For Love of Freedom (Stone Brothers Book 3)

by Samantha Westlake

  "Haverford, you sly dog!" I greeted him back, giving him a brisk hug. Some of the champagne sloshed out of my bottle and landed on the floor, but who cared? There were plenty more bottles behind the bar, just waiting to be opened. "How are things, man? I haven't seen you in forever!"

  "Feels like years, doesn't it?" he nodded. "But hey, tonight's about you! What's this I hear about this being your last big blowout?"

  Right. Tori, the baby, responsibilities crashing down on me like waves. "Later," I said, fighting in vain to keep the smile from slipping off my face. I took a big slug of champagne, trying to keep the party atmosphere going.

  Haverford hadn't made his many millions in high-profile deals without knowing how to read others. "You got it, big guy," he said quickly. "I think I'll go check out those strippers over on the main stage. I hear they can put on a show with ping pong balls."

  "Just volunteer to be the one holding the paddle!" I called after him, trying to restore my former cheer. Focus on the party, Seb. This is exactly what I've been missing, cooped up in that house in the suburbs, with no one around but Tori.

  I bounced around the party, stopping by each of the little groups that formed, checking in and catching up with acquaintances that I hadn't seen in far too long. I fist-pounded with several players on the Chicago Stars, kissed the cheeks of a former pop starlet who had recently made the successful transition to soulful country music (although her fans probably loved her more for the Daisy Dukes than for the crooning ballads), and exchanged a devilishly complex handshake with a dreadlocked rapper.

  "Damn, Stone," the latter exclaimed as I finished the handshake. "Where'd you learn that one from?"

  "Your record producer," I fired back, making him grunt in appreciation. "Now, you better tell me that you're enjoying the party!"

  He flashed a pair of shining gold teeth as he looked around. "I don't know where you find these girls, man," he admitted. "But wherever it is, you better tell me – I've got a whole new inspiration for my next few music videos."

  I smiled, promised that I'd hook him up, moved on. The party was full of the rich and famous, the wealthy and beautiful and powerful of the world, but I still felt like something was missing. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, and I finished off the bottle of champagne as I searched fruitlessly for whatever I needed.

  I collected another bottle from the nearest bar – the place was big enough to need half a dozen different stations for liquor, each with its own smiling, buxom female bartender dressed skimpily behind the counter. I decided that my free hand also needed its own drink, and picked up a glass of fabulously expensive single malt scotch.

  I took a swig of the scotch, then washed it down with a big gulp of champagne. Not bad, strangely enough.

  My wandering through the party led me over to a big wraparound sofa, where I settled down alongside Enzio, the current F1 racing champion and ranked best in the world, and Malik Jones, a former NBA great who now owned his own brands for clothing, energy drinks, sports equipment, and more. Malik nodded at me, although Enzio appeared too distracted by the naked, voluptuous woman currently trying to suffocate him with her tits.

  "Good party, man," he called out.

  I nodded, still not totally convinced. I finished off the last of my scotch, wishing that it would magically replenish itself. "Yeah, I guess."

  Suddenly, a pair of slender arms slipped around me from behind, reaching down to rub my chest as I felt two soft and delightful pillows buffet the back of my head. "Someone's drink empty?" asked a sensual voice in my ear.

  Without even turning, I just held up the glass for her. "Scotch."

  The hands slid up my chest, lingering for a moment just long enough to pop open the top button on my shirt, before lifting the glass out of my fingers. The stripper sauntered around the couch, making sure to show off her figure in front of me before moving towards the bar to refill my drink.

  The way she made her ass, round and perfect without a single hint of cellulite or wrinkles, bounce was enough to even draw the eye of Enzio away from his own female friend. "Sebastian, why are you no smiling?" he asked, his eyebrows furrowing. "She is so sexy, I might even give up racing for her!"

  "I know what's going on," Malik jumped in before I could answer. "I've seen that look on teammates before. You've got a baby mama, haven't you?"

