Hail Mary

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Cobie and I started our new life here, but every day I still drove down to Hostel to go to work.

  Which gave me a lot of time to think as I drove, and what I came up with was an idea to start up a new business here. Not only to save time but also to give Travis the opportunity to have his own business if he wanted it.

  It’d been Cobie’s idea to use the sale of her old place—which had sold for a considerable amount of money thanks to Drake’s additions to the place—to pay for the start-up of the new business.

  I’d thought it was a great idea, mostly because I knew that we wouldn’t use that money for any other reason.

  In the six months since it sold, the money had just sat in an account earning interest since neither of us had felt it was right to touch it. Me, because it wasn’t my house or money to use. Cobie, because she didn’t want to make money off of a house where I’d been held captive and tortured.

  We only came to the decision to use the money to start the new business last night.

  Which had been why I’d invited my brother here in the first place.

  What I hadn’t expected was to announce Cobie’s pregnancy—even though I’d already been thinking that she was.

  Over the last week, she’d changed. It wasn’t the usual signs, though, but the fact that she’d been a whole lot clingier than normal.

  When I’d left to go on a run today, she’d been waiting for me to get back. And had started crying in my arms before I’d even managed to close the door.

  “Did he say yes?”

  Cobie emerged, face pale and looking a bit green around the gills.

  “He said no,” Travis said.

  “What did he say no for?”

  That was Reed, walking through my door without even a knock.

  “He said no to allowing them to start a new business in a place that’ll keep them away from us,” Travis said.

  Reed snorted and walked in, holding out his hands for my son.

  Travis shook his head. “Go find your own baby.”

  Reed rolled his eyes and then turned his face in the direction of Cobie. “Did you tell him?”

  Cobie looked sheepish.

  “Yes.”

  “You knew?”

  Reed was an OB/GYN, but he was not, however, the doctor that had delivered Junior.

  There was only so much I could take, and my brother seeing my wife’s vagina wasn’t one of those things.

  “Yep,” Reed confirmed. “I was the one who told her to test. I tried to get her to come into my office, but since I was the only one working today, she refused. Said she’d wait for my partner.”

  I grunted. “Good.”

  Reed rolled his eyes again.

  Reed had not taken the news of Drake’s involvement in everything that happened to me well. He’d felt terrible at first, and it was only recently that he had started to return to his old self.

  I’d felt bad for keeping him in the dark now because it’d come as a surprise that his oldest childhood friend had been the mastermind behind his brother’s agony over the last few years.

  The door opened and closed again, then the pounding of feet sounded as Mary ran her way inside, followed shortly by both of my parents.

  “Mama!”

  Cobie scooped Mary up in her arms and buried her face in our girl’s neck.

  I grinned inwardly, but outwardly I scowled. “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?”

  Mary’s giggling face popped up, and she stuck out her tongue.

  My brothers chuckled.

  My mom patted my chest. “Maybe the next baby will like you better.”

  Then she walked over to Travis and stole Junior from his arms.

  Travis scowled.

  Reed grunted. “I was next!”

  And I was left feeling utterly euphoric at having my family surrounding me.

  I was no longer sad all the time.

  Sure, I had my moments sometimes when a memory would hit, or something would catch my eye that reminded me of Lily or the girls.

  But mostly, they were good memories now. Memories that left me feeling happy and smiling rather than broken and raw.

  And, as more and more of my family came in to celebrate Mary’s birthday, I realized that my life, although not how I once thought it would turn out, was exactly what I needed it to be.

  It was my kind of perfect.

  ***

  In an hour, Mary’s best friend, Dobbie, showed up.

  Dobbie, the little boy that Cobie had taken care of during clinicals in nursing school, was no longer just a part of Cobie’s life, but Mary’s and mine as well.

  I also didn’t like the way Mary looked at him—as if he was her whole world.

  “You better watch out, Daddy.” Cobie came up from behind me. “That’s looking a lot like love.”

