by Lia Lee
He let out a low chuckle. “Maybe.”
Reaching across the table, I placed my hand on his forearm, encouraged when he didn’t shake me off. “Both of us love you. I’m going to need you. You’re my big brother. I literally don’t know how to live without you there with me. Brett’s going to need his best friend, too. Please promise me that you’ll at least try to be there for both of us? I know that it’s a selfish thing to ask, but I’m asking it anyway.”
Mark was quiet for a long time, and I let him think. I didn’t want to push him, but I also wasn’t going anywhere until I knew that there was chance of getting my brother and Brett’s best friend back.
When he turned to face me with a tiny upward hitch on his lips, the spark of hope in my chest bloomed and grew.
“Fine, I’ll try. I’ve never really wanted to think about it, but now that I have, I think Mom and Dad might be right. You guys were probably always going to happen.”
“Does that mean—”
“Let me finish. I listened, so now it’s your turn.” He waited for me to nod before continuing.
“I love the both of you, too. I do, but the fact that neither of you told me the truth and that I had to find out the way I did, that burns like a bitch. I want to be there for you both and for the baby, I guess, but I need some time, okay?”
“Okay. Take as much time as you need. I’ll be waiting for you.”
I patted his arm and went back inside.
Brett was waiting for me in the kitchen, talking quietly to my mom. As soon as he saw me, he opened his arms, and I walked right into them, wedging myself between his knees where he sat at the island.
“Everything okay out there?” he asked.
“It’s all good,” I said. “He’s going to come around.”
Brett smiled down at me, love and joy burning bright in his smoky eyes, his dimples deep creases in his cheeks. “Just like that?”
I laughed softly. “Just like that.”
Epilogue
One Year Later
Brett
“It’s official,” I told Sophia. “I’m declaring our bedroom a disaster zone.”
“Who knew babies needed so much stuff?” Sophia asked, nodding her agreement.
“Not me.” I really hadn’t. Thank god for grandmothers and the internet. I didn’t think that we’d have survived without either.
People who were parents before the advent of the internet had been elevated to godlike status in my book, and I made sure that my assistant sent both my mom and Sophia’s flowers every week. They both protested that it wasn’t necessary, but it was. Mom finally moved into that house I’d bought for her when Sophia moved in with me.
Mark and Soph’s dad John were also rock stars with little Harper. I made sure to treat them with tickets to Wrigley Field often. Of course, nowadays, if I joined them, it was with a kangaroo carrier strapped to my chest.
Much to my surprise, I fucking loved it. If babies were little pinks lumps, Harper was the most beautiful little pink lump that I ever could’ve imagined. I was crazy about her. Absolutely mad. She had me firmly wrapped around her fourteen-week-old pinkie.
When I found out we were having a girl, that I was about to become the father of a daughter, I freaked the hell out.
At least I’d been a boy once, so I kind of knew what to expect. Kind of. But a girl? A girl who would eventually grow into a woman and start dating one of the little pricks out there? A mini meltdown was probably more accurate of a description of what I’d had at the time.
Because even though most of the boys she’d end up dating probably weren’t born yet, I just knew that they were all going to be pricks. Or assholes.
Mark backed me up. He knew it, too. It had taken him some time to fully accept our relationship, but when he came on board, he came with everything that he had and with absolutely no reservations. He organized a Man shower for me, which had actually rivaled some of the wilder bachelor parties I’d been to, and he helped me move Sophia into my place a month before the baby was born.
So when we found out it was a girl, he bought us both toy guns and solemnly swore to be there on the day that the first prick arrived to pick her up.
Sophia, on the other hand, loudly proclaimed that we both had issues and laughed so hard that I legit thought that she was going to laugh herself into labor. Apparently, that wasn’t a thing. The pregnancy hormones making her super horny, though? That was a thing. A thing that I loved so much that I was already looking forward to getting Sophia pregnant again.
She wasn’t on board with that idea, though. Not yet anyway.
If I was being realistic, she was probably right about it being too soon. I wanted just a little more time to dote on the girls who were already in my life.
And there were a few other things that I wanted to get done first. The most important of which was burning a hole in my damn pocket.
Sophia was standing by her dressing table, in the middle of a sea of playmats and toys, staring intently at the screen of the baby monitor. Harper had gone down ten minutes ago, and while there was a second crib for her set up in our room, we really tried to have her sleep in her own nursery.
My Soph was tired but serene. I thought that she looked more beautiful by the day, but she didn’t agree. Even wearing cotton pajamas with her hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and slightly dark smudges under her eyes, she was the most gorgeous woman on the planet as far as I was concerned.
I still got hard whenever I thought about being inside her, which was still all the time, and I was hopeful about my prospects for later. But there was something else in my pants that I needed to give her first. I smirked a little at my corny, internal joke, and Sophia’s lips kicked up into a smile when she caught me in the middle of it.
“What’s going on in that dirty mind of yours now?”
“It’s not filth all the time anymore, I’ll have you know,” I joked, walking across the room to wrap my arms around her.
