He shrugs. “She was going to embarrass me and I can’t afford to be embarrassed. It’d be best for you to remember that before you leave.”
Colton walks back and kicks him in the chest. Carmen’s head flies back into the counter with a thunk.
“What did I say about threats?” Colton asks calmly. He crouches down and sticks the gun in-between Carmen’s eyes. “We’re leaving now. And if we ever see you again this will be the last thing you ever see. My gun sticking in your face.”
Carmen is breathing heavily, glaring over the gun at Colton. His face is red and angry. I know that look. This isn’t going to be the last time we see him. Carmen always has the last word. He always gets his way.
Colton stands up and walks towards me. “Come,” he whispers.
I hesitate, not wanting to leave a loose end. He’s a ticking time bomb and we’ll never be at peace if we know that he’s around looking for us. Not only will we be in danger but so will our child. And that I can’t have.
Colton seems to read my mind. He lowers his head and gazes into my eyes. “It’s going to be okay Sara,” he says. “He won’t hurt us anymore.”
And I believe him. My father has hurt both of us for more than a lifetime. But we have each other now and together we’re unstoppable.
Colton takes my hand in his and pulls me to leave the bathroom. A movement catches the corner of my eye and I see my dad reaching into the bottom drawer of the cabinet. A cold feeling hits me just as he pulls out a handgun.
“Colton!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
Colton pushes me and spins on his heels. I fall to the ground as his gun goes off three times.
My dad is dead before I hit the heated tiles. His gun falls out of his limp fingers and he falls to the floor with two fresh bullet wounds in his chest and one in his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” Colton says rushing down to help me up. I look past him at my dad’s dead body and feel nothing. He deserved everything he got and I’m thankful to Colton for giving it to him.
He guides me out through the house and I puke in the bushes when we finally get outside. I don’t think it’s from the baby this time.
Colton rubs my back as he looks around. “Are you okay?” he asks. “I’m so sorry for everything.”
“It’s not your fault,” I say, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “You gave him a chance. A chance that he didn’t even deserve.”
I wrap my arms around Colton’s hard body and it feels more like home than this house behind me ever did. It’s time to get it out of my life for good.
I lay my cheek on his chest and smile. “Let’s go get that passport,” I say.
He pulls back and looks at me with pure happiness on his face. “Really?”
“Of course,” I say. “All I want is you.”
We walk out through the gate and head to Colton’s parked car a few houses down. “Where do we go?” he asks.
It doesn’t matter. As long as I’m with Colton than I’ll be happy. I’ll go anywhere with him.
But if I have a say in it…
I smile. “Somewhere hot. And with a beach!”
Colton grins that sexy grin that makes me melt. “You got it, sweetheart.”
epilogue
Colton
I raise my face to the setting sun and close my eyes. I inhale long and slow through my nose, breathing in the salty ocean air.
A slap on the back of my head jerks me out of my contented daze.
“Go horsie go,” Anabella says in her squeaky voice. My hands are wrapped around her tiny legs and I give them a gentle squeeze.
“Neigggghhh,” I say trying to sound like a horse. Anabella squeals in delight and pats my head like a drum. I gallop along the beach, kicking up warm sand with my bare feet, as my three-year-old daughter sits on my shoulders and laughs.
I’ve come a long way.
“Talk horsie talk,” she demands.
I shake my head and neigh like a stallion.
Yup. I’ve definitely come a long way.
I stop and take a peaceful moment to turn and watch the setting sun over the turquoise water. We live in Greece on a tiny island called Makra. The pace crawls as slow as a turtle around here and I’m still surprised that it suits me just fine.
Anabella grips my forehead with her sandy hands and watches the spectacular pink and purples hues of the setting sun dance across the gentle waves. I take a breath and count my blessings. I have more than I can ever want over here.
I have more than I deserve.
I wave to a small fishing boat heading towards the beach. Tadeas lowers his paddle and waves back to me, flashing his white teeth that contrast heavily with his sun-darkened skin.
“Go build Daddy a sandcastle,” I say to Anabella as I put her down in the sand. She runs after a seagull instead. “You listen as well as your mommy,” I say with a smile. She just ignores me as she runs in playful circles on the deserted beach.
She’s a miniature version of Sara. Complete with the long, wavy brown hair and cute, button nose. And looking at her tugs on my heart just like it does with her mother.
“Busy day at the office?” I ask Tadeas as I pull his wooden rowboat onto the beach.
