by Moore,Mary B
Coleman walked into the living room and sat down looking serious, then again that was no change from his usual expression, but this seemed more than usual. He’d told us after Ren and Maya’s wedding that although we hadn’t had any further incidents, it was too early to relax security, which we could all understand because we still didn’t know who the man in the security footage that we think bailed Jodie and Calista out was. Ren had taken security with him on his short pre-honeymoon with Maya and I didn’t know what Luke had organized for us, but I knew we would have some with us, too. Because I was so far into the pregnancy and it was twins, Dr. Conlan had advised that we didn’t go too far on an airplane because twin pregnancies can come much earlier than a normal pregnancy, so we weren't going to go overseas for our honeymoon. To be honest, I quite liked the idea that Ren had come up with for him and Maya, but Luke said he had something organized already. I didn’t trust that we would be safe until we found out who was responsible for what was going on. We’d had bombs, shootings, and people had been injured; how do you switch off from that overnight?
Looking back up at Coleman, I saw him doing the exact same thing Brett was - staring at his phone and frowning.
“Has something happened?” They looked up at me at the same time and it was quite intimidating to be on the end of both frowns.
“No, just personal shit.” Brett said as he put his phone back in his pocket and Coleman nodded in agreement but said nothing. I wonder if it was Amy?
Luke walked in from the kitchen with his own slice of cake and plonked himself down beside me just as we heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. You’d think we’d be frantically planning our own wedding, but Christie and Gram had pretty much done it all for me because with the twins they didn’t want me getting stressed. I was actually relieved about it because when I’d first seen the plans, I had become stressed like every bride, but after the shooting at the bridal shop, I struggled to go out to appointments for the wedding. I was just so damn scared that it would happen again or something would happen to the babies, so Christie and Gram taking that over was a huge relief.
I was snapped out of my thoughts by the door opening and Ren and Maya walking in with George and Christie. The parents to be looked like they were floating on cloud nine with Ren wearing the biggest grin I’d ever seen on his face and Maya smiling with flushed cheeks.
“Well, don’t keep us in suspense. It’s a Cole isn’t it?” We all turned to glare at the fool who was talking with a huge chunk of cake in his cheek.
“We’re just gonna get Maya’s parents on FaceTime and then we’ll tell you,” Ren replied while Maya tapped on her screen. “And for the last fucking time, no, the baby isn’t going to be called Cole.”
Cole frowned and then turned toward Luke and I, but Luke was ready and waiting.
“Don’t look at us, we already have names picked out. We chose them in Bali.”
“Hey Momma, are you and Daddy ready?” Maya said, getting all of our attention back on her. Thankfully her parents had decided to go to Washington to see some friends before flying back to Australia, so it wasn’t some ungodly hour for them.
She passed the phone to Luke to hold for her and went to stand next to her husband. “It’s a boy!” Ren crowed holding his fist up in the air.
“Thank Jesus, it’s a boy, Vivienne,” Maya’s dad said from the phone. I guess after having two daughters, a boy would be a welcome relief. Of course we were all asking questions at once about names, which they hadn’t chosen yet, and other things like that and it took a while for it to settle down.
“So…which one of you is using Cole as the baby’s middle name. I’ll go get the straws to make it a fair draw.”
Luke
Isla was walking toward me in her dress looking like a fairytale. I’d just been thinking that Ren had had it easy having his wedding in a marquee, because standing at the end of the aisle in Piersville’s church with all of the pews filled with people staring at me had me breaking out in a sweat. All of the what ifs had been running through my head, even though I knew that Isla would never ditch me at the altar, when Ave Maria had begun playing and I saw the bridesmaids, with Tony as a bridesman again, walking toward me. There had been a slight delay and then Isla had appeared on her father’s arm, and it took everything I had not to run and get her and then run back to the Pastor currently standing behind me. Initially Isla had wanted her Gram to walk her, but we’d spoken about it the weekend before and she’d decided that she would ask her Dad, who had been shocked but happy about it. I wasn’t sure that the bastard deserved it, but it was up to Isla.