  I lifted my arm and wrapped it around her.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  She snickered into my shoulder. “My lips are sealed.”

  What’s Next?

  Law & Beard

  Book 8 of The Dixie Warden Rejects

  Chapter 1

  I’m at that age where a twenty-two-year-old is looking good…but so is his dad.

  -Winnie’s secret thoughts

  Winnie

  “Cody, no,” I called, seeing my son, who was all of five years old, staring at me with the most heart-breaking expression on his face.

  “Cody.”

  That came from Conleigh, my eldest daughter. Conleigh was sixteen, going on forty-three.

  She was my surprise baby when I was sixteen. She was also more of a mom than I was at times—at least lately.

  No, before you ask, they do not have the same father. Yes, my husband had loved Conleigh like she was his own, or at least, he had while we were married. Now, I wasn’t so sure. Conleigh wasn’t taking this move well. My husband had left me for another woman, and he then forced us to move out of our home because, technically, it all had been his when we’d gotten married.

  “Mom, seriously?”

  I looked up to see her staring at me with anger in her eyes.

  “Seriously, what?” I growled. “I can’t. I don’t have any money, and I can’t buy it for him right now.”

  “I do,” she replied stubbornly.

  I ground my teeth

  “I know you do,” I tried to remain calm. “But, unfortunately, he can’t always get what he wants, and you need that money for lunch this week.”

  “I can make a lunch,” she interrupted.

  I looked up at the ceiling and counted to ten.

  “He does not need the car. He has fifteen just like it at home. You do not need to buy it, because you have to pay for lunch next week. Do not make me repeat it again.”

  Plus, Conleigh rarely ever got up in time to get herself out the door on a normal day. Adding making a lunch to the routine would surely make her much later than she normally was.

  We’d just pulled into the check-out lane when the sliding doors of the grocery store opened and two cops rolled in. One of them was my ex-husband, and the other was a man that looked down right appetizing.

  Not that my ex-husband didn’t look appetizing. He did.

  He’d always been attractive.

  But the man standing beside him? Yeah, he was gorgeous.

  Then again, anything would look good next to my ex.

  My ex who had left me when I’d needed him the most.

  “Daddy!”

  I groaned as I watched my son run toward his father, who scooped him up and acted like he’d seen him only hours ago instead of the three months it had been.

  I gritted my teeth and handed the lady over my card.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s saying declined.”

  I gritted my teeth, then looked at the pint of ice cream that I’d thought to get as a reward for my day.

  “Put that back,” I murmured. “Oh, and thi
s.”

  I handed over my baby wipes. I could use the rags that I’d been using over the last week. It seemed to be working all right.

  She did as instructed, looking at me with pity in her eyes, and I ignored it.

  “Okay, it went through.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief and started stacking my bags into the cart, pushing it stiffly out into the main aisle that would lead out of the store.

  “Hello,” I murmured to the officer who was with my ex.

  “Hi.” He grinned.

  The grin didn’t meet his eyes.

  I was sure he was wondering, just like everyone else, why I’d ‘left my husband.’

  I hadn’t. He’d left me.

  But no one knew that because he told them something totally different than what actually happened.

  And, since this town was so fucking small, and it’d been the town I’d been transplanted into when I’d married my ex, I didn’t figure they’d believe me anyway.

  My ex was a cop, the town heartthrob when he was growing up, and an all-around American hero.

  An American hero to everyone but me.

  “Let’s go,” I ordered softly to my daughter.

  Conleigh walked over to her brother who was talking animatedly with his father, and took him out of Matt’s arms. Then she placed him on his feet and led him out without a word to my ex.

  Cody went, but he only had eyes for his daddy as he walked grudgingly out of the store.

  I didn’t stop and talk to either of them as I passed, but I felt my ex’s eyes on me the entire way.

  Then again, I also felt like someone else was looking, too.

  I pretended it was the other cop.

  At least in my dreams, I could still attract a man with this fucked up body of mine.