Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 135382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135382 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 677(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 451(@300wpm)
“I thought about putting him up for adoption.” She admitted the plan that had come to her in her dark moments.
“Because you don’t think you’re worthy of him,” Avery said. “But you are. While you’re here, I want you to see a friend of mine.”
She could guess. “Kai Ferguson?”
Avery sat back, Nate settling down against her. “Yes. I know your mom sent you to a therapist, but that was a long time ago and you’ve done a good job of hiding away from the world. I thought it was good for you at first, but now I wonder. You can do charity work here and raise your baby around family. You can find someone who makes you happy, and I worry you won’t even try if you stay out there.”
She would do anything for Avery. “I’ll see Kai. I’ll try.”
Avery stood up. “Is his formula in the diaper bag?”
Steph followed her, every bone weary. “Yes. I’ll get it if you don’t mind me using your kitchen.”
Avery pointed her way. “You see, you’re acting like you’re a burden. That’s what we’re going to work on.”
Liam stepped back out of the hall and picked up her sad suitcase. “Avery knows how to make a bottle. You are going to take a long, hot shower and get to bed. We’ll handle the wee one. Well, we’ll handle the massive linebacker you’ve got there. Go to sleep and rest. You’re good now. You got him out and now it’s time to let me take over.”
They presented a united front. All three of them. Nate looked perfectly happy in Avery’s arms.
“Okay.” She could use a shower, use some sleep she hadn’t been able to get while sitting up in economy with a baby in her arms.
She was safe. It was enough for now.
* * * *
Brody Carter set the weight down and stretched one arm over his head and behind, trying to loosen his left tricep.
“I can’t believe you’re actually up at six in the morning working out.” Kayla Summers strode into the gym, wearing pink yoga pants and a tight tank, her night-dark hair in a high ponytail. “After everything you drank last night, I suspected you would be sleeping it off.”
“Bastard doesn’t sleep,” Tucker said as he did what had to be his hundredth bicep curl. The damn boy had been in the gym before Brody and he hadn’t broken a sweat. “He parties and he works out. I think he needs a mission.”
The man they’d named Tucker had a point. Tucker was one of the six men McKay-Taggart rescued from Dr. Hope McDonald’s cruel experiments. The now deceased doc liked to experiment on men. Her drugs had wiped the memories of the men the team now called the Lost Boys.
Thinking about Dr. McDonald made him think of another doctor, a doctor who was the opposite of Hope and her evil experiments. It made him think of a doctor with the sweetest smile in the world.
“Hey, anytime the boss needs me, I’m ready to go. And it’s not like I haven’t been working. Walt and I just got back from a job in Iraq. That wasn’t a piece of piss job. It was serious. God knows keeping Walt alive is work enough.”
His normal partner also happened to be the scientist on the team. Walt was brilliant, but he also sometimes was a magnet for trouble. He was far better in the lab than the field, but that meant Brody got stuck there where he knew nothing and ended up surrounded by people who were way smarter than him.
That was his place though. He was pure muscle and he couldn’t forget it.
Tucker shifted the twenty-pound weight to his free hand and started all over again. “Well, I would do almost anything to get out of here. Not that here’s bad.”
Sasha was working out beside Tucker, laid out on the leg press. “Here is no bad. Here is good food and many women to pleasure me. I have been in bad place. Bad place has no women.”
His bad place had been torture and drugs that wiped his memories, so Brody was fairly certain Sasha was telling the truth. Sasha had recently completed his training with their boss Damon Knight and been given Master rights at The Garden, the club they all played at. Sasha was there every night the club was open.
Brody spent all his time in the bar lately. Oh, he’d had a few sessions with submissives, but he couldn’t work up the will to go any further than a flogging or rigging up a sub for his friends. He’d been a bit like a monk because every time he put on a pair of leathers, all he could think about was how Stephanie had dropped to her knees in front of him, offering up her sweet self.