  Normally, I'd be able to better hide my reaction – but the booze lessened my control, and Malik nodded sagely. "Yeah, it happens to the best of us," he said, reaching out to pat me on the shoulder with one huge hand, big enough to wrap around a basketball. "Feels like the end of the world, yeah?"

  "Baby mama?" Enzio repeated, turning his frown to Malik.

  "Yeah, you know?" Malik pointed at the stripper still happily working her ass on Enzio's lap. "He got a woman knocked up."

  "Ohh." Enzio didn't seem to know how to do sympathy, but he patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. "My advice, man? Buy her a nice house, and then distract with another horse, yes?"

  The words probably lost something in translation, but his gesture towards the stripper returning with my refilled drink was clear enough. "Thanks," I told Enzio, before the stripper settled down in front of me, blocking my view of anything but her perfectly shaped assets, a pair of pink nipples pointing temptingly at me.

  "Your drink, master," she purred, holding the glass tumbler between her breasts. They glistened, dampened by the condensation on the outside of the glass. "Look good?"

  I thought again of Tori, but then banished that vision from my head. This was my life, not being at home with her and, in the future, a screaming baby. "Yes," I answered, reaching out for the glass.

  Before I could take it from her, the woman slipped her hand around my wrist, lifted my fingers up to her mouth. "I'm Jewel," she purred, opening dark red lips and sucking lustily on my fingertips. I felt a corresponding stiffening in my lap as the warm wetness of her mouth caressed my fingers. "And you're not focusing on me enough, baby."

  I opened my mouth to protest, but she pulled the glass of scotch from between her breasts, had it against my lips. "Drink," she commanded, tilting it back.

  I gulped down the fiery liquor. As I did, she pulled my fingers away from her mouth, pressing them against her chest. They tightened, and I felt the squeeze of her breast against my palm, warm and soft with that stiff nipple in the middle of my palm.

  "Good boy," she murmured. She gave me a second, and then once again lifted the glass up to my lips. "Finish it."

  As I did as commanded, her hand now drew my fingers south. They ran over a perfectly taut stomach – no baby bump there, the tiny little part of my mind that still thought coherently pointed out – and then down further. She didn't have a single hair on her body below her head, nor a stitch of fabric.

  Jewel set the empty glass aside, and then spread her legs wide to straddle me. "Now, how can I make you forget about whatever's bothering you?" she asked, her grin revealing perfect teeth. She leaned forward without giving me a chance to answer, pushing my face into her warm, soft cleavage. No stretch marks on these breasts, unlike how Tori's probably looked by now. These were the kind of breasts that I wanted to see – perfect, as if sculpted by God himself, along with the rest of her body...

  My head spun, probably due just as much to the multiple glasses of scotch on top of the champagne as from the rush of blood flowing south. I heard Enzio's words again in my head, telling me to buy the baby mama a house – or was it a horse? – and then let her go.

  Yes, yes, he was right. That was what I needed to do. I'd given Tori a house, and I'd be able to set her up with all the money she'd need for raising a baby. But I couldn't be a father, not right now. I wasn't ready.

  This life, the drunken parties and mingling with athletes, celebrities, other successes. This was where I wanted to be. If I stayed home with Tori, didn't see these people, I'd be missing out on so many experiences. I wouldn't be a success like them – I'd be the failure, the one who knocked up a girl and got t
aken out of the whole scene-

  "I need to do something," I managed to get out, pushing Jewel off me.

  She looked taken aback for a second, but recovered almost immediately. "You better not take long, baby," she purred, batting long lashes at me. "I'm hungry, and I think you're the only one who can fill me up..."

  I gave her perfect body one last look, but then staggered away. There wasn't a single quiet corner anywhere in the party, so I found the stairs, pushed the door open to duck into the stairwell. I pulled my phone out of my pocket, nearly dropping it before managing to get it the right way and unlocked.

  I dialed Tori's number, stared dumbly at the screen before remembering that I needed to hold it up against my ear. Goddamn, I really was drunker than I'd thought. It all had hit me at once. I listened to the phone ring, then beep at me.

  Voice mail. Maybe that was better.

