“Layla nearly died,” Jesse Thornton muttered, his jaw clenched. “She went into preterm labor, and the twins were in the hospital for months.”
Lyric tensed beside me. “Stop reminding me, Dad,” he gritted out. “I have nightmares just thinking of something happening to Mila. Just stop, okay?”
“Why do you think I was so worried about Lucy when she was pregnant with Hayat and Evan?” he grumbled, rubbing a hand over his shaved head. “Anything could happen, son. You have reason to worry.”
“Jesse,” Layla hissed at him, glancing at my dad out of the corner of her eye. “You’re not helping the current situation.”
Glancing at Dad, I realized he was practically shaking with his own worry. “Mila, we need to get you home. I’ll call Doc, and he can come over and check you out.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, locking my fingers around Lyric’s. “I saw an obstetrician yesterday, and she said everything is fine. Yes, I’m considered high-risk because it’s twins, but she said there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I can’t take care of you if you’re here,” Dad snapped, getting to his feet.
“You don’t need to take care of her,” Lyric told him, rising to his feet as well. The two men glared at each other, and my nervousness only spiked higher. “I’ll take care of her and our babies.”
“Didn’t you just come to town?” Dad’s brows lifted. “How the fuck is it that they’re your babies when you only got here a few days ago?”
“We met in New York,” I informed him coldly, more than a little irritated—and hurt—that he assumed the babies weren’t Lyric’s.
Did he think I was a slut or something? One of the MC sheep that slept with anything that blinked at her?
“Of course you did,” Dad grumbled. “Fucking New York. Shit. That’s where all this trouble started. First Monroe, and now you? What the hell do you girls do when I’m not looking, huh?”
“What do you mean, ‘First, Monroe’?” I cried.
Mom’s lips twisted. “She told us last night. She’s pregnant too.”
My hands covered my mouth to hold in my gasp. “But… But she—” I broke off, because there were no words. Monroe was pregnant? That blew my mind.
“She said it happened while she was in Italy. She refuses to talk about the father, and when I told her she needed to contact him to let him know he is going to be a parent, she told me she didn’t know how.” Mom shrugged. “I could tell she was lying, but she was so upset, I didn’t want to push it.”
“Is she okay? I mean, no blood pressure issues or morning sickness? Does she know if she’s having twins or whatever?” I was more worried about my sister than I was myself. She was so delicate, fragile at times, it seemed. She was sweet and pure, not like me. I could take care of myself, but Monroe needed someone to watch over her. Protect her from the evil that was in the world.
She told me everything, except…
Fuck, was the father her stalker?
That was the only thing that made sense to me. Monroe told me everything, except when it came to that guy. I knew it was because she wanted to protect him, but why the hell did he need protecting when he was the one always saving her? Dad would have wanted to shake the guy’s hand, not put a bullet in his head.
Pushing that to the back of my mind until I could talk to my sister, I focused on the here and now. “Dad, Lyric asked me to marry him.”
“What?” Dad exploded. “No way. You two have known each other for all of five minutes. You are not going to marry this dumbass, Mila.”
“Hey!” Jesse yelled. Layla and Emmie both grabbed for his hands as he jerked to his feet, but he was too quick for either of them as he got in Dad’s face.
Height-wise, Dad was a few inches taller than the Demon, and he was a little thicker in the muscle department as well, but Jesse wasn’t intimidated by the enforcer. “What’s wrong with her marrying my kid? He’s a good boy…most of the time. As long as he isn’t around his brother, he’s fine.”
“He’s the good twin,” Layla agreed, her voice slightly shaky, but her smile was warm. “And he will take perfectly good care of your daughter. He loves her, and you heard as clear as I did, she said she loves him too. They aren’t babies anymore. They’re having their own. You can’t stand in their way and expect them to take you on their adventures through life, treating Lyric like that.”
“Watch me.”
