Rock Hard Daddy: A Single Dad & A Virgin Romance

by Rye Hart

  “You didn’t have to come for me,” I whispered

  He stared at me as if I'd grown a second head. "Of course I did! You were in danger!"

  "I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be rescued," I whispered, my voice starting to shake. "I should go down with them."

  He cupped my cheeks and stared at me helplessly. "You can't die here. How are we supposed to start our life together if you die here?" he asked, staring at me.

  "You still want me?” I asked, incredulously.

  "Yes! I love you, Brittney. I told you nothing would change that. I realized that you did what you had to do to survive. You didn’t know me our my family when you agreed to get into this fucking mess in the first place.”

  I looked at him wide-eyed for a moment. I took him in, and even as gunfire exploded around us I knew I had to kiss him. If I died here, I wanted to have the taste of his lips on mine. I threw myself at him and kissed him long and hard, my eyes squeezed closed.

  When I pulled away I looked up at him, “I thought you hated me."

  He held me close and shook his head. "Never. I just had to process everything. It was a lot to take in."

  I nodded but stayed silent, refusing to let him go. After a moment he pushed me back and gripped my shoulders.

  "We have to get out of here.” he murmured.

  I nodded and grabbed my rebar, swallowing thickly. "Where's your gun?"

  "I'm out of bullets."

  The gun fire had died down, though a few shots rang out now and then. There must have only been one person left hiding out somewhere. Ryder took my hand and pulled me close, leading me across the foundation.

  Just as Ryder was about to peek around the corner, Fang jumped out, gun raised. "Well, well. Look at this. Two little love birds that got away."

  My eyes widened and I started to take a step back. Ryder stepped in front of me to shield me and Fang just laughed. "You think you're going to protect her?" he spat, stepping forward. "Why would you waste your time on this useless bitch? She's not even a good lay."

  I had a lot of sharp witted retorts for that comment but I stayed silent, my eyes narrowed. I had a smart mouth but he had a gun. My hands were shaking, the rebar smacking the wall and making far too much noise.

  “That all you got, princess?” he hissed, grinning wildly at me. “I’ll take you on. Let’s see if you can get to me before my bullet gets you,” he said, cackling at his own terrible joke.

  “NO! This isn’t her fight!”

  Fang glared at Ryder, his eyes full of a fiery hate. “All my men are dead because of this bitch. She tricked us. She tricked her family; this is most definitely her fight,” he snarled.

  Ryder’s eyes narrowed and he took off after Fang. Shocked at the audacity of the man, Fang took a step back and was suddenly completely open. He no longer had the wall as a shield. I saw Damien raise his gun, but I knew Fang would have more than enough time to fire. My eyes widened and I jumped forward, shoving Ryder out of the way. He was larger than me, but since he was running it was relatively easy to push him. He stumbled to the side, his shoulder slamming into the wall.

  As he turned to look at me our eyes met and a chorus of sounds filled my ears. There was loud pop as Damien and Fang fired at the same time, followed by the sound of Fang’s body hitting the ground, and Ryder screaming my name as the air was forced from my lungs.

  I hit the ground hard, an aching feeling in my chest as I tried desperately to suck air into my lungs. The world was spinning and I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt Ryder pull me into his arms and the tears in his eyes made my heart ache. I reached up to touch his face, smiling weakly.

  “Tell me you love me,” I whispered.

  He pressed his forehead to mine and swallowed thickly, whispering the words “I love you”, through tears. We stayed like that for a long moment before I cupped his cheeks.

  “Hey, don’t be mad at me for dragging this out. I just wanted to hear you say you love me again,” I whispered.

  He frowned and pulled away. “What?”

  “I’m fine, I’m not going to die,” I wheezed, pulling up my shirt to reveal the bullet proof vest.

  His eyes widened and he stared at me. “How did you-”

  “I stole it from Fang before I ever came out here. I figured I would be needing it one day.” I whispered.

  He stared at me in disbelief. “Are you even hit?”

