The Billionaire's Secret Kink Box Set: Knox: Secret Alpha Billionaire Romance Bundle (Rosesson Brothers Book 1) (39 page)

Knox sat up on one elbow and stared at her. "What? What's wrong?"

Mica buried her face in her hands, not wanting to face it.

Knox reached for her wrist immediately, concern lining his voice as he tried to pull her hand away. "Mica, what? Tell me?"

Mica pulled her hand back to her face, then peeked out at him between her fingers. "Knox, I'm so sorry. I—I should have told you. Remember when we first had sex without a condom and I told you it wasn't the right time for me to get pregnant?"

Knox nodded.

"Well now is the right time. We should have started using protection a few days ago, maybe longer."

Mica watched him closely, not knowing what to expect, certainly not foreseeing the smile that spread over his face.

"Are you telling me I might have gotten you pregnant?" he breathed, awe in his voice.

Mica dropped her hands. "Yeah, I guess I am."

Knox pulled her into a bone-crushing hug. "I would love that."

Mica didn't know how to reply to that. She let him hug her tightly, her mind spinning with thoughts of pregnancy, babies, and Knox as a willing father.

Knox ran a gentle hand through her hair. "You wouldn't be quite as happy, I take it."

Mica shook her head. "I don't know. That's not the kind of thing I think about. And what about Dick Bailey? I would hate to be pregnant or have a baby with him still out there somewhere."

Knox's face darkened immediately and he lay stock-still, his hand frozen in place in her hair. Mica's heart broke to be the one who reminded him of such a somber fact, but behind that emotion, her mind faltered in disbelief of how happy he'd been for a moment. He was ready for babies? With her?

A sudden, deep longing made her eyes fill with uncertain tears as she contemplated it. Knox would be the most wonderful father on the planet, she was sure of it, but what kind of a mother would she be? She didn't know. Plus, their relationship was so fresh and new and exploratory. She didn't want to ruin anything.

Knox pulled his hand away from her and swung his legs over the bed, his face set in a hard mask, his thoughts obviously on Bailey. Mica fell back to the pillow and watched him get up and get dressed, her mind spinning.

They made it through the day with no more talk of babies. Knox delegated a large office just for her, seeming to think she could go with him to work every day and do her business there. Mica knew she could, for a while, but not forever.

The first thing Mica did in the privacy of her office was call her doctor in Seattle for a local recommendation and make an appointment for the following day. Birth control weighed heavily on her mind, and she prayed hourly that she wasn't already pregnant.

As the week unfolded, Mica and Knox developed a comfortable rhythm of work and home routine. They began to go out, first only to Mica's home for clothes for her, but then out to dinner and even to the movies. Knox invited his brothers at first, but as the weeks wore on with no sighting of Bailey, they became more comfortable and went out on their own, although Knox always carried a few concealed weapons and never let Mica so much as go to the bathroom by herself.

Mica's period came, putting her fears and Knox's hopes of a baby to rest. Mica quietly started the birth control she had gotten, leaving the pills out in the bathroom so Knox knew, but never coming out and mentioning the subject. It seemed easier that way, at least until they had some closure on the subject of Dick Bailey.

Mica realized just how close Knox and his brothers still were when they began to all visit Knox's mother together in a kind of caravan. They would meet for breakfast at a donut place on Sunday, then drive out together, talk for hours, laughing and ribbing each other, talking to their mom, and even teasing Mica. Bronx seemed to have spent the last month alone thinking up different jokes about her eyes.

Knox had decided to forgive his mom if any of what she had said had not been exactly true, and had not talked to her about Amelia Mae since, extracting a promise from Daxton that when he thought the time was right, Daxton would be the one to ask if Cordelia wanted them to look for Amelia Mae. Knox thought he was too close to the answer he wanted, and if he asked, he might influence Cordelia.

The brothers would spend all morning together, then go off to their own plans in the afternoon, or sometimes Knox would have them over to the house. Mica met Phoenix on the last Sunday before he went back to Afghanistan. He struck her as the most intense of all the brothers, a Navy Seal by trade but a fighter by choice. He kept her enthralled and a little scared with stories of street brawling for money before his father finally did his best to force him into the military, offering him a way of life where fighting wouldn't land him in jail. He told half his stories in British, Australian, or German accents, making her wonder where and how he'd learned them, but she was so fascinated with listening to him, she forgot to ask. When she asked Knox later he shrugged and said their grandparents were British immigrants, their nanny had spoken German, and he wasn't sure about the Australian.

Life settled into a familiar and sweet rhythm, where Mica and Knox grew closer every day and explored each other every night. Until finally she had to bring it up.

"Knox, I have to go to Seattle," she told him one morning during breakfast.

Knox closed the laptop he'd been reading emails on and turned to face her. "For how long?"

"I don't know. That's where my work is. I never expected to be here in San Francisco forever." Mica winced, wondering what the conversation would mean to their relationship.

"I'll go with you."

Mica smiled. She would love that. But they would run into the same problem there, she knew. "Your business is here."

"So move your business to San Francisco, can't you do that? You have an office here already."

Mica thought of the tiny room they rented so they had a place to prepare for runway shows in the city a few times a year. She sighed. "I guess I could do whatever I want, it's my company, but would it be a smart business decision? No. I would be doing it strictly for personal reasons. Our home is in Seattle, all the employees live there. I couldn't ask them to move."

Knox pushed his food back and rubbed his chin. "What if I come with you for two weeks, and then we re-discuss it. Is there a place in your office where I could set up shop?"