Mom jumped up so fast, I almost got whiplash watching her. She punched Dad in the chest as hard as she could, but he didn’t even flinch. Taking a step into his space, she tilted her head back as far as it would go so she could glare up at him. “Now, you listen to me, James Masterson. My daughter just said she’s getting married and having babies. We are not missing out on a single minute of that. Let me repeat that so it gets through that hard-ass head of yours. We. Are. Not. Missing. Out.” With each gritted word, she poked him in the chest. “She’s so much like you, she will be stubborn enough to cut us both out of her life and not let either of us close again until you accept that boy. So, you accept him. Right fucking now. Because I will not let your stubborn ass ruin this for me.”
His jaw clenched so hard, it was a wonder he didn’t break his teeth. “Willa—”
“Unless the next words out of your mouth are ‘Welcome to the family, son,’ you can shut the fuck up right now.” She put her hands on her hips, standing between him and us. Mom was so damn tiny, Dad could have lifted her over his head with one hand if he really wanted to. But instead, he stood there, not daring to touch her. And slowly, his shoulders began to droop under the force of her intense glare.
Their gazes locked for a long moment, and I think we were all holding our breath as we waited for him to finally speak. When he turned his dark eyes to Lyric, I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable explosion.
“Welcome to the family, son,” he said with a heavy sigh.
Tears instantly filled my eyes, spilling out before I even lifted my lashes. “Really?” I whispered. “You mean it?”
He combed his fingers through his beard agitatedly but nodded. “I mean it. I only want you to be happy, Mila.”
I started to jump up, but Lyric caught me before I could straighten, reminding me to take it easy to avoid problems with my blood pressure dropping. Giving him a watery smile, I kissed him quickly, then carefully straightened before throwing myself into Dad’s arms.
When his arms wrapped around me in return, I let out a happy little sob. “Does this mean you’ll walk me down the aisle?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” he answered without hesitation. “That’s my job, right?”
“Right,” I whispered brokenly. “Thank you, Daddy.”
His arms tightened around me. “You haven’t called me ‘Daddy’ since you were like eight,” he murmured quietly. “I like it.”
Smiling against him, I cuddled closer. “Thank you. This means everything to me.”
“Yeah, well, let’s hope I don’t regret it.” Releasing me slowly, he turned to face my future in-laws. “You two.” He pointed at Jesse and then Emmie. “We will never discuss what I did for you all those years ago. Are we clear? You ever breathe a word to anyone about what happened, it will be your last.”
“I try to forget that day every morning when I open my eyes,” Emmie told him, getting to her feet. She stood there, facing down Dad just as fearlessly as Mom had only minutes before, only she couldn’t possibly know the big MC enforcer wouldn’t hurt her. None of us did, and I was beyond nervous for her. Yet she did it anyway. “What happened that night…it stayed at that farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. We don’t speak of it. Ever. We’re family now. I take care of all my family, just as you showed me years ago, you take care of your own.”
“Plus,” Lyric spoke up, wrapping his arms around me from behind as he looked at Dad over the top of my head. “You’ll find out quickly enough that having Emmie Armstrong as family will make your life a hell of a lot easier.”
Dad pressed his lips together in annoyance. “Don’t give a damn about that. All that matters is that you take care of Mila and her babies. Because if you don’t, you’ll see firsthand what I did that night for your family.”
“If he doesn’t take care of them,” Jesse said, his voice hard and just as menacing as Dad’s, “I’ll help you.”
The two older men locked gazes for a long moment. Then, as if coming to a mutual understanding, Dad stuck out his hand, and Jesse shook it. “An Angel and a Demon are family,” Dad said with a sudden grin. “That’s got to make for some interesting jokes.”
Chapter 19
Lyric
“You have a client waiting,” Mila called out from the front of the shop.
I lifted my head from the sketch I was working on for one of the college guys. It was a massive dragon he wanted on his back. The guy had virgin skin, but this thing was going to look wicked on him.