More Than Forever (Providence Series Book 2) (24 page)

Chapter

TWENTY

? 

W
aiting for the asshole
to pick up the phone as it rang in my ear, I thought about my latest plan and grinned at my desk. 

“Yeah.”  

“Hold back.” I had this all planned out perfectly. 

“What?”  

Holding back my temper as much as I could, I repeated it enunciating it precisely.  

“Hold back.” 

“You want me to do nothing?” 

My temper snapped. “Listen, you fucking idiot, yes, I want you to do nothing. I want them to fucking think that it’s all over so that we can catch them with their motherfucking guard down. Do I make my-fucking-self fucking clear?” 

“Yes,” he hissed, fucking me off even more. 

“You will stand back and you will treat me with some
goddamn motherfucking respect
!” I finished it on a roar that hopefully had his fucking ears ringing. 

“Affirmative.” He said and then hung up on me. Before I ended his life, I was going to teach him about respect. 

I needed to take some deep breaths to calm myself down. Most people would want this out of the way quickly, but I wanted to play with them. To torment them and then take them down when they were at their weakest knowing that their last weeks on earth had been full of misery and the loss of the people that they loved the most. Adding in the Townsend’s just made it that bit sweeter. 

On that thought, I needed to give the other asshole a call to clue him in to the new plans. It wouldn’t do for them all to still be on guard because the Townsend’s were still being played with; no, this had to be a mutual attack. The best way to win a war is to catch your opponent off guard. Thank fuck I was patient. 

“Mr. Lewis”
 

I was going to kill that bastard
when this was all over. Being in the Military meant that I had honor, so I would complete the contract that I’d been hired for, rather than just go and end my fucking misery by gutting the fuck like I wanted to. But when it was all over, I was going to take my dullest knife and slowly open him up. 

Sitting back, I looked at the photos of my Red that I had on the table in front of me and instantly calmed down. Now that I was on what could technically be called r and r in this job, I was gonna get to spend more time with her and that suited me just fine.  

Once this was all over, I was going to take her to the house that I had set up for us that no one would ever find, and then I’d go and gut the fuck. 

Looking at my favorite photo of her where she’s standing in her bedroom trying on some shit from her store, I started getting hard like I always did, so I took the photo over to the bed and started stroking myself. Soon she could do it for me. 

Chapter

TWENTY-ONE

One week later….
 

I
sla
 

T
hings had thankfully been quiet
for the last week, but we were still pretty much on house arrest since whoever was responsible was still out there. I was currently sitting on the couch with Cole, watching the grape balanced on my bump waiting for one of the babies to kick it off. We’d been playing this game for the last ten minutes and it was still as funny as it was the first three times. 

“Does it hurt?” Cole asked, tickling Pippa’s stomach as she lay on her back in his arms. Like Ren’s dog, it appears that the little pig had fallen in love with him although, much to the upset of Maya, the pig had stopped humping him. 

“When they kick?”  

When he nodded, eyes still firmly on the grape, I replied, “No, more like a tap. They’re only tiny still, so it’s not too bad.” 

“Do they move a lot?” 

“Yeah, there’s not a lot of space inside for them both, so they tend to squirm and stretch and, obviously, punch and kick.”  

“Do you ever get scared?” His tone had changed to an almost nervous one and it caught my attention because that just wasn’t like Cole. 

“Of losing them or something going wrong?” 

Again he nodded. “All the time. If I don’t feel them move for a while I start to panic. 

It got so bad last week that Luke rang the OBGYN and she said to drink ice water to get them to move and if nothing happened then to go in. My poor babies get a rude awakening now.” I grinned at him and noticed that the smile he was giving me back didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Is this about Ebru?” 

He shrugged and looked back down at the snoring piglet in his arms. Before I could question him further, the door opened and Maya walked in with a big grin on her face. 

“There’s only one inside me!” She fist pumped the air. 

“What did Dr. Conlan say?” I asked referring to the OBGYN that we were now both with. Poor Maya had to wait to see her until everything settled a bit more with all of the drama and had been looking forward to this day. 

“I’m fourteen weeks, oh, and she did a scan.” She pulled the images out of her purse and passed them over to me before sitting down on the chair next to the couch that Cole and I were sitting on.  