  "I'm sorry, Tori," I slurred out. "Oh, yeah. This is Seb. Listen, we need to talk. I think that I've just, you know, been forcing myself into this too much?" I sagged back against the side of the wall, felt myself slipping down into a sitting position. The words spilled out of me without thought. "Maybe, I don't know, we need to just, like, take a break."

  And there it was. Out now, too late for me to take it back. I babbled onward, at least ten more minutes of rambling into her voicemail, before the idea to hang up finally managed to penetrate my drunken mind.

  I stood up, turning around to go back out of the stairwell and rejoin the party. I grabbed the handle and pulled-

  -and the door didn't budge.

  Perfect. Just perfect. Apparently, the stairwell door didn't open from this side. I was locked out of my own party, on the roof of the towering hotel.

  I looked at the dozens of flights of stairs leading downward, tried pounding on the door a few more times. I couldn't even hear the party raging on the other side; that probably meant no one would hear me.

  Perfect.

  Chapter Eighteen

  TORI

  *

  I listened to the voicemail play again, my world crumbling around me. It droned on, and just as it finally came to a merciful end, my finger stabbed out to replay it. Those words started again, burning into my head.

  I felt my legs threatening to give out under me. I just barely managed to make it to one of the stools in the kitchen before they gave up the ghost, depositing me heavily into the chair. They spread wider, now, accommodating the growing belly that contained the baby.

  Our baby. Mine and Seb's baby.

  Except now, he didn't want anything to do with it.

  He'd texted me a few hours earlier, letting me know that his private jet touched down safely in Vegas. I'd sent him back a cheery reply, telling him to have fun, telling him that we'd be missing him, waiting for him to come back.

  We. The baby and I. For just a little while, I'd started to think of us as a little family, a unit that would stay together.

  So much for that vain hope, it seemed.

  I hadn't heard much else from him, but assumed that he was off at this party that he wanted to throw. I had been a little nervous about him holding a party – after all, I'd been to plenty of Seb's parties, I saw how they sometimes turned out – but he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize what we had together, would he? He'd grown since those earlier days, become more accustomed to being a parent, living here with me...

  Or not.

  I sat there in the kitchen for several minutes, just looking at the answering machine, fighting against the temptation to torture myself further by listening to the message again, and again, and again. I'd been just a little too slow in getting up from the couch where I'd settled down, and the phone's ringing had gone over to voicemail before I made it to the headset. Stupid, that. I really ought to have brought the receiver around with me, so that I wouldn't risk missing a call.

  I groaned, reached up to press my hands against my eyes. I couldn't even think straight. What did I want to do now?

  Inside my head, I almost expected Seb's mental voice to speak up. Could he defend this message? Would he try to convince me that it was just his nature?

  Wisely, that voice inside my head stayed quiet. Probably good, if it knew what was good for it.

  Well, I knew what I wanted to do now. I wanted to go get drunk, smashed out of my mind with some girlfriends, forget all about Seb ever existing.

  "Not happening, I know," I said out loud, lifting my palms from my eyes so that I could direct a glare down at the baby bump swelling out from my stomach. "You don't like the booze, so I don't get any booze."

  Still, I could at least do the girlfriend thing. I picked up my cell phone, gave Ellen a call.

  "That utter ASSHOLE!" she screamed when she arrived at my house, not five minutes later. I imagined that I could hear the tires smoking on her car outside. "I'm going to pin him down, and you can tear his nuts off with a rusty knife! How dare he!"

  "Ellen, it's not that bad-"

  "Not that bad?" she repeated in disbelief, spinning around to face me. I took a half-step back at the anger glowing in her eyes. She seemed more than angry enough for both of us, and for a second, I feared that she might test out that rusty butter knife deal on me. "Tori, the father of your child just ran out on you, told you that he doesn't want to be a part of your life any longer! Of its life!" She pointed a finger down at my stomach. "He's choosing to be an irresponsible ass instead of stepping up to do his duty!"

