More Than Forever (Providence Series Book 2)

by Moore,Mary B

  “What? Is it the babies? Fuck, where’s Guntur?” He was scanning the beach, but the point of Guntur and his men were that they were to blend in and not stand out, so Luke reached for the burner phone lying on my book.

  “Yes…no…yes! They moved!” I felt the feeling again and went to put my hand over it, but Luke beat me to it.

  He was crouched over me for a couple of minutes while we waited for it to happen again, and just as he started to reduce the pressure it happened.

  “Holy shit!” He whispered. I knew from pregnancy websites that you couldn’t normally feel a baby move from the outside until around twenty weeks, but when I’d looked up twins it had said that it was possible when they were in this position. It didn’t happen often, though. The fact that it had and that Luke had felt it made this moment one to never be forgotten. When I was little, every time something good happened or I had a memorable occasion, I would put them into a journal that I’d titled ‘Good Times’. Because my Dad was an asshole and my mom was self-centered, the only good that I’d had in my life was Gram and the Montgomery’s so the memories were all to do with them. Then I met my three best friends and I had moments with them too, but this was going into the top five moments; all of which involved the father of my little kickers who was smiling so wide that it had to hurt. He looked up at me with his hand still over the babies. I still had a notebook that I wrote them in, or I typed notes in the app on my phone.

  “I want to get married now.”

  I was still so focused on the babies that for a minute I thought I’d heard him wrong.

  “What?”

  “Hear me out,” he leaned over me, putting his hands either side of my head. “I want to get married now, here! Before you say no, think about it. This place means something and knowing that I married you here, even though it’s just us, will make it even more beautiful.”

  He looked so serious and worried and it took me a couple seconds to digest what exactly he was saying to me.

  “Your mom will kill us!”

  “We’ll have another wedding, a huge one to make her happy, but I want us to get married here!” He said, moving his hand to the side of my neck and stroking his thumb across my jaw. Just that one touch grounded me.

  “Gram will kill us!”

  “She’ll get the same big event that Mom will!”

  Looking up at him while he stroked I realized something, I wanted this badly. It hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility, I mean we’d only been engaged for sixteen hours, but getting married here of all places? And our babies having names from here… Right here, right now, there wasn’t anyone possibly trying to kill us. I was starting to realize that Luke really was serious and that he loved me and not just because of the babies. This went a long way to healing the modicum of hurt and lack of trust that I had left in me.

  “Let’s do it!”

  “Are you serious?” His hand moved away and he leaned down so that our faces were millimeters away from each other.

  “I want to marry you here.” I grinned up at him and watched as an expression I’d never seen before crossed his face; it was soft and it was…peaceful.

  He closed the space between us and gently kissed me before rising up and blowing my world for the third time in twenty-four hours. “Every year, we’re coming back here to the place that made my life complete.”

  Reaching up and grabbing the back of his neck, I pulled him back down to me and kissed him, pouring everything that I had into it.

  With our lips still touching, I said the one thing that I hadn’t said to him since he’d come back into my life. “I love you! I fell in love with you when you threw mud in my face and put a worm in my spaghetti. I loved you when you shot me in the ass with a BB gun. And I loved you when we conceived these babies. I love you and our little kickers. Thank you for giving me all of this!”

  Unfortunately, at that moment, my bladder reminded me that I’d been holding it for forty-five minutes, and for ten of those I’d had Luke’s huge bear paw sized hand pressing down to feel the babies move. I needed to go to the bathroom stat or this moment was going to be ruined in the most humiliating way.

  “Honey,” I murmured.

  “Mmmm,” his lips still busy on mine.

  Ah fuck it, I was going to have to say it and run. “If I don’t get up right now, then I’m going to christen the occasion and your legs.”

  He jerked back and to the side giving me space to jump up and start my mad dash to the little beach house. I made a mental note to do my Kegel exercises as my bladder tried to literally go with the flow with each bounce.

  Luke

  I looked across the table at Isla eating dinner and smiled. The pregnancy was bringing out a different food aversion every day, which normally lasted a couple of days until something else took its place; tonight, it was beef. Last night she couldn’t eat enough of it so she’d ordered beef satay and nasi goreng when we sat down, smiling happily until the satay was put in front of her and then she’d gone pale.

  Being the nice guy that I am, I swapped my chicken for her beef and didn’t hear a peep from her until she’d finished the pile of food in front of her. It was a miracle that Isla was as small as she was seeing as how she could really pack food away; she always could, but the babies were making that even worse now. I had zero issues with this, a happy Isla was all that I wanted and if she was happy the babies were happy, so it was win-win.

  I’d been thinking how I could approach a topic that needed to be discussed before we got married; I didn’t want anything between us and it didn’t sit well with me to not explain, so I was going to take her for a walk down the beach instead of the path back to our cottage.

  I could see our little house getting closer and realized I needed to bite the bullet and gave her hand a tug as I stopped walking. She still had her feet in the surf when she turned around and looked at me in confusion.

  “We need to talk,” I started and winced when I saw the look on her face. This was the wedge between us that I was talking about and needed to fix; she still had some trust issues with me and I hated it. “It’s not bad, Angel, I promise!”

