Текст книги "Checkmate"

Автор книги: R. L. Mathewson

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

“Don’t fucking listen to him, Rory!” Connor yelled, but he was quickly silenced by a punch to the gut from Bryce.

“And how exactly did you find out about that?” Darrin asked.

“Because I overheard Connor explain it to Andrew,” Jacob said, gesturing to Andrew who closed his eyes in resignation and cursed.

“When?” Reese demanded.

“In June I think,” Jacob said, looking thoughtful, “he was just using her. He wasn’t in love with her. As long as he didn’t hurt her, I stayed out of it. I didn’t know that marrying her was part of the plan. I thought he was just going to screw up and Rory was going to end their deal.”

“That’s bullshit!” Andrew snapped, but thankfully no one hit him, probably because none of them were mean enough to strike a man recovering from a life threatening illness.

“I heard every word!” Jacob said firmly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I love her!” Connor shouted.

“Then why are you after her company?” Jacob demanded.

“Okay, let’s get this over with, I have somewhere to be in an hour,” her father said, gesturing to her brothers to drag a bloody and panting Connor forward.

“I’m a little confused about something,” Johnny said. “If he was trying to get on our good side, then why didn’t he try sucking up to us?”

“He only kept telling us to fuck off,” Sean said, sounding confused.

“He punched me,” Bryce bitched.

“That’s because I didn’t want any of you!” Connor snapped.

“What the hell do you mean that you didn’t want us?” Johnny demanded in outrage.

“We’re a fucking catch!” Sean snapped.

“You’d be lucky to get guys like us! Lucky!” Bryce said, sounding pissed and insulted.

“I don’t want any of you!” Connor snapped.

“You bastard!” Johnny gasped as her brothers glared at him.

“Rory?” her father said, drawing her attention, but not enough to look away from Connor who was looking up at her through one swollen eye.

“Yes?”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes,” she said softly with a small nod that had Connor noticeably relaxing.

“And what are you willing to do to prove to my daughter and my boys that you’re telling the truth and that you love her?” her father demanded, watching Connor intently as he waited.

For a minute, Connor stood there, not saying anything as dread twisted in her gut. She wanted to tell her father that he didn’t have to prove anything, but she needed to know that their deal was truly a thing of the past.

Connor looked up and met her eyes as he said, “Anything. Everything. She can have my house, my business, everything that I have. I don’t care about any of it. The only thing that I want is her.”

In that moment, she knew that their deal truly was a thing of the past. Connor loved his house and would never willingly give it up. She'd been expecting a fight over it. Giving it up wasn't easy for him. It wasn't something that he'd ever planned on doing, but to prove how much he loved her, he gave it up, gave up everything for her.

She bit back a smile as she walked over to him, making a show of thinking it over. “What about the bathtub?”

“It’s yours.”

“Will you stop stealing my hot chocolate?” she asked, reaching up to cup his slightly bruised handsome face.

“No,” he said, turning his head so that he could press a kiss against her palm. “But I’ll learn to make it the way that you like it and make it for you.”

“Highland Construction is mine?” she asked, already having decided a month ago to combine the companies and run it with him.

“Yes,” he said with absolutely no hesitation.

“You’ll work for me?”

“Yes.”

“Fetch my drinks?”

“No.”

“Be at my by beck and call?” she asked, loving the way his poor abused lips kicked up into a grin.

“No.”

She sighed heavily as she said, “You really suck at interviews.”

“Do I have the job?” he asked, giving her that bad boy smile that she loved.

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said with a shrug as she turned to walk away.

“Uh, Rory, what do you want us to do with him?” Johnny called after her.

“Give him the official welcome to the family,” she said, laughing as she walked away.

“Rory?” Connor called after her, sounding uncertain and for good reason. “Rory!”

She paused long enough to look over her shoulder and wink as she announced smugly, “Checkmate.”

Epilogue

1 Year Later…..

“Who do you think we should call?” Rory asked as she snuggled closer to him.

“Your dad?” Connor suggested, not sure that calling his father-in-law at two in the morning to come bail them out of jail was the best idea, but that’s all he had at the moment.

“No,” Rory sighed, laying her arm across his chest as she did her best to get comfortable, but the bench in the holding cell made that pretty difficult.

“Why not?” he asked, pressing a kiss to the top of her still damp head.

“Because I’d have to explain to him why we got arrested,” she said with an adorable little pout.

Connor chuckled as he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer. “In a couple of hours everyone in town is going to know what happened.”

“This town sucks,” she muttered, making him laugh.

“You have no one else to blame but yourself,” he said, wincing when she poked him in the side, hard.

“You could have just said no,” she said, tilting her head back so that she could glare up at him.

“True, but you would have gone for my nipples if I had said no,” he said, laughing when she poked him again.

“At least it’s not the worst thing that we’ve ever done,” she muttered, giving up on trying to get comfortable on the wooden bench and moved to sit on his lap.

“Put some space between you both, now,” the police officer manning the desk barked at them.

Connor placed his hand on the large swell of Rory’s belly as he stared the officer down, “If you want to put some space between us, let my wife out of here.”

“I can’t do that and you know it,” the officer said, not looking too happy about having a pregnant woman locked up in a cell. Connor wasn’t exactly thrilled with it either. If his hormonal wife hadn’t reached over while he’d been driving them home, after making another late night run out for burgers and shakes, and started rubbing him through his pants, he would have used better judgment and not turned into their old high school’s parking lot to help her take care of another craving.

In his defense, he really hadn’t thought that anyone would be able to spot his truck from the road, not with that storm going on and making it difficult to see anything. At least this time they hadn’t come banging on the window until after they’d finished and Rory was dressed. He hated anyone else seeing his gorgeous wife’s body, but it did happen on occasion when things got out of hand, kind of like tonight.

