Cowboy Love in Peril [Love: The Cowboy Way 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (7 page)

“You’re right! You’ve always been arrogant, proud, and stupid, and you still are.” She stalked away from him, her hands clenching into fists as his words ran through her mind again. Kimber spun on her heel and stormed back over to Wade, screaming in frustration as she pushed against his chest as hard as she could, yet didn’t budge him an inch.

Wade looked a little shocked by her attack at first, but then he cast his gaze away as he bit down on his lip, and she knew he was suppressing a grin. She put her hands on her hips, stunned that he would laugh at her at a time like this. Kimber heard him chuckle as he pretended to clear his throat, irritating her all the more, but she didn’t get a chance to lash out again because he wrapped his arms around her and trapped her against him. “I’m sorry, honey, but I gotta tell ya, sympathy isn’t your strong suit.”

Kimber couldn’t see his face, but she knew exactly how he would look, and the thought of him fighting not to laugh as she tried to wriggle out of his grasp, made her smile despite her anger. She was glad he’d stopped her from hitting him some more. He might be big, stubborn, and arrogant, but he didn’t deserve to be abused for it.

“It’s okay, you can let me go. I’m calm now.” She eased out of his arms and had the urge to smile again when he took a cautious step away from her. “I’m sorry, Wade. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I didn’t mean to laugh but I’ve never seen you so mad before. I guess I pissed you off, huh?”

Kimber grinned, her cheeks burning with shame as she imagined how deranged she must have seemed. “You could say that.”

The humor drained from his face, and Kimber could see him struggling to find the words to explain himself. “I’m not much good at this kind of stuff. It just meant so much to me, you know, the thought I might have given you one or both of the kids you adore so much. I was proud of myself for the first time in my life. I’d actually done something right. Something good. Then one day, I looked at Brandon and the kids sleeping in the chair in the nursery, and realized in that moment that I hadn’t done a damned thing.”

“I don’t know what to tell you that will make you feel better. You’re upset about the kids, I get that, but you couldn’t be more of a father to them. And they would be devastated if you weren’t around anymore.”

“Why wouldn’t I be around? I ain’t going nowhere.” He closed the distance between them and tilted her face up to kiss her. “Guys like me don’t get this lucky, I told you that already. I’m just hurting, that’s all. I’ll get over it.”

Kimber’s shoulders tingled as the brutal afternoon sun started to burn the skin exposed by her strappy top. She led Wade over to the small white gazebo nestled in the corner of the garden, its roof and sides wreathed in the vibrant pink bougainvillea her mother had nurtured for years. Wade had to stoop to get through the door, and the seat was so small she had to tuck herself under his arm in order for both of them to sit comfortably.

Neither of them spoke for a while, and Kimber’s mind wandered back over the last few weeks and Wade’s strange behavior began to make a little more sense. “That’s why you didn’t want to marry me anymore, isn’t it?”

Wade sucked in a ragged breath and shook his head. “I’ve never not wanted to marry you, Kimber. I’ve wanted that since I was barely more than a kid. I just didn’t think it was the right time to discuss it, not until the truth had come out.”

“Well, it’s out now. Or it will be, once Brandon gets home.” Kimber sat up and twisted around on the narrow bench seat so she could see Wade’s face. “Talking of Brandon, is that why you’ve kept him at arm’s length recently?”

“I guess I was a little jealous for a while back there.” Wade squirmed under her gaze, looking shamed by his admission. Kimber cupped his jaw, scratching her palm with his stubble as she turned his face to hers so she could kiss him.

She scooted down on the bench, tucking her feet up under her butt and laying her head on Wade’s lap, sighing with contentment as he began to play with her hair. He kept his gaze averted, and Kimber was okay with that, aware that he needed some time to deal with all that had happened. She closed her eyes, and thought about the paths their lives had taken so far, to bring them to this moment. Jessica and Emily hadn’t been planned, but Kimber knew that having them was the best thing she had ever done. She couldn’t even imagine how Wade felt right now.