He hadn’t taken the death of Jodie and Calista badly, and when it had been confirmed that it hadn’t been suicide, he said that they had made a lot of enemies so it stood to reason that one of them would have snapped. The depth of their vileness had come out after the breakup of the marriage and some of them were influential men, so there were a lot of suspects which made their actions while they were alive even worse. Marriages were ending and people were hurt, children now had split families, and sure it wasn’t just Calista and Jodie’s faults, but from the journals that were found in their room, they had meticulously planned who they were going to get control over and how. Add what they had done to Isla onto it all and I couldn’t blame Geoffrey for not being upset over the deaths.
Now, though, her father looked like the happiest man alive walking her down the aisle as my heart thumped hard in my chest. When she reached me and her Dad passed her over to me, we grinned at each other and I willed the Pastor to talk fast, in case she changed her mind. I knew she wouldn’t, but what if someone objected or something went wrong?
Although Isla had chosen a church wedding, we’d cut down the service slightly as she was so heavily pregnant and we didn’t think that bits of it applied to us, so within forty-five minutes, she was yet again Mrs. Isla Montgomery and I was kissing my bride. I’d chosen to give her a thin diamond band to wear in front of her wedding and engagement rings, a promise of eternity together. She’d had my wedding band engraved and as she went to put it on my finger, she showed me the inscription - More than forever.
We just had the reception back at the Townsend’s to get through and then I could take her away on the special mini honeymoon that I had planned. Our real one would happen after we had the babies and things were safer.
We had just sat down after cutting the cake when all of a sudden, there was a change in the security men that we could see inside the tent. Some of them stood ready, and a couple of the ones outside ran past the tent and toward where Ren’s property was. I made eye contact with Baz who looked tense, but also not majorly concerned and when he met my eyes he shook his head to let me know that it wasn’t that bad that I had to carry out the backup plan that we’d formulated for both Ren and my weddings to get the girls out of there.
“What’s going on?” Isla sounded scared.
“Nothing major, sayang. It might be an animal tripping one of the sensors.” I knew it wasn’t, but right now I didn’t want her worrying.
Not long after it, I saw Coleman approach Brett and whisper in his ear and then move onto Ren whose lips thinned as he listened to what Coleman had to say. I was about to get up and walk over to them when Baz appeared beside me and whispered, “We need you to come and ID someone Luke. It’s not urgent, but the sooner we sort this out the better.”
Standing up, I turned and smiled at Isla. “I’ll be right back, Angel; Baz needs me to look at something.” She looked worried, so I winked and gave her a quick kiss before following Baz out of the tent.
When we got to the outhouse where the intruder was being held, I didn’t expect to see who was handcuffed to the chair inside.
“Dick?” Ren and I said at the same time.
“Says his name is Richard.” Coleman stood glaring at him with his arms crossed over his chest. “Caught him creeping near your house Ren. When he was picked up, he said he was a guest, but his ID doesn’t match anything that
we have on our lists or the approved list either.” The approved list was people and workers who were approved to come onto the property without someone calling us to ask us if we agreed to their presence on the land.
“What did you want, Dick?” Ren asked, deliberately stressing the nickname to piss him off.
“I got lost.”
“Did he have anything on him?” I asked Coleman. Baz had left Graham in charge of Isla, and at the moment there was only a handful of us in the outhouse, but Coleman had taken center stage and was standing close to Richard while Baz and the other men stood back watching. One of Coleman’s guys threw a bag at my feet and I picked it up and looked inside to find women’s panties and bras and a couple of items of clothes.
None of it looked familiar so, I passed it onto Ren. “What the fuck?” He exploded.
“These are my fucking wife’s!” He took a step toward the asshole in the chair who actually looked afraid now, but Coleman held him back.
“We knew he was an issue of a different kind from Brett, so when we saw him coming through the trees toward the property we allowed him to continue so that we would have evidence to press charges.” Ren glared at him and if I was honest I would have, too. That asshole had been through their property and had stolen some of my cousin’s things. It even pissed me off!
