Adored: A Masters and Mercenaries Novella (1001 Dark Nights) (8 page)

She would try to sneak away, try to get back to her tiny apartment that would be terrible for raising a baby in. There was barely enough room for her. Babies required lots of stuff. Babies required love and affection and care, and how was she going to make it work?

The door opened and Mitch Bradford stood there looking like he’d run a couple of miles without bothering to change into sweats. He was still wearing his everyday armor, but his hair was windblown and he had a nice sheen of sweat on his brow. “Laurel, I just got the text from Will. Are you all right?”

Her brother had texted Mitch?

Before she could say a thing, her brother let his fist do the talking. Will reared back and Mitch went flying out of the room.

It looked like the worst day of her life wasn’t over yet.

Chapter Four

Mitch hit the nurse’s station with a crash, his spine slamming into the edge. It took him a moment to truly register the fact that Will had gone completely insane and was attacking him.

“Someone call security.” He heard the nurse’s voice behind him.

“No need,” Will said. “I can take out the trash myself.”

Will came at him, throwing another punch, but this time Mitch was ready. He ducked, narrowly missing getting clocked right across the nose. Will was serious. He wasn’t fucking around. He’d obviously found out what had happened with Laurel.

Had Laurel told her brother it was all his fault? He certainly hadn’t expected that from her.

“Nothing happened?” Will asked the question in a mocking tone. “Earlier today you told me nothing happened. Want to amend that statement, Counselor?”

Mitch held his ground. If they were going to do this here, then he would take his punishment, but he wasn’t going to go out quietly and he wasn’t going to stand here and let Will beat the shit out of him. “What happened is between me and Laurel.”

“Will, stop it. You are going to break a hand and then where will you be?” The three Daley sisters were standing right outside the door to Laurel’s room. The oldest one, Lila, was staring at both of them with a ferocious frown on her face. “Also, none of this helps Laurel.”

“I don’t care right now,” Will shot back and then returned his attention to Mitch. “You promised me she would be safe with you. You promised you would take care of her.”

Shit. This was about the incident? He hadn’t mentioned that Laurel had been shot at because she’d begged him not to and there hadn’t been anything Will could do. He’d been in Chicago at the time. No wonder the man was pissed. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t expecting it, obviously. It never occurred to me that she would be in that kind of danger. I swear if it had, I would have put a guard in front of that door.”

Will stopped. “What are you talking about? She didn’t need a guard. She needed a fucking condom, asshole.”

“Oh, Mitch is talking about when Laurel got shot at two weeks ago,” Lisa supplied helpfully.

“What?” Will turned again, this time sending that glare Laurel’s way.

Condom? Why was Laurel in the hospital? “I’m perfectly clean. I had a damn checkup a few weeks ago. Call Sanctum. My blood tests are clean.”

Laurel looked so young and vulnerable standing there in a hospital gown. It looked like she’d cried off her mascara. His gut clenched. She’d been crying. She clutched at the back of the gown to keep it together. Why was she here? What had happened? In that moment, he no longer cared what she’d said about him. He merely wanted to know she was all right.

“Laurel, I swear I don’t have any kind of STD.” He kept his distance because it looked like he was the bad guy in this scenario. “My blood tests are clean and I’ll be honest, I haven’t had sex with anyone in a good long while. Anyone else, obviously. Baby, if you’re sick, something’s gone wrong, but I swear it’s not me. I would never put you at risk.”

“You don’t have the clap, asshole. You have working sperm,” Will said between clenched teeth. “Hence the need for a condom.”

The words didn’t compute. He stood there like a complete idiot as everyone stared at him.

His best friend waved a hand in front of his face. Ex-best friend. It looked like that was done. He was good at collecting exes. Ex-wives, ex-friends, ex-lovers who promised there wasn’t a problem…

“She’s on the pill,” he said. That’s what they were talking about, right? Sperm had been mentioned.

Yes, I am fully functional, buddy, and guess what? We flooded her that night. Is it really any wonder we’re here? And you can thank me later
.

His dick was still getting him in trouble. Had his dick gotten them all in trouble? Like serious trouble. Like lifetime of being bound together kind of trouble.

Like he couldn’t give up Laurel because he’d gotten her pregnant kind of trouble?