  “Oh, I’m hit. It’s going to cause some wicked bruising, but I can live with that,” I said with a little grin.

  He yanked me closer and held me tight, rocking with me. “I can’t believe you. I just can’t believe you! You’re an idiot!” he said through his laughter.

  I chuckled and wrapped my arms around him, shaking my head. “I’m not an idiot. I’m just in love,” I murmured.

  I couldn’t help but feel the most hopeful that I had in days. I held onto Ryder, professing my love to him again and again. This was where I belonged; this is where I felt safe. Ryder helped me stand and I leaned heavily on him. We wandered around the half built house, stepping over Fang’s body as we finally met up with everyone. Chloe ran over to me and threw her arms around me, tears in her eyes.

  “We thought you and Ryder were gone,” she said, unable to make herself say ‘dead’.

  I wrapped one arm around her and shook my head, smiling. “We’re alive and kicking. It’s going to take a lot more than that to get rid of us.”

  She laughed and stepped back so that Damien could approach us. He smiled and wrapped an arm around each of us before leaning back. “I’m so damn happy you two are alright.”

  I nodded and sighed. “Thank you. Even though this is my entire fault.”

  “No, don’t start with that. You more than proved your worth, Brittney.”

  I looked up at him with wide eyes. “You mean I can stay?”

  He smiled simply and nodded. “Welcome home.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Three years. I can hardly believe it’s been three years that I’ve called this place home. I felt so good and I felt so alive here. Everything came together when Damien and his gang finally accepted me. I’d spent so much of my life being bitter and hopeless that I never thought I’d find anything meaningful. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I had friends here and I had love.

  I moved in with Ryder that very day, not that I had much to move. I never went back to the trailer I shared with Fang. I didn’t want anything to do with him and I didn’t want any reminders of that life. I wanted to start fresh here in Nashville with Ryder and the rest.

  There were no casualties on our side that day. I still thought back to it occasionally and thanked my lucky stars that no one had died because of me. I’m not sure I would have been able to live with myself. I was thankful every day that I didn’t even have to think about that.

  A few months after I started my life with Ryder, my mother wandered into the picture again. At first I wasn’t sure it would be a good idea, but Ryder somehow convinced me to give her a chance. We sent her to rehab and she managed to clean herself up. This was the first time she had a real support system and it made me happier than anything else to see her clean. She lives with us now and works at a nearby daycare.

  Ryder and I are happy together. Everyone keeps asking us when we’re going to get married, but we just don’t see a reason to. We’re in love and that’s enough for us. Maybe one day we’ll tie the knot, but right now we’re just happy doing our thing.

  I turned to look at him, smiling as the light danced over his sleeping face. It reminded me of the first night we spent together. He’d always been a heavy sleeper and he looked so angelic when he was asleep. I leaned in and pressed a kiss to his nose, causing him to wrinkle it. His eyes fluttered open and he looked at me, a smile slowly coming to his face.

  “Well good morning,” he purred.

  “Good morning,” I whispered back.

  “What were you looking at?”

  “Just you.”

  “
Oh?”

  “I was just thinking about how lucky I am to have you.”

  He smiled and caught my lips. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  I knew I’d found my haven in him. My Ryder.

  The Blind Eyes of Love

  Chapter One

  “There you go, sir, right down this way, mind your step or you’ll be down in the dirt and that’s no way for those fine white breeches of yours to end up now, is it? Down one more, there you go, and then more—oh, have a care, sir, that step is a bit tipsy, like. There we go, ‘tis all right now. Just a bit more.” The sturdy grip of the innkeeper’s wife steering him out of the inn was both reassuring and annoying. “Now up you go, into the post-chaise, that’s right, sir, up—yes, that’s it!” she crowed as if he had done something quite remarkable by hoisting himself into the post-chaise after she had directed him to the opening. “Now, mind, my Harold will go along with you to get you to Laverly Hall, sir, and he’ll come back after you’re safely home.”