“She was mine, you just had to get in there first. It should have been my bed that she was in,” the dick started yelling and bouncing the chair up and down. His words had Ren taking another step towards him, getting held back by Coleman again.
“Think hard man, you have a pregnant wife that you need to get back to. Right now, he’s fucked, but if you beat the shit out of him, you’ll be in shit, too. Clean remember?” After what had happened with the shooter, we had agreed, from now on that we were going to keep our noses as clean as possible.
I could see Ren’s jaw working away as he tried to calm down, so leaning around him I met Richard’s eyes. “Right now, the only reason that he isn’t trying to kill you is because he’s being held back. Whatever delusions you have about my cousin, stop now or we’ll make sure that there are so many charges pressed against you, that it takes years for you to have a shower where you’re not scared to death of turning your back to the room. Do I make myself clear?”
“She was mine. She was into me!” The asshole actually believed what he was saying, was he insane?
“Have you done anything like this to her before?” Baz asked from the sidelines, looking at Dick as if he was a science project.
“I couldn’t get close enough because of him,” he spat in Ren’s direction.
“He’s followed her a couple of times,” one of Coleman’s men added. Ren didn’t look overly surprised by this so obviously he’d been made aware of it. “But we’ve always managed to intervene before he could get close to her.”
“Call the police,” Coleman directed and Dick started to panic.
“You can’t! I’ve done nothing wrong!”
Coleman lifted his chin at us and Ren and I walked out of the outhouse after giving Richard one last glare. The whole way back to the tent, Ren was silent and I could feel the justified fury coming off of him.
“I hate this,” he whispered. “I should be keeping her safe! She should be relaxing and enjoying her pregnancy and preparing for the baby, but instead we’re constantly looking over our shoulders and living under the shadow of whatever is going to happen next.”
“I get it.” And I did because I felt the same way. “When Isla’s car was bombed, I assumed that would be the worst, but when she was shot? Fuck man…” I needed to clear my throat because it always choked me up thinking about it. “I don’t know who it is or why they’re doing it, but I do know that they’ll get caught and when they are, they’re fucked.” We walked to the entrance to the tent and I stopped and turned to face him. “We need to leave the He-Man shit to the experts now, Ren, and focus on our wives and our babies. We remain vigilant at all times and we do not take any breaks in this bullshit for granted, okay?”
Nodding his head, he ran his hands through his hair in frustration. Looking into the tent, we saw our wives standing there talking to a couple of guests. Isla stood smiling with her hand on her bump while Maya threw her head back and laughed.
They must have felt it because they both turned their heads in our direction at the same time and grinned, and as easy as that, the weight riding my shoulders lifted; Ren must have felt it too because he let out a long breath and then strode up to Maya and picked her up.
I got to Isla just after him and as she reached up to give me a kiss she whispered, “Don’t think you’re off the hook. I want to know what happened, but right now I want to dance with my husband, so get moving.”
I didn’t need to be told twice, so I walked onto the dance floor and took her in my arms. I was the luckiest guy in the world.
Isla
Lying back on the lounger on the beach, I looked across the crystal blue water in front of me and listened to the relaxing sound of the surf. Luke had refused to tell me where we were going and when we’d got into the small plane and taken off it had been very early morning, so I ended up falling asleep. When we landed at the private air strip, there hadn't been any clues around telling me where we were. I’d been blindfolded for the car journey to what I later found out was a dock, where one of his friend’s yachts was waiting to take us to their small private island. It was absolutely beautiful and never in a million years would I have thought that I would get to enjoy something as lavish and beautiful as this. Especially, not with the man that I’d been in love with since the first day I met him.
“Are you comfortable, sayang?” my husband asked from behind me, leaning over to kiss my neck. I hadn’t heard him walk up in the sand and hearing him call me the special nickname that I loved, had me grinning as goosebumps broke out over my arms. Sitting down next to me on the lounger, I watched the sea water fall off his hair onto his chest and then trail down it to the band of swim shorts. “Isla?” His chuckle broke through my water hypnosis.