“Maybe, but I know that look, and whatever it was this time, it was dirty or borderline dirty at the very least.”
She knew me well, but she was the love of life, so I was okay with having lost the mystery. Most of it, anyway. I could still surprise, and I was pretty sure that I was about to.
“Fine, you want to know what I was thinking?”
Sophia nodded. “Pray tell, oh filthy one.”
“I was thinking that there’s something in my pants that I’m desperate to give you.”
Sophia smacked my chest, laughed, and rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, you’re an animal. How many hours has it even been?”
I raised an eyebrow, grinning to flash my dimples, because I knew she loved them. “What do you think I’m talking about?”
She cupped my cock, and it reacted to her attention. Then she dropped her hand and gave me pointed look. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“It wasn’t that, actually. But you know that’s yours whenever you want it.” I reached into my pocket casually, trying to keep calm, even though my heart was pounding harder than Sophia had squeezed my hand just before Harper made her appearance in the world. “I was talking about this.”
I pulled the ring I’d picked up from the jewelers earlier out of my pocket and sank to my knee. Sophia stopped laughing immediately and stared down at me, blue eyes wider than golf balls.
“Sophia Love, you have given me everything that I never knew I wanted out of life. Everything that I was too afraid to ask for or dream about. You asked me a question once that changed my life for the better and forever. I’m really fucking hoping that you’re going to give me the same answer that I gave you. Will you marry me?”
“Why me?”
My heart wasn’t going to handle much more of this. “What?”
“You said you wanted the same answer you gave me,” Sophia said, a megawatt smile on her face. “Those were the first words you said to me after I asked you.”
I groaned. “Okay, smartass. I meant the ultimate an
swer, then.”
Sophia sank onto her knees, crawled into my lap, and grabbed my face between both of her hands, eyes blazing like a cobalt fire. “Yes. Of course, I will. I’ve loved you for a million years, Brett Kelly, and I’ll keep loving you till my dying day. A million times, yes.”
And then, just like I had on that fateful day that kickstarted my life into the thing of beauty that I couldn’t live without today, I leaned forward and closed those precious few inches to capture her delicious mouth with mine.
Soph looped her arms around me, pressing her breasts up against my chest, melting into the kiss, and making those sexy little noises that still turned me to steel. She smiled against my lips. “Can I have it now?”
“Which one do you want?”
“Both,” she quipped. “Shiny one first. When we get to the other thing in your pants, I want to be wearing only the ring that officially makes me yours.”
“God, I love the sound of that,” I told her honestly, opening the hand that was still clutching her ring. In its center sat a large, brilliant cut diamond, with two rings of smaller sapphires around it. The band was inlaid with tiny diamonds and sapphires. “I had it made like this because the colors together reminded me of your eyes.”
Sophia gasped when she took her first real look at the ring. “Brett, this is stunning.”
I shrugged. “You’re stunning. The ring’s pretty.”
She held out her hand, and I slid it on, loving that it was my ring sitting on her finger. Perhaps her parents, and even Mark in the end, had a point. I would never have been able to watch her with another man. We were inevitable, because she’d been made for me, and now, finally, she was really going to be mine.
The stones shimmered in the light when Sophia held up her hand to admire them, sighing happily. “I could just look at this and revel in what it signifies for the rest of night.”
I squeezed her ass. “No can do, future Mrs. Kelly. You promised me that I was going to get to see you in only that ring, and since tonight is all about promises...”
“I don’t remember promising,” Sophia said, joy lighting up her eyes.
I recognized the emotion, because it was exactly what I was feeling. “The promise was right there in your tone.”
“Well, I guess if it was right there, then I’d better make good on it, shouldn’t I?”
Without another word, she stood up from my lap and started walking toward our bed. She turned to face me when she reached it and shimmied out of her pajamas, hooked her thumbs into her panties, rolled them off, and pulled the ponytail out of her hair to shake it free.
My mouth dried up, and my cock strained against my jeans, instantly hard for her. “You are so fucking beautiful.”
She placed her hands on her narrow hips and cocked her head at me. “Well then, Mr. Kelly, what’re you waiting for?”
Absolutely fucking nothing.
Jumping to my feet, I shed my clothes before I even made it halfway across the room and went to stand right up against my future wife, bending to claim her mouth for a kiss that sent a current shooting through my veins.
I put my knee on our mattress, then locked an arm around her waist, and guided her gently onto it. Sophia went willingly, her body following my movements easily.
Once she was spread out on the bed, I stepped back to marvel at the sight of Sophia Love, the girl I’d never wanted to notice but simply couldn’t miss, now my fiancee and mother of my child, naked on my bed.
My cock throbbed and pulsed, my heart nearly bursting from happiness. “I am the luckiest damn man in the world, baby. Thank you.”
I spent the next couple of hours showing her exactly how grateful I was for her presence in my life, that she’d given me Harper, and how fucking happy I was that she’d had the bravery to ask me that one question.
THE END
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Chapter One
Mila
Going Under
“Hey, Mila, don’t throw it so hard. You know I’m a shitty swimmer,” Claire squeals as the Nerf football flies past her outflung hand and splashes behind her.
