Sinner (Shelter Harbor #1)(177)

“Well excuse me, Miss know-it-all.” I stick my tongue out at her and she giggles.

Sometimes things happen for a reason. Sometimes, we find things we were never looking for in places we never thought we’d find them. And sometimes - sometimes - the impossible becomes real.

Me getting pregnant on our honeymoon would be a textbook example.

At seven o’clock at night, on the day of the farmer’s market in Houston, I knocked on London’s door with Landon and Emily in tow.

At seven-o-one, Landon and Holden locked eyes and had this big macho moment of glaring at each other and sizing each other up before my friend elbowed her fiancé in the ribs and told him to be good.

By seven-o-nine, Landon and Holden were better friends than I think they’d ever have imagined.

At seven-thirty, Emily helped me mash up avocados, limes, onions, and cilantro, and at seven forty-five, we all sat down for tacos.

At midnight, with Emily asleep in the guest bed upstairs, we popped a bottle of champagne for Landon and I, cans of orange-ginger seltzer for my pregnant friend and her non-drinking beau, and cheered to Landon and I’s voting shares suddenly turning into owner shares.

A combined fifty-four million dollars of owner shares, to be exact.

At one in the morning, with Emily sleeping upstairs, London and Holden crashed in their own wing of the house, and with whispered shushes on our lips, Landon and I tore each other’s clothes off and made love twice on the living room floor.

…And once more in the pool house.

I did end up moving to Denver with them, because I had the same thought he’d had: home just isn’t home if it’s not with the family you’ve found. My adoptive friend-family in Houston understood, and honestly, it all made sense with the turning of the pages our lives were taking. London and Holden had their baby boy, and Archie started seeing a nice woman - way nicer than his first two wives - who’s twenty-one-year-old son was some sort of social marketing wiz-kid.

The sit down with Archie about me leaving went about exactly as I could imagine it.

“You’re fired.”

London snorts, shooting Archie an admonishing look. “Dad!”

He grins at me, and I grin right back. “She knows I’m kidding.” He frowns. “You do know I’m kidding, right?”

“I know.”

“Man, playing for the enemy, huh?”

“Moving IN WITH the enemy, actually,” London ribs, wagging her brows at me.

“We’re gonna miss you, kid.”

“I’m going to be visiting so much, you’re going to wish you HAD fired me.”

It was later at dinner that he took me aside and wiped a tear away, letting me know that his shotgun was always loaded, and that if “this pretty-boy character” laid a “mean hand” on me, he and his Remington would personally be coming to Denver to “blow his nuts to kingdom-come.”

Believe me, that’s the highest form of sentimentality in Archie Jacobs’ lingo.

Back in Houston, we cleaned house.

Big time.

The entire Rattlesnakes board got the boot, which may seem harsh, but any feelings of soreness on the subject went right out the window when certain emails were leaked by one of the departing board members - emails showing a pretty damning collusion between Don, a few of the other board seats, and the potential buyer.

In the end, three of them were invited back. The organization is in the process of suing Don.

More importantly though, we made peace with Sam. My father, I guess.

Sam is not my dad, though. I’ve made that clear, and I’m pretty sure he understands. Instead, I’m choosing to look at him as a sort of distant uncle figure that I can slowly get to know on my own terms.

We ended up reinstating him as an owning partner, too. For all his crap and all the reasons I should hate him, it is after all his team and the legacy he built that he’d wanted to give to the two of us when he thought he was done for.

It’s not making up for everything, but it’s a start.

We’ve talked, and more and more, I’m at least starting to see that he tried to have a place in my life, early on. It was my mother, guilted by her indiscretions that wanted him gone.

But like I said, I’m getting to know him on my own terms.

“He’s here!”

The tumbling sound of Emily barreling down the stairs chases her into the kitchen where I’m sipping tea.

“My dad’s home!”

So, today at a checkup that Landon was furious for having to miss because of some sort of dust up in the coach’s office, I got a question I wasn’t quite ready to hear.

“Do you want to know if it’s a boy or a girl?”

I’d blinked, and Emily, who I’d brought along and was sitting in the swivel chair to the side of me, had gone wide-eyed.