All eyes swung Laurel’s way and she flushed.

“Did you tell him you were on the pill?” Will asked. He had the pissed-off father-figure thing down.

Father. He was going to be a father. Was he going to be a father? It wasn’t like Laurel didn’t have a choice in the matter.

“I never said that,” Laurel replied and Mitch watched as she steeled herself.

“I asked you about it and you said everything was fine.” He’d gone over that night about three hundred times since then.

“It is fine. I’m fine. You don’t have to worry.” Her chin came up in what he liked to think of as her queenly pose. When she looked at him like that he knew he was in for stubbornness. “Thank you for worrying, but I’ll be fine. I’m going to get dressed now. I would appreciate it if the two of you could stop making a scene.”

She turned and walked back into her room. Lisa gave him a grin and a wink before turning and following her sister, but Lila remained even after the door had closed behind the other two.

“Well, this is a mess. Will, you’re not making this better,” Lila said.

“I’m sorry. I lost my head for a minute there,” Will admitted.

“You knew she had a thing for him,” Lila complained.

Will shrugged. “I did. At the time, I didn’t think it would be so bad. I thought Mitch cared about her, too.”

“I do. I care about her.” Laurel was pregnant. She was carrying his very small, probably-no-more-than-a-couple-of-cells child inside her body right that very moment.

He didn’t want kids. He’d never wanted them. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them. He liked his friends’ kids fine, but he would be a shit dad. He hadn’t been close to his own but his mother never let up that he was exactly like the bastard. Unreliable. Selfish.

Two failed marriages had proven her right.

“Then what are you going to do?” Lila asked, though a bit more softly now. “Mr. Bradford, I’ve only met you a couple of times, but I’ve seen the way you look at my sister. Let me see if I can figure out what happened. Laurel is a stubborn girl and she learned early to fight for what she wants. She decided she wanted you and she pushed you to the point that you gave in. You then did something stupid and caused her to run.”

“What did you do that was stupid?” Will asked. “Wait. I want to get back to the shooting thing.”

He was stunned. He was actually lucky his freaking knees were still working because the knowledge that Laurel was pregnant—with his baby—was…he wasn’t even quite sure what it was. His mind was working overtime, but his mouth seemed to move on its own.

“Derek is sure that it was some kid trying to rob the dentist next door. Apparently he was high and he was looking to get higher. Laurel startled him and he shot at her through the glass in the reception area.”

“Oh my god. Why wasn’t I told?”

Lila chuckled. “Uhm, because you tend to lose your cool, big brother. Thank you, Randy. I think we’ve got everything under control. Dr. Daley was a bit upset, but he’s calmed down now and he’s not going to cause any more trouble with the lawyer who’ll probably sue the hell out of him and the hospital we work at.”

Mitch turned. Lila was talking to a security guard who looked deeply unhappy he’d been pulled from his nap or something.

“Mitch isn’t going to sue us,” Will replied.

“No, but if I ever get the chance to punch you, I’ll take it.”

“Was I right?” Lila asked.

Mitch was totally happy he’d drawn the middle Daley sister. Lisa was an imp who didn’t seem to take anything seriously and Lila kind of scared him. And he didn’t scare easy. Laurel was stubborn, but she didn’t have Lila’s grim determination. “About what happened? Yeah. She pushed the hell out of me and things exploded and I was a little freaked out afterward.”

“You didn’t think you two should talk about it beyond asking briefly if she was on birth control?” Will was right back to pissed off.

Maybe Randy the guard shouldn’t have shuffled off so quickly. “She left me, Will. I wanted to talk, but she walked out and she didn’t walk back in. I gave her space. Hell, I needed space. I called her on Saturday and again on Sunday. She didn’t answer. I walked back in Monday morning like a fucking idiot with flowers and shit and she quit with an e-mail. An e-mail.”

She’d decided he was a bad bet and he couldn’t blame her.

Was she scared that she’d be stuck with him for the rest of her life?

And so much for going to his grave with the flowers secret. His mouth wouldn’t stop.

“Good. Then you and Laurel can work this out.” Lila gave him a nod. “I suggest you do that thing you two seem obsessed with doing or she’ll walk all over you.”

“What thing?” Mitch asked.