He’d been carrying the secret with him for weeks, all alone in his grief. And he was grieving, of that she was sure. He still had the girls, but he’d lost something, too. Something very precious to him.

The urge to restore his sense of pride and give him back what he’d lost overwhelmed her. Kimber knew there and then that she’d find a way to cope, and happily bear all the snooty receptionists in the world and anything life threw at her as a result, but she’d give Wade a child.

She opened her eyes to find Wade looking down at her, a weird expression on his face. She realized then she was smiling like a maniac, excitement at what she wanted to tell him near bursting through her chest. But when she saw a tear roll down his cheek, the words she’d been about to say stilled in her throat and she sat up.

“Wade?”

He dragged a fist across his face, and turned his misty gray gaze on her, a small smile on his lips. “Aw, honey. I know you too well.” Wade cupped her jaw in his hands and kissed her, and she could still taste the salt of his tears on her lips when he pulled away. “The Kimber I know and love would be wracking her brains for a way to make me happy. And, if I were a betting man, I’d say she’d just decided that we were gonna have more kids. Am I right?”

“Don’t you want to?” she whispered, frightened by the sadness in his eyes.

“Of course I do, but it’s not that simple.”

Kimber groaned inwardly, annoyed at herself now for going on so much in recent weeks about how afraid of the future she was. “Look, I know what I said, but I was just being a wimp, that’s all. So what if people talk about us? Only we’ll know for sure what is going on. The kids will be loved more than any child could wish for and we’ll find a way to explain it all to them as they grow up. There are plenty of families these days that don’t have traditional mothers and fathers—gay couples, single parents, people who have to use surrogates.”

She stopped to take a breath, scared anew by the deepening frown on Wade’s face and the hard set of his jaw.

“Kimber, we can’t. We just can’t.”

“Why on earth not?”

Wade smiled but the look in his eyes chilled her to the bone. “Because, when I realized the kids weren’t mine and began to think about all the times in the past, before Brandon came home, that you and I had been careless, yet you’d never once got pregnant, I started to think. So, rather than drive myself crazy, I got tested. The truth is, we’re lucky Brandon is here, otherwise we wouldn’t have Jessica and Emily.”

“Oh, my God...”

A nerve ticked in Wade’s jaw as he kept his gaze riveted to the floor for a moment, then he gave a deep sigh and braced his palms against his thighs as he got to his feet. “Give me a minute, okay?”

Kimber tried to see which direction he went, so she could follow him if he didn’t come back soon, but gave up once he’d taken only a few steps away and she could no longer see him through the sheen of tears.

Brandon yanked on the straps of the stab vest, slapping the Velcro tabs down and shooting a look at the chief who was standing on the other side of a prison guards’ office, one floor above Costanza’s cell. “Boss, tell the SERT guys there’s no point in all this. He’s gonna have me take it off as soon as I get near him so he can check for weapons.”

“I know, but humor them, will ya? The Special Emergency Response Team are running the show. Their captain is pissed off he had to stand back and let us handle this part, so don’t give him an excuse to fuck us up, Reed. Besides, worst come to worst, you could always slap that fucker in the head with it.”

“Guess so.” Brandon grinned. Some things never changed—and Chief Roberts was one of them. No matter what the circumstances, he never lost his dry wit, nor his preference for going in hard and fast and getting the job done. Roberts was ten years older than Brandon but had no desire to leave the squad and would no doubt die with his boots on. “So, as soon as you hear from the Feds that the judge is safe, you’re gonna storm the block and take Costanza out?”

Roberts gave a brisk nod and turned his attention to the screen of his phone. “Latest is, they’ve got a lead on the van used in the kidnapping. If luck is on our side, they’ll have a trace on it soon.”

“Okay, so how am I gonna know what’s happening out here?”

“SERT say they can’t risk giving you an earpiece so you’re gonna have to listen out for my signal. You remember the old signal, don’t you?”

Brandon grinned. “Of course.” He jerked his head toward the prison warden, Tom Murdoch, who was deep in conversation with a couple of his guards. “Costanza won’t budge on him having to be there?”