  Dennison St. John, Duke of Laverly, fumbled for his purse. “Please take this for your pains, and your Harold’s, too,” he said, drawing out a coin.

  “Not to hear of it, sir. You kept Bonaparte out of England, and that’s good enough for us,” the woman said.

  She sounded sincere. More likely, she pitied him, to have gone off to war in full manhood and to return home sightless. It would doubtless be a tale she’d regale others with in the tavern; the poor Duke, not a soldier any longer, just a blind man who’d given his eyes at Waterloo for the glory of England .

  “I insist,” he said, his tone firm and cold.

  “Can’t do it, sir,” she said. “I told you, you’ve given us enough.”

  Laverly put his purse back in his coat. He would give payment to her husband. Perhaps the good Harold would be more willing to be paid for his pains.

  He could hear Harold entering the carriage and the seat creaking as he sat down opposite Laverly. Then the post-chaise took off. Harold, who smelled, not unpleasantly, of ale, cleared his throat.

  “Good to be heading home, sir,” he said.

  Laverly kept his gaze, such as it was, on the window, as the landscape he couldn’t see passed.

  “Reckon you’ve had enough of Europe,” Harold tried again.

  “Europe,” Laverly said, “has had enough of me.”

  “Right, yes, of course. Did you see him, sir? I mean, before? Did you see Bonaparte?”

  “Unfortunately, no. I was in hospital when he was taken.”

  “Pity. You’d have wanted to see that,” Harold said.

  “Not really. Bonaparte isn’t worth the effort.”

  “No, course not,” Harold said hurriedly, as if aware that he was on unwelcome territory but unsure of how to deliver himself from it. “Still, I reckon it’s like seeing a monster when you’re a little ‘un. You’re that frightened of him, , but then it turns out to be only the shadow of the bedpost or some such thing, when you wake up.”

  The bedrooms at Laverly Hall were grand; he remembered that much, although he’d been away for years, serving with Wellington. His family wealth, his mother’s style, and his father’s pride of heritage had guaranteed that Laverly Hall did justice to its architectural ancestry. The estate had been long inhabited by Laverlys when the Yorks and Lancasters were fighting one another. Now, centuries later, it was the one constant remaining in his life. At least in his own home, with the family servants around him, he could take account of his life and decide his next step. He would not venture out into society until he had mastered himself. Blindness was not death; that was what the doctor had told him. Of course, the doctor could say that, he had his bloody sight. But at Laverly Hall, Laverly knew that he could restore himself. The family paintings in the hall that celebrated the Laverly who’d married a Spanish princess, the Lavelry who had taken the cross to Jerusalem, the Laverly who had served Queen Elizabeth; they were part of his inheritance, even if only in portrait form. He could no longer see them, but he remembered where they were, each and every one. He recalled his father, when guests came to stay, showing them the gallery of Laverlys and reciting the biography of each one’s renown. For one did not merit a portrait merely because one was a Laverly. No, one was expected to have done something of note.

  What was there for him to do? He’d served with Wellington, fought with honor, earned his medals. Was that enough to garner a portrait? A fine showing he’d make in his scarlet coat and white breeches, polished boots, saber in hand, the unruly black hair that defined a Corinthian’s style, and of course the famous Laverly jade eyes--and dark spectacles. Just what was needed to polish off the dashing figure of a Hussar, that final proof of his sacrifice for King and country.

  Laverly realized that he must have spoken out loud because Harold cleared his throat and Lavelry could hear him shift his weight in the seat as if he were uncertain whether to get up or stay seated.

  “We’ll be there shortly, sir,” Harold said encouragingly.

  Yes. Home. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until the days after the artillery explosion when he’d awakened in the field hospital, his eyes bandaged and his surroundings strange to him in a way that the barracks never had been. His wounds were healed, the doctor had said dispassionately. It was true that he couldn’t see, but there had been damage and they’d feared scarring, but he had nothing to fear there.