He holds up a line with half a dozen fish hanging down. “The fishies were hungry today.” He unhooks the biggest sea bass, the size of Anabella, off the line. “For dinner,” he says, handing it to me.
I wave him off. “No, no, I can’t possibly,” I say.
He shoves it in my arms, insisting. “Yes, you take. I give you a fish a day forever.”
I reluctantly take the fish and give him a hug. “You don’t have to do this,” I say, glancing over my shoulder to check on Anabella. She’s practicing, but failing miserably, at doing a handstand. She’s been wanting to do one since Sara showed her how last week.
“I want to,” Tadeas says firmly. “You saved my Kaden. It’s my honor. You’re a miracle man.”
There’s no hospital or clinic on the small island of Makra and I just kind of fell into the role of being the island doctor. We have a spare room in our house and I’ve collected medical supplies over the years and now I’m the island healer. And I’m actually pretty good at it.
Tadeas had brought his seven-year-old son, Kaden, to me two weeks ago with a nasty cut on his foot. He was climbing up the rock cliffs with the older boys of the island and sliced his heel on a razor sharp rock. It was infected and oozing green when he came to me and I managed to clean it out with some antiseptic and sew up the gash. I kept him in our house for two days while I treated his fever with penicillin. If I wasn’t there it could have gotten ugly for the boy.
Ironically, healing gives me an adrenaline rush as high as killing ever did. I don’t miss the old life at all.
I hold up the fish in my hands and nod. This is going to be amazing over the barbecue. “Bring Kaden and your beautiful wife over for dinner and I’ll cook this sucker up. I have to take out his stitches anyways and I have a new batch of wine that’s ready to be cracked open. I can’t possibly drink it by myself.” Tadeas licks his dry lips and grins.
Sara and I bought a little house on the island when we arrived in Greece after leaving the US after that whole mess with her father. We found a quiet hillside with a couple of acres of property overlooking the ocean. I paid for it in cash, with the money I had stashed away.
The previous owners grew grapes on the property and I kept at it. I enjoy spending the days with my hands in the dirt and the sun on my back. The sound of the crashing waves are soothing and drown out the memories and all the pain that haunted me for so long.
I began making wine when I had way too many grapes to eat, and after two years of failed batches of wine that tasted like grape juice mixed with rubbing alcohol, I finally got a batch that was almost drinkable. But last year I tweaked the recipe and the whole island came knocking on the door with fried octopus, fresh baklava, flowers and anything else you could imagine in exchange for a bottle.
I wave
‘so long’ to Tadeas and scoop up Anabella in my arm. “Time to see Mommy,” I say, tickling her ribs and making her laugh and squirm. Her laugh is a junior replica of Sara’s. It makes my heart hurt in a good way every time I hear it.
I hoist her back on my shoulders and we continue along the beach until the soft white sand turns to tiny pebbles. “Bye beach,” Anabella says, waving to the gentle waves lapping the shore. “Can we come back tomorrow Daddy?”
“Of course my love,” I say, wondering how I got so lucky.
There’s a dirt path ahead that snakes through the waist high grass. It’s a ten-minute walk up a slow incline to the highest point on the island. There’s a rock cliff that is a blast to dive off of and it gives the best view on the planet of the setting sun over the ocean.
The colors of the sunset are spectacular but they’re nothing compared to the angel sitting on the edge of the cliff dabbing a paintbrush onto her canvas. Sara’s brown hair is waving in the gentle breeze. Her sparkling eyes are narrowed in concentration as she slides her brush gently across her current masterpiece. She looks at peace. Happy. If my heart gets any lighter it’s going to float away.
Sara never went to art school like she wanted to but I don’t think it would have made a difference. If anything, it would have held her back. She’s an incredibly talented painter. She tours the island during the day with nothing but a bag of oil paints and a blank canvas tucked under her arm. There’s no shortage of beauty on this small, secluded Greek island.
On the weekends in the evening, the three of us stroll down to the small town center where the tourists come in off the large cruise ships and private yachts to swarm our quiet island. Sara sets up a table where she sells her paintings that she painted during the week to chatty and friendly tourists passing by. They love her work and she usually sells out just as Anabella falls asleep in my arms, tuckered out after a long day of playing. We smile at each other as the tourists walk away, admiring the painting they just bought. They’ll bring them home to their small, cramped city apartments, a small reminder of the relaxing time they spent in Greece.
After Sara is sold out we usually walk to a tiny restaurant that serves skewers of spicy lamb and the sweetest tomatoes and cucumbers that I’ve ever tasted. Anabella sleeps, curled up on my lap, as Sara and I eat. We drink a bottle and a half of wine and enjoy each other’s company.