I laugh as I tread water, my long brunette curls fanning out around my shoulders like a bundle of water snakes. “Don’t be such a wimp, Claire. Put some effort into it,” I shout back.
“I’ll give you effort,” Claire puffs out as she lunges for the ball where it bobs in the choppy water a meter or so beyond her reach. “But I’m saving it for the office. My strength is better spent dreaming up the next brilliant design for a client, not horsing around in salt water.” At last, her fingers close around the spongy orb, and she hurls it back at me in a single motion.
I catch it inches in front of my face. “I agree. You’re not winning any quarterback awards with an arm like that,” I tease.
“Oh, get over yourself,” Claire says with a grumble, spitting water in all directions. “I’m an artist, not an NFL hopeful. And I’m not part fish, either, like you.” She turns and paddles her way toward shore. “If we stay in here much longer I swear I’m going to grow scales. I’m going to dry off and bag the last rays of this magnificent Australian sunshine.”
“Landlubber!” I call after her, tossing the football into the air and flipping onto my back to kick it with my foot as it comes down. The last rays, indeed. We’ve been on vacation in Australia nearly two weeks, and I can’t believe our time is almost over. In a few days, it will be back to the grind for both of us at our design office in New York City.
I bounce the ball off the top of my foot and punt it back into the air. I watch Claire’s slim figure emerge from the waters of the Pacific Ocean and stride onto the sand of the world-famous Bondi Beach, her skimpy, neon-orange bikini clinging tightly to her wet skin. Every man on the beach is gawking at her, including the tanned, blond hottie who turns his head in her direction from his perch atop his lifeguard tower.
Damn my best friend and her traffic-stopping bod. I’m not jealous, exactly; Claire and I have known each other forever, but I did wish my own physical roadmap was a little straighter and a little less hairpin curves. Standing side by side, I was the hourglass, while Claire was the swinging pendulum. And she had a set of cans even a porn star would envy. I have great tits, too, but not the Barbie doll waist and legs to go along with them like Claire. Maybe the hunky lifeguard liked a girl with a little more meat on her bones and afro-esque curly hair. Will he stare at me the same way when I stride onto the beach from the watery depths? I wonder.
While I love the ocean and Claire the terra-firma, both of us are artists at heart. Right out of college, Claire and I started our own graphics and interior design business called Church & Strait—a melding of our surnames, Mila Churchwood and Claire Strait. It had been a financial stretch to set up shop in the heart of New York City, but to attract the kind of clientele we wanted, New York was a no-brainer. We’d worked hard, and this little holiday down under was our self-imposed reward; and for me, a much-needed balm to soothe away the pain of losing my mother. It’s been a year, but I’m still coming to grips with the fact I am now officially an orphan.
The Nerf ball hits me on the head and splashes down in front of my face. I wince as saltwater lands in my eyes, and I squeeze them shut on reflex. Upon opening them, I see the ball drifting out of reach on a receding wave. My eyes still sting, but I move toward it, determined not to let it escape out to sea. I paddle over the swells, but the ball maddeningly seems to move farther away from me with each stroke.
I kick against the pull of the
waves, suddenly realizing how much stronger the undertow is, just these few yards out from where Claire and I had frolicked earlier. I know I should start back to shore, but the ball starts moving toward me on a big swell, so I stop swimming to let it come to me. The swell becomes a dark wall of water as it rises, my little ball caught in its grip. I turn and swim away from it, realizing that if I can catch the wave just right as it breaks, I can body surf into shore like a pro. Maybe that will impress the nice-looking lifeguard?
I feel my body rising with the tide, and I stroke harder to keep speed with it. It’s stronger and faster than I thought, and instead of being lifted into the crest of the wave, the watery wall engulfs me with a fury, pitching me forward into a crazy somersault. Underwater, I struggle to regain control over myself, the surreal quiet of the ocean surrounding me, filling my ears. I lose my sense of direction, not knowing which way is up or down. I can’t feel the sand beneath my feet; I don’t know how deep I am. I’ve never known panic in the water before, but it’s introduced itself now. I need air. I need to get to the surface.
The pressure of the ocean finally relents, and I scramble in what feels like an upward direction. I know I shouldn’t expend further energy, but my lungs are desperate for air. I kick toward the light above me and, in the longest moment of my life, I finally break the surface. I gasp and cough, sucking in mouthfuls of blessed air. My limbs feel limp, and I can barely keep my head above the water in the rolling surf. Through my blurred vision, I can see the golden strip of beach, but it seems far away. How did I get this far out? Can I get back? I’m so tired.
Another wave sloshes over my head, drenching me once again. I can’t stay here. I force my numbed arms and legs to move, propelling me feebly forward. My Nerf ball drifts past me as if in mockery. It will probably make it to the beach before I do.
If I ever do.
I strike the ominous thought from my brain and focus on getting to shore. The choppy water seems to fight me, battering me from all directions. I hear splashing; I can make out figures on the beach, halfway into the water as if walking toward me. Then a voice. Close by. Huh?