Mica smiled and nodded. It sounded like a perfect compromise for now. That meant she could show Knox her city, her home, her business, and she wouldn't have to think about the long term for two more weeks. Thoughts of Dick Bailey danced in and out of her mind. She wished she knew what had happened to him. Knox and Daxton had sent investigators to comb through the names and places that Paul Banning had given them and turned up nothing. The trail stopped cold two years ago, the last time anyone in Oregon remembered seeing him. Knox now had investigators combing through Seattle asking questions about him, but it was a big city, and the only lead they had was the hotel he had been staying at when he threatened Mica. So far, no one from the area remembered him.

Mica clapped her hands together in excitement and clasped them in front of her. "We can stay at my house! Can we drive? Can we bring the dogs?"

They hadn't taken Lulu or Tiny back to Knox's dad's house, and Knox's dad hadn't asked for them, possibly as a kind of peace offering. Knox hadn't talked to his dad since that day, and seemed content to let the subject of the lost baby age for now. Amelia Mae would be twenty years old that spring, and the brothers sometimes wondered about her, but seemed to be waiting for Knox to take the lead on looking for her or not.

Knox caught her hands and pulled her to him. "Of course we can bring the dogs. But we can't go until Saturday. We have dinner with my brother on Friday, remember?"

Mica thought back. She did remember. The new brother. The biker from the end of the driveway. That was ok, she could wait till Saturday. She kissed Knox on his nose and pulled out of his grip, then ran to find her phone to text Justin.

She couldn't wait to introduce Knox to her world.

If only she could do so without the lingering fears of Dick Bailey out there somewhere, waiting for them to let down their guard.

Knox

On the drive to Mica's house in Seattle, the sky overcast, the weather getting colder the farther north they went, Knox contemplated what he had learned about his half-brother the night before at dinner. Thomas Covina was twenty-four, with a hard outlook on life, and a tough nickname. Talon. His mother had been just as rough on he and his two brothers as Knox's dad had been on him. She'd ended up kicking Talon out of the house at sixteen. He'd moved in with the son of the president of a local motorcycle club, the only person who would take him in, dropped out of high school, then grown up the rest of the way under the tutelage of those coarse men, eventually becoming part of the club himself. Talon's two brothers were much younger than him, one seventeen and the other sixteen, and all of them were proven to be fathered by Felix Rosesson. Their mother had kicked the other two boys out of her house recently, and Talon had taken them both in.

Knox wanted to do something for Talon and his brothers, but didn't know what would be appropriate. What he really wanted to do was try to talk his father into giving them support that they had always deserved from him, but never gotten. But he didn't think he could face his father with this new evidence of what an absolute dick the man was, without wanting to punch his face again. A talk with the old man would have to wait. He could give Talon money himself and Talon could decide what to do with it. The youngest brother apparently wanted badly to go to Science camp, but the cost was certainly out of Talon's current reach.

Knox contemplated giving him a million dollars, and wondered what something like that would do to a man like Talon. He hadn't learned as much about him at dinner as he would have liked. Talon didn't like to talk about himself. But the Rosesson money should belong to him as much as it did any of the brothers. That was Knox's firm opinion.

"Right here, turn here," Mica said, and Knox pulled into the driveway she indicated, pulling his thoughts back to the moment. His eyes took in her house, her yard, everything he could see with intense curiosity, trying to learn more about this incredible woman in his life. Mica directed him into the garage where he parked the car and got out, letting the dogs out to run into the yard.

Mica stayed in the seat, texting someone, like she had been for the last thirty minutes of the drive. Knox figured it was Justin. It was always Justin. He found himself thinking how glad he was that Justin was gay.

"Guess what!" Mica gushed as she popped out of the passenger seat, looking around at her house, a large smile on her face.

Knox walked out of the garage towards the dogs who were smelling everything in the yard. He stopped at the tailgate of the truck to wait for Mica. "What?"

Mica ran up and kissed him on the cheek. "Ruth is getting a lifetime achievement award from the American Fashion Institute. She's flying in from India, and the date is next Friday, so we can go!"

Mica kissed him hard and ran towards the front door.

"Wait," Knox called, wanting to be the first one in the house, not having even a moment to examine his thoughts about heading to such a big event, when surely Dick Bailey would know about it if he was out there, watching them.

***

Knox

Their time in Seattle passed quickly, Mica taking Knox out every night to show him her favorite places in the world. No sign of Dick Bailey seemed to be good news, although as the date of the award for Ruth grew closer, Knox's anxiety level ratcheted up a little each day. He couldn't help feeling like they were heading towards some final, fatal showdown that would leave him worse off than he'd ever been in his life. He used all the tricks he'd ever learned to keep his mind free and clear so he could enjoy the time he was having with Mica, but they didn't always work. He knew Bailey wasn't dead. He hadn't sustained any injury that would have killed him. And he knew Bailey wouldn't give up. If there was one thing he had learned about the man over the last month of investigations, it was how shrewd and bulldog-like Bailey was. Not one to live and let live.

Knox went to work with Mica every day, and this time it was his turn to run his business from long distance. He spent most of his time applying for permits to carry his guns into the downtown building the awards ceremony would be at. He had approached the manager of the venue, offering his company to provide free, backup security for the evening, but his offer had been politely declined. Knox looked for ways around it, and finally decided on flying Daxton and Bronx and Rock in for the night. He tried to tell himself he was just being overcautious. If Bailey were going to try something, it would be smarter for him to do it somewhere not so crowded, like at Mica's office, or even her home, or even on the road on the way to work or home from work. But he couldn't shake the feeling that the event would be where they met up with Bailey again. He wanted to be ready.

He met Justin, and was happy to find he liked the man, although he didn't quite believe Justin was actually gay for the first several days.

"He's a mimic, silly," Mica told him, after he asked her about it.