Sara is always a little tipsy as we walk back home and leans her head on my shoulder as we watch the tourists on break from their stressed out lives. My only regret is that we didn’t move here sooner.
We always stop in front of our favorite place: the old, tiny chapel overlooking the water. It’s slowly being overtaken by climbing vines with the biggest, most stunning flowers in the world. We smile as we look at the crumbling cement walls and remember the beautiful day we got married here. It was the happiest day of my life.
That’s usually when I wrap my arm around her waist, careful not to wake the sleeping girl in my arms, and Sara looks up at me and blushes. I kiss her long and slow and say a prayer of thanks to being even happier with her now than the day we got married.
I’m so happy that I have her. And the little, wet, sandy munchkin on my shoulders.
“Daddy, look, Mommy,” Anabella says, pulling my ear. She points to Sara sitting in front of her canvas. She finally sees us on the path. She smiles and waves.
She starts putting away her art supplies as we approach. Her painting is striking as always and I’ve seen enough of them to know that it will be the first one sold on Friday evening.
“Don’t mind us,” I say as I lower Anabella to her feet. She hugs her mom and then runs into the grass looking for toads. “You can keep painting. You know I love watching you paint.”
She smiles as her cheeks flush red. “I’m all done.”
I walk up behind her and slide my hand under her thick hair. The skin is warm on the back of her neck. Her hair smells like the ocean and I just have to lay my lips on it. I kiss her on the head and she turns to me with a look that I know so well in her eyes.
“Early bedtime for Anabella tonight,” I joke.
She nods as she bites her bottom lip and traces her hand along my abs up under my shirt.
Sara grabs my loose shirt in a ball and pulls me down. She strains her chin up with puckered lips. My mouth closes on hers and I open my eyes as I kiss her. Not because I don’t feel the passion between us, but because I still can’t believe that I’m kissing her. I can’t believe that I was lucky enough to wind up with her.
I’m the happiest man on the planet.
And I vowed on our wedding day to make her the happiest woman on earth.
She pulls away from my kiss and licks her moist lips. She smiles peacefully as her eyes are swimming in desire.
Well, if I’m not there yet, I’m pretty damn close.
the end
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Ultimate Shifting Championship Series
Bare Knuckle Bear
Grayson and Dakota
Bare Knuckle Grizzly
Hunter and Brooke
Bare Knuckle Black Bear
Jack and Skyler
one
Dakota hoisted the heavy tray of beers off the bar and stepped right into a puddle of blood.
“Shit,” she cursed, slipping and almost dropping everything. The beer bottles clinked together as if clapping over her acrobatic recovery.
“Will someone clean this up?” she yelled out in frustration.
Luke looked up from the glass that he was drying behind the bar. Ugh. When was the last time that towel was washed? No wonder the glasses had a nice coating of…something on them.
“Not in my contract,” Luke said raising an eyebrow.
Dakot
a wiped the blood off her foot on the hardwood floors. There were so many cigarette and cigar burns from people carelessly tossing their butts on the floor over the years that it looked like the surface of the moon with all of the tiny, gray craters.
“Please Lukey,” she said, puckering her lips and giving her coworker her best, baby girl voice. “For me?”
“Fine,” he said, rolling his eyes as he placed the glass on the shelf, dirtier than it was before. “But you’re cleaning up the next one.”
She gave him a smile as she walked away with the beer, glancing down for any more puddles of blood. You couldn’t be afraid of blood working at the Bar Knuckle. There was a lot of it.
Dakota forced a smile as she approached Walter Cash’s table. She hated serving these guys.
“Good evening Mr. Cash,” she said, placing four beers down, one for each of the shifters at the table.
Walter nodded at her, not making eye contact. Dakota eyed him quickly. He was an enormous man with hard eyes, a long nose and a thick head. His forearms were the size of cinder blocks and his fingers the size of fat sausages. He was the biggest rhino shifter that she had ever seen. Actually he was the only rhino shifter that she had ever seen.
“No hi for me?” Brad asked, shifting in his seat, turning his nauseating body towards her. He had a mullet under his red trucker hat and the face of a weasel that recently got run over by a truck.
Dakota forced out a smile as Brad touched her forearm with his cold hands, sending stomach-turning shivers through her body. She pictured smashing all three remaining beer bottles over his head.
The Hitman's Baby: A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Novel Page 14