  As if a scar would be worse than this, Laverly thought savagely, his anger roiling through him anew at their stupidity. To be blind, when he was not yet thirty, when he had not married nor fathered a child, was a cruel prank worthy of the Greek Furies or an uncaring God. In his present state of mind, he could see little difference between the two.

  “Almost there now, sir,” Harold said as if he were a talking timepiece. “Will your servants be expecting you?”

  They would not. Laverly had told no one that he was coming home. Explanations were too unwieldy; he had dictated a letter to be sent to Glesson, the butler, explaining that he had been wounded and would be mustered out and returning home before the harvest was over. That was as much as he would let the nurse write, even when she begged him to allow her to provide more detail. He refused. One didn’t provide one’s itinerary for servants, he had told her haughtily. But that wasn’t the reason for his reticence. He would be returning home to a staff that had known him since he was a wild youth; now they would seem him chastened. They would most likely feel it was his comeuppance. And he would not be able to tell who pitied him, who was amused, who mocked, because they would be able to see him and he, with his useless, sightless, ruined eyes, could see nothing. To be so humbled when one was an officer, a gentleman, the scion of a noble line, was to be less than a servant, it was to be nothing at all.

  “I’ll wager they’ve missed you, sir,” Harold offered. “We don’t hear much from Laverly Hall; quiet, it’s been, since Her Ladyship passed on. A house in mourning.”

  His father had died four years ago. His mother had been gone a year. A sister had died in childbirth three years ago, her child taken with her. There were cousins, and if he should die without an heir, there would doubtless be someone who would be more than willing to inherit the title, the lands, the estate, and the gold. But he didn’t intend to die without an heir. Dammit, he didn’t need sight to do that!

  “Yes,” he said simply, feeling obligated to acknowledge Harold’s efforts to make the journey a pleasant one, even if his attempts simply conjured forth the ghosts of Laverly Hall and the fact that the living Laverly was not a whole man any longer.

  The post-chaise stopped. The postilion and coachman dismounted, and Harold got out of the vehicle. Impatient, Laverly got up from his seat. He could hear the two men talking in low voices as if they didn’t want him to hear. He banged on the door of the post-chaise to indicate his desire to descend and obviously, since he couldn’t see the bloody ground, he would require some assistance.

  “Sir, did you say no one knows you’re back?” the
coachman asked.

  “Said as much. No, I didn’t announce my homecoming. I expect they’re inside. Be so good as to carry my trunks to the door, if you please. One of the footmen will take them from there.”

  “Sir, it don’t look as though anyone’s about,” Harold said uneasily.

  “Of course they are, where would they be? Knock on the door,” he ordered sourly.

  “I did sir,” said another voice, belonging to the postilion. “Nobody come to the door, sir.”

  Laverly swore. “Is there some village festival to which they’ve gone?” he suggested.

  “Sir,” Harold said, “it don’t look like anyone’s been about for some time. The grass is overgrown, and no one’s trimmed anything since last spring, I’m figuring. No lights are on inside. And the fine house looks poorly done by.”

  “What the devil do you mean, it looks poorly done by?” Laverly raised the hilt of his sword and hammered the door with it. They’d hear that, even if they had turned in for an early night.

  Silence returned his barrage of knocks. Laverly waited, then commenced knocking again.

  “Sir, I don’t think anyone is---“

  “Dammit, they’ll rouse or I’ll know the reason why!” Laverly bellowed, giving up on his sword and applying his fists to the hard oaken door.

  “Sir,” Harold said. “I’ll find a window and see what’s inside.”

  Laverly turned the doorknob. It opened without resistance.

  “Careful sir, it’s near dark. I don’t—“Harold muffled an oath as he tripped over something in the entranceway.

  The house was cold. It bore a musty, unused odor as if nothing fresh, neither human nor floral, had been inside its walls for too long.

  “Those blackguards,” Harold said in a long, exhaling breath of disbelief.

  “What is it?” Laverly asked, keeping his voice level with effort. Whatever it was, it wasn’t the French coming at him, it wasn’t swords or guns.

  “Sir, it looks to me like your house might have been robbed,” Harold said.