  She stood looking unsure and then nodded for me to continue.

  Taking a deep breath, I launched into it.

  “That night at prom,” she tugged her hand, but I wasn’t letting go. “I was the happiest guy in the world when you said you’d go with me as my date that night. I’d been in love with you for years and instead of just saying it, I was a dick. A couple of months before prom, you’d stopped hanging out with me as much and I realized it was because of how I’d been acting, what I’d been doing, and the reputation that I had.” I ran the hand that wasn’t holding Isla’s through my hair and let out a frustrated breath. Fuck this was hard. “So, I worked on us and you started to let me back in and I took my shot and asked you to prom. When we got there, Joey Benson had brought a bottle of whiskey that he’d stolen off his dad and stashed in his locker, and throughout the night we thought we were the shit and drank it. I remember being wrecked, and the next thing I was kissing someone. I thought it was you and that you’d come looking for me, but by the time that I realized that it wasn’t and that it was Calista, it was too late and you’d gone.”

  Isla was looking down at her feet in the sand, but I could hear a little sniff every so often and it was breaking my heart.

  “Isla, look at me.” She slowly raised her head and the expression on her face gutted me. “I never would have touched Calista, ever! I didn’t want her. In fact, it’s fair to say that I hate the bitch and still do. That’s not to say she hasn’t come on to me, many times in fact,” I realized my mistake when I saw her tense. “But, I’ve never touched her or taken her up on it.” I rushed out. “That night I was too drunk to drive, and in the end we had to call Dad to come and get us. By the time I got over the vomiting and hangover from hell, you had left. Your Gram came and found me a week later, getting drunk again by the lake on my own, and laid it all out for m
e and what had happened. I felt like such a piece of shit. When you graduated from college, I didn’t know if seeing me would ruin the day for you so I stayed at the back out of the way and watched everything. But sayang.” My voice had now dropped down to a whisper and I put my arms around her tense frame. “I saw all of it and I was so fucking proud of you.”

  “You were there?”

  “Absolutely. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  “I think I get it Luke,” she whispered, looking out to sea and biting her lip before turning back to me. “You broke me, though, and it took years to heal.”

  “I know this, and that’s why I’m explaining it. And Kendal, that most definitely wasn’t what she made it out to be, but it was a stupid fucking thing to do.” Cupping her face in my hands, I bent down until we were almost nose to nose. “I am so sorry, Isla, and I swear that I’ll spend every day proving that you never have to doubt me.” I held my breath and watched as she looked between my eyes for a couple of seconds before nodding her head.

  “I love you, Luke,” she said as a tear ran down her face and I tried to catch it with my thumb, but one on the other side was now falling and in my panic that she was crying, I didn’t know which one to catch first. “I won’t lie and say that I trust you completely, but I will say that I trust you and I do want to marry you. When I left for Singapore, I tried to convince myself that I hated you, but I couldn’t, which just pissed me off.” I chuckled because she’d always been that way. “But, I do know that regardless of the small bit of me that’s worried, that I love and trust you. I will say, though, that if you do anything to me again, you will destroy me, Luke. Please don’t break me!” She ended on a whisper that was so bleak that it was like a kick to the nuts.

  Sliding my hand down to her stomach, I held our babies and said the only thing that I could. “I promise!”

  I saw her grin just as I felt the tiny tap under my hand and grinned back. This was all I needed in life and God, I was going to make sure that it was never taken away from me.

  Chapter

  TWELVE

  Isla

  “Say it,” Luke growled as he moved in and out of me slowly. It was torture.

  “What?” Who the hell asks questions in the middle of marriage sex? Or normal sex?

  “Say it,” he repeated.

  “I will kill you if you don’t start moving properly.”

  Obviously, that wasn’t what he wanted to hear because he stopped moving completely and stayed leaning over me on his hands staring down at me.

  “Isla, say it,” he said firmly.

  “What the shit do you want me to say, Luke?” I yelled, pushing my feet down onto the mattress and lifting my hips. If he wouldn’t move then I would, but he foiled that plan by pushing his hips into me which, although it felt lovely, wasn’t what I’d been looking for.

  “Say your name.”

  “Jesus Christ, Luke, that’s what you want?” I whimpered and pulled his face down to mine. “Isla Louise Montgomery, Mrs. Montgomery!”

  Before I could blink, he had started moving again and proceeded to show me exactly how much those five words had meant to him. I’d so be using them again.

  Luke

  Yesterday had been one of the most amazing days of my life; we’d been married on the beach by an officiant from one of the resorts. Bambang, one of Guntur’s guys, and the chick who cleaned for us, who Isla had become close to, were our witnesses. Isla had worn a white sundress with little embroidered flowers that we’d got while we’d been in Lombok, and I’d worn my beige shorts and a white shirt. It was hard not having any of our family there, but we would cover that when we got home. Before she’d gotten dressed, I’d given her the angel wings necklace that had survived the fire in the safe and that I’d kept since she gave it back to me when I fucked up at Prom. She’d stood staring at it in her hand for ages before bursting into tears and swearing that she’d never take it off again.