I looked down at the image and grinned, it looked like baby Townsend had swallowed a golf ball, but you could see their limbs and nose and lips perfectly. “She’s gonna be beautiful like her mama.” 

“She?” Cole said sounding like I’d lost my mind. “No, it’s a he. Ren and I already decided.” 

We both looked at him and just stared in silence. What could you say to that?  

“What? It’s true!” He said scowling at both of us.  

Shaking my head in resignation, because when he got like this it was impossible to change his mind, I passed over the pictures to him. “Here you go, Uncle Cole.” 

He took them from me and then froze when he looked at them. Maya and I watched as he traced over the baby with his finger and then swallowed audibly. “He’s perfect,” he whispered. 

Maya and I looked at each other wondering what the hell was going on with the lovable clown when a majorly loud snore from such a small pig broke the quiet. 

“Jesus,” Maya said shaking her head. “She sounds just like her daddy.” 

“Speaking of which,” Cole said, putting the pictures carefully on the table in front of us. “How has he taken the news of his impending ‘real fatherhood’?” 

“First he was excited, then he was scared, then he was in shock, then he was sick…it’s a work in progress,” Maya shrugged. “Today, though, he stood staring at the screen and almost broke my hand. The moment she said there was just one in there and it came into view, he passed out.” 

Cole and I burst out laughing and I had to reach quickly for the grape that was about to roll off my bump. “Why was he so worried it was more than one? Do twins run in your family?” I asked before I popped the grape in my mouth getting a look of disgust from Cole. “What? It’s my belly and I know it’s clean. Jeez!”  

“I blame Amy. She keeps saying that it’s triplets and calling up telling him to practice juggling dolls so that he can get around with them, seeing as how he only has two arms and all.”  I think the look of horror on our faces at the thought of someone juggling triplets just so that they could walk around said it all because she started laughing that hard her face went red. “I know right? Ren says that if I let her babysit he’ll sell Pippa to a Meat of the Month Club.” 

I looked down at the snoring piglet in Cole’s arms at the same time that he did and then back up at Maya who’d stopped laughing and was grinning. “Relax, he loves her as much as I do. You should hear him when he thinks no one’s around. ‘Who’s giving Daddy nuffles? Daddy loves nuffles!’” Her imitation of Ren had Cole and I cracking up again waking up the pig in question, who made angry honky noises at us. 

Getting down on the floor with her, Cole picked up the toys that he’d brought with him and started playing with her. “You’ll make a good Daddy one day,” Maya said smiling widely at him. The sad smile that he gave her back wiped the grin off her face.  

I could tell she wanted to quiz him on what was wrong, but it was obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it if our chat earlier was anything to go on, so I jumped in before she could. “Speaking of Amy, how’s she doing?” 

Maya looked up at me and I shook my head slightly looking out the corner of my eye at Cole. “She’s good,” she replied, looking at Cole again. “I think something happened with Coleman while she was here, though.” 

Cole snapped out of his funk immediately. “Is that a fact?” he asked with an evil grin on his face. He and Amy had a love hate relationship in that he loved to wind her up and she hated him. He also had some sort of bromance hero worshipping thing going on with Coleman and had even grown a short beard just like him. The first time Brett had come back from Dallas and Coleman had seen the beard, he’d just shaken his head and muttered ‘fool’ under his breath and walked back outside again with Cole hot on his heels. Coleman had actually shaved the next morning, but Cole was keeping his because he said Coleman would definitely be bringing the sexy back. 

“Cole, no.” Maya said shaking her head. “Not on this.” 

“But why?”
Did he really just whine
?  

“I don’t know what’s happened to Amy, but she avoids relationships.” Maya leaned forward and reached for the piglet that was now running around the bottom of her chair in circles. When she was caught she let out a squeal and then did her honking noise again when she saw her Momma’s face and started straining to get to her. Clever little thing! “She’s scared and I’m hoping that Coleman can fix it because any guy would be lucky to have her,” she finished in a whisper, letting Pippa nuzzle in her neck while she scratched her back gently. 

“She hasn’t told you something happened?” Cole asked as he got off the floor, dusted off the back of his jeans, and then sat back down beside me. 

“No, but she changed about four years ago and went from Miss Monogamous to…” I could see that she was trying to think of a good analogy, but hey, the baby brain bested us all at some point.