Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64910 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 325(@200wpm)___ 260(@250wpm)___ 216(@300wpm)
I was such a fuckin’ idiot.
“Hey,” Mimi said. “So I was hoping that you could come…”
“Don’t live there anymore, Mimi,” I said. “We moved to Florida to raise our baby in the Sunshine State. If you need anything, you could always try my brothers. But with them all married, getting married, and with babies on the way, I highly doubt they can find time to spare.”
More, I didn’t want them spending time with Mimi, forging a relationship that I definitely didn’t want forged.
Dory’s eyes widened.
“Baby?” Mimi squeaked.
“Baby.” I trailed my eyes down the length of Dory’s body. “A boy.”
Mimi sucked in a breath, but it was Dory’s sniffle that had me looking up at her to find tears in her eyes.
“Gotta go,” I said. “Bye.”
I hung up without waiting for her to reply and moved so that my hands were cupping Dory’s shoulders. “What’s wrong, baby?”
She wriggled her nose before saying, “You claimed our baby. It was just… these hormones…”
I smiled. “It’s my baby. Or, I guess, ours. I can’t wait to meet him.”
Her lower lip quivered, and I could tell that she needed a moment.
So when she pulled away, I allowed her to.
“If you don’t mind,” she said softly. “I’m going to go take a shower. I feel like I need it.”
I winked at her. “I’m going to go catch up with Wake anyway. Let him know we made it and talk to him about what he was able to find out today.”
She waved me off before all but slamming the door in my face, and I grinned.
A couple of minutes later, I arrived at Wake’s place to find him outside working on an old car in his driveway.
“Wake,” I called to him. “It’s me, Bram.”
Wake’s eyes had already been on me, but he grinned when he heard the name.
We hadn’t met officially as of yet, but we’d been doing a lot of communication over the phone after Easton had procured his number for me.
“Bram.” He wiped his hand on a red rag, then offered it to me. “How’s it going?”
“Okay,” I admitted. “She threw up almost every hundred miles like clockwork, so it took us a bit longer than we expected.”
He started chuckling, but then his face sobered. “I have a sister. God, she was so sick when she was pregnant. I’m talking, couldn’t even get out of bed sick. If Dory’s upright, she’s doing okay.”
Oh, I’d done my research. I knew that hyperemesis was bad. Or could be worse than what Dory was presenting with.
I’d talked to Tide about it, and he’d said that she was doing well for the hand she’d been given.
So I was hoping that it never came down to that. But hell, we had four and a half months left. To say that she wasn’t out of the woods yet would be an understatement.
Which reminded me, we needed to find a doctor in Florida that could take over her case.
“What’s got that look on your face?” he asked. “Everything okay with the wife?”
I smiled. “Everything is great… mostly. She’s already got an eating disorder and this nausea isn’t helping her situation. I was just thinking that I needed to help her find a doctor here. Sooner rather than later.”
“I know a guy.” He smiled. “My brother. Just don’t tell him that I sent you, okay?”
I sensed a story there but knowing that he was likely as private as I was… well, I chose to let it lie.
“Hit me with the number.”
CHAPTER 17
I married a stale ham sandwich.
-Dory to Bram
DORY
To say that I was living in a fairy tale would’ve been too tame of a word.
We’d been in the rental house on the bay for exactly a week. That was seven days of time that I’d spent with my husband.
Today would be the eighth day, and today, both of us were going off to our respective jobs.
Our brand-new jobs, in our brand-new town, in our brand-new rented house, with our brand-new lives ahead of us.
To be honest, it was everything that I ever wanted, and it was inevitable that something was going to go wrong.
“Don’t go anywhere without carrying,” he ordered, his eyes intense and severe. “After talking to that incompetent sheriff, there’s no way in hell that you should be doing anything or going anywhere by yourself without something to protect you if you need it.”
Bram had learned yesterday, after the sheriff had done nothing but brush him off for the week that we’d been here, that they hadn’t done a single thing to try and find the man that had attacked me.
That’s why, for the last day and a half, Bram’s made it his life mission to make sure I was safe.
I felt warm, and protected, and for the first time in an eon, happy. Well and truly, completely and wholly, happy.
It was an odd feeling.