  "You think that I don't realize that?" I snapped back, before I managed to get a handle back on my temper. I groaned, made my way over to the couch in the living room where I'd been sitting and trying to read one of the dozens of baby books before the telephone started ringing. "To be honest, I'm kind of impressed that he made it this far."

  "That's... fatalistic," Ellen said, surprising me with her knowledge of the word. She moved over to drop down into the chair across from me. For a moment, I looked enviously at her tanned and toned legs, on display in the sparkly little miniskirt. Clearly, I'd caught her just before she headed out to some party of her own.

  "Nah, it's realistic." I tried a smile, gave up when it became clear that it wasn't going to work. "And hey, I'm smarter than I look. So I'm a realist."

  She blew out her cheeks. "You are smart, at least," she agreed. "You know that my mom had to redo last month's profit statements, like, three times? She just couldn't believe that the numbers were right. She was so convinced that we'd missed a bill somewhere, she was digging through all the papers in her office."

  "Actually, that's another thing I need to work on," I mused, distracted for a second. "I was going to help her set up a paperless system to automatically handle billing and expenses, so she doesn't have to do it by hand."

  "Good luck convincing her to try it," Ellen snorted. She looked a little thoughtful. "But I never thought you'd convince her to change the menu, so go figure. Maybe you can pull it off after all."

  For a second longer, thoughts of River's Edge Café distracted me, but it couldn't last forever. "Oh, Ellen," I moaned, once again letting my head sag forward. "What am I going to do?"

  She knew that I wasn't talking about the restaurant. "You'll get through this, Tori," she promised, reaching forward to hold my hand in both of her own. "I know you will. You're, like, the strongest girl that I know."

  "That's a little sad," I said, even as tears suddenly welled up at the corners of my eyes and threatened to come spilling out in a flood. Damn hormones. That was all that this was.

  "Yeah, but it's also kind of inspiring, you know?" She had the hints of tears glimmering in her own eyes, but she still smiled at me, even through them. "Come on, Tori. At least you find this out now, and you can make plans for it. How much longer on that... thing?" She flicked her eyes down towards my protruding stomach.

  "I'm at nearly five months, so about four more."

  "See? That's plenty of time to plan out a future. And you can do it." Ellen gave my hand one last squeeze, and then stood up from her cha
ir. She planted her hands on her hips, looking around at the house's interior. "And I think that the first thing to do is give this place a Viking funeral."

  I blinked. "Excuse me?"

  "Come on, let's burn Seb's shitty suburban house to the ground! That will leave him with a good message of how you feel when he comes back from being a lecherous ass! That will show him that you're not going to take any more shit from him!"

  I clambered up to my feet, managing to grab my best friend's hand before she headed off to get her firebug fingers on some matches. "Actually, I think the house is in my name," I said quickly.

  She turned to me, her eyebrows climbing up her flawless forehead. "He bought you a house??"

  I nodded. An unexpected pain pierced me, and I quickly blinked again as I tried to keep my eyes clear. "Yeah. I really thought that he was going to turn things around, that he'd..." I cut off, unable to say anything more.

  Ellen looked at me, her mouth hanging open for a moment. "Wait a second," she said, realization dawning in her eyes.

  I looked away, but it was too late to hide my expression from her. "Ellen," I said, my voice husky.

  She sat back down on the couch beside me, her features softening as she reached out to loop a hand around me. "You fell for him, didn't you?" she asked in soft tones, barely above a whisper, as she patted me.

  "No." We both heard my words ring hollow, and I dropped my head further, looking down miserably at my feet.

  She didn't correct me, just let the lie hang in the air. "How long?" she finally asked.

  I shrugged. "I don't know. A while, I guess, I just didn't want to admit it. I knew that I couldn't tell him, guessed that nothing would probably come of it. But I guess that a little part of me kind of hoped that he'd maybe, someday..."

  "You wanted him to change and become a more responsible guy, one that could love you back," Ellen finished, reading my mind.

  "I know. I'm an idiot." I leaned over against her, being careful not to rest my entire bulk against her. Thanks to the extra pounds of baby I now had to lug around everywhere, I'd probably knock her all the way off the piece of furniture.