  I’d needed to hear her say her new name last night, but when she called herself Mrs. Montgomery, that was it for me. I’d woken her up another two times throughout the night, so she deserved to sleep in this morning.

  Getting out of bed, I picked up the phone to call my Mom to tell her the good news, but before I could turn it on there was a loud knock at the door. Checking to make sure that it hadn’t woken Isla up, I pulled yesterday’s shorts up my legs and went to the door seeing Guntur through the small window on it.

  Pulling it open, I tried to remember if we’d had a meeting this morning that I’d forgotten about.

  “A man has been asking about you in Nusa Dua,” he said walking in and closing the door behind him. “It’s only a matter of time before he crosses to Lombok, Luke, so we need to get you and Isla out of here.”

  We’d chosen the Giles because they were so secluded and small so it was easier to be aware of everyone near and on them with the team spread out. With a possible threat being so close, it was time to move on.

  “When?” I turned around and headed in the direction of Isla to get things organized.

  “As soon as possible, Luke. I’ll be outside waiting.” I heard the sound of the door open and close while I walked around the bed towards Isla to wake her up.

  “Isla,” I gave her a gentle shake and she opened her beautiful hazel eyes.

  “Sweetheart, we need to get ready. We have to go.”

  For the billionth time, I thanked God for the fact that Isla was so sensible as she got out of bed and started putting stuff in our bags. Maybe most people would be scared and want to know what was happening, but Isla listened and trusted and always acted rationally. Well, the pregnancy was making her cry more, but aside from that she was rational.

  I walked up behind her and took the pile of clothes out of her hands. “You go take a shower, Angel, I’ll do this and then we’ll swap when you come out, okay?”

  “K,” she murmured and walked into the bathroom.

  By the time the shower shut off, I had most of our shit in the bags and clothes laid out for us to wear. I wasn’t sure what the plan was, but I knew that Baz and Guntur would have it sorted out by the time we left the island. Not waiting for Isla to come out, I went into the bathroom and jumped into the shower as she brushed her teeth. This wasn’t ideal because it meant the water stayed cold and that I got hit by that cold water; at the same time, Isla standing fresh faced in front of the mirror with only a towel on meant that the cold shower was a necessity if we were going to get out of here anytime this morning. I had it bad if we were potentially in danger and I was still getting hard for her. The cold water made my leg and the other areas of me that had been injured ache, though, so I made it a brief shower.

  Within thirty minutes we were ready and our bags were being carried down to the boat waiting for us.

  “What’s the plan?” I asked Guntur once we’d started the journey to Lombok.

  “Baz has flown in a friend’s jet to Lombok. From there you fly to Jakarta to pick up half of Baz’s team and then to Manilla where he and the rest of the team will meet you and then you will return to America. The suspect in Nusa Dua has been delayed by a well-meaning taxi driver,” he said that bit with a grin on his face. “Who has, unfortunately, taken him to a village forty miles away from Ngurah Rai Airport. Even more unfortunate, was the fact that the well-meaning taxi driver didn’t speak any English, so he didn’t understand him when the suspect requested that he wait for him while he asked some questions in the local hotel. The local hotel is nine small rooms with no air conditioning, outside toilets and woven palm walls.” I grinned at the evil genius of this team and its simplicity, too. “Even more unfortunate, no one speaks English and the phone lines were taken down during a storm the other night, and they won’t be repaired until tomorrow afternoon.” The grin left his face as he got to the next point. “We don’t know if he was acting alone though, Luke, this is why we have to move both of you, now. There have been four travelers who have arrived in Bali over the last t
wo days who have acquired our attention, so to be safe we have to go.”

  I held Isla’s hand as we motored toward land and thought through all of this. I had to keep them safe no matter what, failure wasn’t an option.

  Ten Hours Later…

  We had left Ninoy Aquino Airport in Manila an hour ago and we’re now en route back to Piersville. Thankfully, as the jet we were on was a private class jet, we could land at the small airfield just outside of town.

  “What’s the plan when we get back?” This had been weighing on my mind the whole time. I didn’t have a house anymore as what was left of mine most likely looked like the remains of the world’s biggest bonfire and I didn’t think that Isla’s house was secure enough at the moment. The car blast had caused damage to the front of the house, too, and we also needed to carry out some security upgrades on it before it was livable. I’d also had an idea and had started on some drawings and was going to talk to Dad about them when I saw him.

  “Layla Townsend’s house is free and has been offered up by her family for you to stay in until further notice,” Baz started. “There had been a security upgrade already carried out to the house and also to the property surrounding it, and there are constant patrols by both uniform and undercover security.”

  I sat back and looked down at Isla’s head on my shoulder where she’d fallen asleep before we’d even taken off. Her left hand was curled on my thigh and her wedding rings glinting at me caught my attention.

  “Is this the safest option?” I couldn’t take my eyes off them. They were proof that she was mine, that the babies inside her were mine, and they needed to be kept as safe as possible. If this meant going to Japan, hell even Azerbaijan, so long as she was safe, I’d do it.

  “At this moment in time, Luke, yes,” Baz replied. “I spoke with Coleman, Mace, and