Lila gave him a mysterious smile and disappeared into the room.

“She’s telling you to top Laurel.” Will scrubbed a hand through his hair. “She’s probably right. Laurel isn’t reasonable when she feels like she’s in a corner. You’ve convinced her you don’t want her.”

“I never said I don’t want her. I simply want better for her.” She deserved better than he could give her.

Will stepped in front of him. “You’re all she’s got now. So man up and be better for her because you’ve got one shot at this. I get that you’ve always thought we’re so different. You come from money and I don’t, but we both had shitty parents who did nothing to get us ready for kids of our own. I had to grow up a long time ago. It’s your turn. It’s your turn to shove all that shit aside and be more. She needs you to be more.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her.” And he hadn’t really come from money. Sure his father had been wealthy and he’d been given a trust fund on his eighteenth birthday, but his mother had made her money the hard way—by marrying it over and over and over again.

“I know. Why did you lie to me? You said nothing happened.”

“I was trying to protect us both, I guess.” God, he was going to miss Will. “I didn’t want to lose your friendship and I knew Laurel wouldn’t want you to know about it. She said everything was fine.”

“Lesson number one. When she says she’s fine, you’re in trouble. There’s no such thing as fine. It’s like Southern chicks saying bless your heart. What they actually mean is you’re an idiot. Fine means something like the same thing except it carries connotations that violence could happen if you don’t figure out what’s wrong. How bad was it?”

“The sex? It was fantastic.” It had been the absolute best sex of his life.

Will groaned. “No, asshole. Never, ever tell me that. Ever. Again.” He shuddered. “I was talking about whatever you did to make her run.”

He needed to stop being so literal. “I said it was a mistake.”

Will winced. “Okay, well, the flowers thing was a good idea. Maybe you can try that again. She also likes those cheese Danishes from the bakery down the street from her place.”

“I tried that, too.” At least he was on the right track. “Unfortunately, I brought them in with the flowers and…”

“She quit via e-mail. I’m sorry about that, man. It was a cowardly thing to do.”

Or she’d stopped caring. This was kind of what he did. He was difficult and after a while, people stopped caring and they disappeared. “I know I let you down, Will. I’m sorry about that.”

Will sighed. “You lost your head over a girl and now you’re going to do the right thing. I knew you two were combustible the minute you got in the same room together. I thought she would be good for you and vice versa.”

What had he been thinking? “How am I good for her?”

“You push her. Laurel sometimes accepts her place far too easily. Did you know she didn’t even negotiate her salary at the new place? I have a friend who works there and I had him look into it. She simply accepted the offer and never thought about requesting more. Without you, she never would have gone back to school. She wouldn’t have become a paralegal. She stays an office manager, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but Laurel needs more.”

“She’s too smart to get stuck. She should go to law school. She would enjoy it. She needs a job where pay doesn’t matter, so get off her back about this one. This type of work is exactly where she should be. Helping people. That’s what makes Laurel tick.”

“Yes, and you saw that and you made it possible for her to do that, and in a safe environment, and you made sure she didn’t lack for money. So get over your damage, as Kai would say. You’re good for her.”

He leaned against the wall, studying Will. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be. “Kai would never say that. He would sound like a massive intellectual douchebag. ‘Mitchell, your problems stem from a childhood abandonment by your father and verbal abuse and neglect from your maternal influences.’”

Will made a vomiting sound. “I love the dude, but I want to strangle him when he gets going about childhood issues. Doesn’t he know manly men don’t talk about that shit? We beat each other up and then get a beer. You want a beer, man?”

At least he hadn’t lost his best friend. “I would love one, but I think I need to talk to your sister.”

“The good news is she came in an ambulance so she doesn’t have a car. I’ll do you a solid and refuse to give her a ride back. If she gives you any trouble, just pick her up and move her.”

He went a little shaky at the thought. “I can’t do that. She’s pregnant.”

Will shook his head. “No. Don’t even think that way. She’s here today because she didn’t eat breakfast and got woozy. She’s not a delicate flower. The baby is seriously tiny. So don’t let her fool you into thinking she’s fragile. Laurel’s strong. She’ll be fine and the two of you have a lot to talk about. Don’t let her shut you out.”