“He insisted on it or the deal was off. To be honest, it works in our favor. He might take Murdoch out first if he hates him as much as he hates you.”

“Very funny.”

“The guys mingling with the prisoners have seen no signs of anyone loitering around Costanza’s cell or taking a particular interest. There’s a buzz amongst the inmates because the wing has been cordoned off all day, but they seem to buy the story we circulated that it’s being fumigated. We’re pretty confident he has no access to weapons but watch for the usual things like rudimentary shanks.”

Roberts gestured at Murdoch to come over and join the briefing. “I’m gonna pat you down now, Sir. We need to make sure you haven’t got any keys on you, and we can’t take the risk that you might have secreted a weapon just in case. If you have, and Costanza gets hold of it, then he’s got us by the balls.”

Brandon studied Murdoch as he tolerated the frisk search, noting his hands were shaking as his gaze darted around the room. “You okay?” Brandon asked him, silently cursing the fact that he had someone with him he’d have to protect. The last thing he needed was a distraction. Costanza was a nasty piece of work who had orchestrated this whole thing so he’d get a chance to kill Brandon, face to face. All they didn’t yet know was how he planned to do it.

“One more day,” Murdoch said again as he put on a stab vest. He’d already mentioned, numerous times, that Costanza’s extradition to New Mexico was scheduled for the next day. “One more day and he’d have been somebody else’s problem.”

“Okay, let’s roll.” Roberts strode from the room, leading the way down the stairs to the set of metal doors at the entrance to D wing. The door slid open and Roberts turned to slap Brandon on the shoulder, a gesture that said as much as was needed in these types of situations, then stepped back to let the two men enter.

Brandon walked behind the warden, allowing the man to lead the way, conscious of the sound of the door as it closed behind them. The knowledge that it would only open for him again if he survived the encounter with Costanza made him think of his family. A knot formed in his gut as he allowed himself that one last moment of weakness, then reminded himself that if he wanted to see them again, he had to keep his mind on the task at hand.

Brandon saw that Manny’s cell, situated about halfway along the block, wasn’t the only one that had been left open. Murdoch slowed down as he got nearer to Costanza, giving Brandon a moment to visually scan the empty cell next to Manny’s. Before he had a chance to ask the warden why it wasn’t locked like the others, Murdoch moved forward without awaiting Brandon’s instructions.

“Costanza? We’re here, and we’re unarmed,” Murdoch said, his hands already in the air as he stepped in front of the open door.

“Where’s Reed?”

“Here,” Brandon said, stepping through the door and glaring at Murdoch.
Fucking civilians
. Brandon damped down his irritation at the man who’d just proven he couldn’t follow a simple order, such as not doing anything until he was told to, and turned his attention to Manny.

Costanza was a shell of the man he used to be. Once a vain peacock, who fit the stereotype of the drug running pimp, with his flashy white suits and fondness for ostentatious jewels, he now looked like nothing more than a frail old man. Wispy scraps of graying hair clung to his balding pate, exposing the genetic flaw that he used to hide with custom-made hairpieces. His artificially whitened teeth now looked faintly ridiculous as they gleamed in his pale, sunken face. But his eyes hadn’t changed. The dark, almost-black irises glittered with anger, as they always did when focused on Brandon.

“Ah, the murderer of my son.”

“Manny, we’ve been over this. You killed your son, not me. I’m not the one who put a gun in his hand before he could walk.”

Antagonizing a madman wasn’t a negotiation tactic Brandon would have normally chosen, but the one thing he had to his advantage was Manny’s irrational and unbridled hatred of the man who’d shot his son. It didn’t matter to Costanza that Brandon had simply shot back at the man who’d been shooting at him. But it didn’t take a shrink to figure out that Manny directed his hatred outward, because he couldn’t face the truth about who was really responsible for his son’s death.

“
Cabrón
!” Manny’s face contorted around the word, his rage evident, but he stayed where he was, with his back pressed to the wall between his bunk and the toilet. He gestured toward the men with the hand gripping his cell phone. “Get rid of the vests.”