“Let’s call my brothers,” Rory suggested, laying her head on his shoulder.

“Can’t. They’re refusing to bail us out for five years, because of what happened last month at the Halloween Festival.”

“That wasn’t my fault!”

“Shhh, I know, baby,” he lied. It was completely her fault, but he wasn’t about to point that out to his hormonal wife. He wasn’t a fucking idiot after all.

“Andrew?” she suggested, sounding hopeful.

“Nope, he’s down in Boston for the weekend, helping with the walk to raise money for leukemia research”

“Oh, damn,” she said, sagging his arms. “What about Jacob?”

“Not until after six. You know his rules,” Connor said, pressing another kiss to the top of her head as he shot another glance at the clock, wishing it would speed up so that they could call their assistant. If the man wasn’t so damn good, Connor would have fired the bastard’s ass months ago, but the man was a freaking god with a computer so they were screwed.

For a few minutes she didn’t say anything and he actually thought that she’d fallen asleep, so when she climbed, with difficulty, off his lap and waddled over to the door, he was taken by surprise, but her next words had him groaning.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she announced, cradling her stomach as she leaned against the wall.

“You have to wait for a female officer,” the officer said, shooting her a sympathetic look, probably thinking that would be enough to make Rory waddle back over and sit down.

It wasn’t.

“No, you’re going to have to take me,” she said, shifting.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to wait for a female officer.”

“I am nine months pregnant with a boy whose idea of fun is to play kick ball with my bladder and you really think that I can wait?” she demanded and he knew that if there wasn’t a set of bars separating them that she’d be kicking the shit out of the officer’s shin right now.

Connor stood up and joined his wife at the bars. “Just let her out. She doesn’t need to be in here. Have someone take her home and I’ll stay.”

“How in the hell is that going to work?” Rory demanded, turning a murderous glare on him and he knew that the hormones had taken over once again.

Yup, pregnancy was a fucking blast.

“I need help getting up the stairs and with Andrew in Boston, there won’t be anyone to help me!” she snapped and he really wished at that moment that Andrew had stayed home. Eleven months ago Andrew bought his old house so that Connor didn’t have to watch it go to strangers and it had been the best decision that any of them had ever made. Rory and Andrew still liked to give each other shit, but they’d grown very close over the past couple of months. He went out of his way to help Rory out whenever he was home. He was very protective of her. She’d saved his life after all and was always there for him.

“Well, I-“

“All I want to do is to use the bathroom and maybe get a snack and he,” she said, gesturing to the stunned officer, “won’t let me and now you’re willing to stay in jail just to get away from me!” she sobbed just as the first tear entered the picture and he knew, just knew that she was going to go for his balls this time.

For years he’d wished that she’d act more like a girl and cry a few tears and now he was getting that and more. She cried at everything and he meant everything. If he got her a cup of cocoa, she cried. If he told her that he loved her, she cried. If Bunny did something cute, she cried. If the mail was five minutes late, she cried. He could not wait for his sane, normal, happy wife to return to him. God, he missed her.

When she buried her face in her hands and sobbed loudly, he threw the bastard keeping him locked up with her a murderous glare. The crying didn’t stop, oh no, it got worse and soon the officer was fumbling with his keys and couldn’t open the cell fast enough.

“You know what? You can both go home. I’ll talk to my sergeant. You don’t need to be here and I’m sure you can clear this whole misunderstanding up with the school board tomorrow,” the officer said, opening the door and gesturing for them to leave, looking close to begging them to go.

“Are you sure?” he asked as Rory somehow managed to sob louder.

“Yes!”

“Thank you,” he said, comforting Rory as he guided her out of the cell, but the poor thing was still pretty upset and wouldn’t stop crying. She didn’t stop crying while they were being signed out, handed their personal items, or when they walked out of the building. He was at a loss at what to do by the time he helped her in the truck.

As he walked around the truck to the driver’s side, he resigned himself to a night of sitting in the damn nursery that he’d built her so that she could gush over every little sock, diaper and teddy bear just to make her happy. He took a deep breath before he opened the door, climbed in, and started the truck. It wasn’t until he pulled out the parking lot that he realized that his wife was no longer making rather frightening sobbing noises.

“Do you think that we could stop at Roy’s Dinner on the way home? I have a craving for their apple pie and hot cocoa,” Rory said, sounding chipper and scaring the shit out of him.

“You want to stop and get pie?” he asked, cautiously, knowing that the wrong tone could get him killed.

“Mmmhmm,” she said, nodding as she reached over and started playing with the radio.

“Okay………..,” he said, not really sure how to proceed so he went with a safe question, or at least what he hoped was a safe question. “Do you need to use the bathroom?”

“No,” she simply said with a shrug.

“No?”

“No, I’m good,” she said, shooting him a sweet smile.

“Then what was all that back at the jail?” he asked, wondering if her hormones were starting to make him go crazy.

“I had a craving for pie,” she said with another shrug as she settled back in her seat.

He pulled to a stop at the light and for a moment he could only stare at her in wonder. “You did all that for pie?”

“And cocoa,” she clarified with a nod.

He laughed, he couldn’t help it.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, reaching over to hold his hand.

“You are a dangerous woman, Mrs. O’Neil.”

“And don’t you forget it, Mr. O’Neil," she said teasingly.

“Or what?” he asked, raising their entwined hands so that he could press a kiss to the back of her hand.

“Or I’ll go for my pliers,” she promised, making him smile, because he knew damn well that she would. She didn’t take any of his shit, drove him out of his mind and he loved every single minute of it.