“Hmm?” I looked up as he burst out laughing.
“I asked if you were comfortable and what you wanted to do for the rest of the day?”
I’d been diagnosed with the onset of a condition called PGP, pelvic girdle pain, because of the weight of the twins. It wasn’t exactly agony, but it did feel like I’d been kicked between the legs sometimes and others it was a dull ache that could flare up for no reason. Because of this, Luke had gone into overdrive making sure that I hardly walked anywhere when he was around, that he ran after me, and that I was always as comfortable as possible.
“I think I might go into the sea for a bit,” I murmured looking out across it and thinking that this sounded like heaven.
“Isla,” I looked quickly in his direction because of the panic in his voice. He looked at the sea and swallowed audibly before looking back at me. “There’s sharks in the sea.”
“Sharks?” Had I heard him right? I looked back at the water looking for a fin or something and didn’t see any.
Nodding his head, he grabbed my hand. “Blacktips, Hammerheads, Bull’s, Tigers…”
It was a bad moment to laugh, but every time I heard about Tiger sharks now, I thought of the story of Cole bouncing on Maya’s bed and screaming at a spider and going on about the fake sharks or whatever it was. Luke’s eyes narrowed on me so I replied with the one word that would explain it all, “Cole.”
“Isla, please, there’s too many, Angel.” Obviously, he couldn’t be distracted.
“Luke, there were probably more in the Gilies.” I tried to help him rationalize his worry, but this didn’t help because he went even paler than he had been since I brought up going into the sea. Sighing, I looked back out at the water and thought about the situation. After what had happened and what we’d been through, we still didn’t know if we were safe, so it was understandable that he would pick up on every danger now. “Can I at least go to where the water reaches
my chest?” He started chewing his lip anxiously so I tried again. “Waist? And you’ll be with me, too!”
He thought about it for a second and then nodded and picked me up to take me into the sea. He hadn’t said anything yet and Luke only got really quiet when he was worried, a high level of angry, or upset, and I hated that he had to feel like this when we should be happy. I was scared and worried, too; I wasn’t ready to go anywhere on my own yet not that I was able to with the security that we still had, but if I was put in that situation I don’t think I would be able to cope. The only time I felt properly safe was when I was with the man holding me.
He stood in the water holding me and I burst out laughing. “This wasn’t the deal honey,” I giggled, kicking my legs and splashing water over both of us. He let out a laugh, but his heart just wasn’t in it so I relaxed as he held me and snuggled into him, enjoying the peace and being with him until he turned around and walked us back to where I’d been lying under an umbrella.
We were snuggled on the lounger together and he was running his hand down my back. “I was going to take you to Disneyworld because I knew you had always wanted to go,” he broke the silence. “Right now, it just isn’t safe enough, so I’m going to take you and the babies as soon as all of this shit is resolved.”
I froze where I was rubbing my cheek on his chest and slowly looked up at him. The only time that I’d mentioned that to him was when we first met, so he must have remembered it for all of those years. Proving that pregnancy hormones were a bitch, I burst into tears on him again. “Shit, I’m sorry, Angel, it’s just - it’s not safe enough and I know you want to go but I can’t let you get hurt…”
“It’s not that,” I sniffled, cutting him off. “You’ve remembered all of these years!”
He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Of course I did.” It must have hit him what I meant, seeing as my own father hadn’t even celebrated or remembered my birthdays. Lifting me higher up whilst being careful with my mega bump, he brought me eye level with him. “The day I met you, you had braids either side of your head with a pale blue bow at the end. Your favorite tee when you were eleven had the Brain dude from Pinky and the Brain on it. When you were fourteen, you got a pair of bubble gum pink Dr. Martens from your Gram and refused to wear anything else for a year. When you were fifteen, you fell and grazed your knee and had Harry Potter Band-Aids on it for a week.” Pushing my hair gently out of my face, he continued. “I remember everything, and any dreams that you have, from now on, I’m going to move mountains to make them happen.”