More Than Forever (Providence Series Book 2) (35 page)

Chapter

TWENTY-EIGHT

I
sla
 

I
t was the Wednesday
following Ren and Maya’s wedding and we were all sitting in Colette and Jack’s living room waiting for them to come back from their sonogram appointment. 

“If they have a boy, they’re naming it Cole,” Cole said, eating a piece of red velvet cake left over from the wedding. 

“Bullshit!” Brett scoffed. He was working from Piersville now, but had to keep flying back to Dallas for meetings. Jack started arguing with Cole about how his grandson would be taking his name and Hurst joined in while Colette and Linda just looked at each other and then started discussing baby stuff.  

Coleman walked into the living room and sat down looking serious, then again that was no change from his usual expression, but this seemed more than usual. He’d told us after Ren and Maya’s wedding that although we hadn’t had any further incidents, it was too early to relax security, which we could all understand because we still didn’t know who the man in the security footage that we think bailed Jodie and Calista out was. Ren had taken security with him on his short pre-honeymoon with Maya and I didn’t know what Luke had organized for us, but I knew we would have some with us, too. Because I was so far into the pregnancy and it was twins, Dr. Conlan had advised that we didn’t go too far on an airplane because twin pregnancies can come much earlier than a normal pregnancy, so we weren't going to go overseas for our honeymoon. To be honest, I quite liked the idea that Ren had come up with for him and Maya, but Luke said he had something organized already. I didn’t trust that we would be safe until we found out who was responsible for what was going on. We’d had bombs, shootings, and people had been injured; how do you switch off from that overnight? 

Looking back up at Coleman, I saw him doing the exact same thing Brett was - staring at his phone and frowning. 

“Has something happened?” They looked up at me at the same time and it was quite intimidating to be on the end of both frowns. 

“No, just personal shit.” Brett said as he put his phone back in his pocket and Coleman nodded in agreement but said nothing. I wonder if it was Amy? 

Luke walked in from the kitchen with his own slice of cake and plonked himself down beside me just as we heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. You’d think we’d be frantically planning our own wedding, but Christie and Gram had pretty much done it all for me because with the twins they didn’t want me getting stressed. I was actually relieved about it because when I’d first seen the plans, I had become stressed like every bride, but after the shooting at the bridal shop, I struggled to go out to appointments for the wedding. I was just so damn scared that it would happen again or something would happen to the babies, so Christie and Gram taking that over was a huge relief. 

I was snapped out of my thoughts by the door opening and Ren and Maya walking in with George and Christie. The parents to be looked like they were floating on cloud nine with Ren wearing the biggest grin I’d ever seen on his face and Maya smiling with flushed cheeks. 

“Well, don’t keep us in suspense. It’s a Cole isn’t it?” We all turned to glare at the fool who was talking with a huge chunk of cake in his cheek. 

“We’re just gonna get Maya’s parents on FaceTime and then we’ll tell you,” Ren replied while Maya tapped on her screen. “And for the last fucking time, no, the baby isn’t going to be called Cole.” 

Cole frowned and then turned toward Luke and I, but Luke was ready and waiting. 

“Don’t look at us, we already have names picked out. We chose them in Bali.” 

“Hey Momma, are you and Daddy ready?” Maya said, getting all of our attention back on her. Thankfully her parents had decided to go to Washington to see some friends before flying back to Australia, so it wasn’t some ungodly hour for them. 

She passed the phone to Luke to hold for her and went to stand next to her husband. “It’s a boy!” Ren crowed holding his fist up in the air.  

“Thank Jesus, it’s a boy, Vivienne,” Maya’s dad said from the phone. I guess after having two daughters, a boy would be a welcome relief. Of course we were all asking questions at once about names, which they hadn’t chosen yet, and other things like that and it took a while for it to settle down. 

“So…which one of you is using Cole as the baby’s middle name. I’ll go get the straws to make it a fair draw.” 

L
uke
 

Isla was walking toward
me in her dress looking like a fairytale. I’d just been thinking that Ren had had it easy having his wedding in a marquee, because standing at the end of the aisle in Piersville’s church with all of the pews filled with people staring at me had me breaking out in a sweat. All of the what ifs had been running through my head, even though I knew that Isla would never ditch me at the altar, when Ave Maria had begun playing and I saw the bridesmaids, with Tony as a bridesman again, walking toward me. There had been a slight delay and then Isla had appeared on her father’s arm, and it took everything I had not to run and get her and then run back to the Pastor currently standing behind me. Initially Isla had wanted her Gram to walk her, but we’d spoken about it the weekend before and she’d decided that she would ask her Dad, who had been shocked but happy about it. I wasn’t sure that the bastard deserved it, but it was up to Isla.  

He hadn’t taken the death of Jodie and Calista badly, and when it had been confirmed that it hadn’t been suicide, he said that they had made a lot of enemies so it stood to reason that one of them would have snapped. The depth of their vileness had come out after the breakup of the marriage and some of them were influential men, so there were a lot of suspects which made their actions while they were alive even worse. Marriages were ending and people were hurt, children now had split families, and sure it wasn’t just Calista and Jodie’s faults, but from the journals that were found in their room, they had meticulously planned who they were going to get control over and how. Add what they had done to Isla onto it all and I couldn’t blame Geoffrey for not being upset over the deaths. 

Now, though, her father looked like the happiest man alive walking her down the aisle as my heart thumped hard in my chest. When she reached me and her Dad passed her over to me, we grinned at each other and I willed the Pastor to talk fast, in case she changed her mind. I knew she wouldn’t, but what if someone objected or something went wrong?  

Although Isla had chosen a church wedding, we’d cut down the service slightly as she was so heavily pregnant and we didn’t think that bits of it applied to us, so within forty-five minutes, she was yet again Mrs. Isla Montgomery and I was kissing my bride. I’d chosen to give her a thin diamond band to wear in front of her wedding and engagement rings, a promise of eternity together. She’d had my wedding band engraved and as she went to put it on my finger, she showed me the inscription -
More than forever
.  

We just had the reception back at the Townsend’s to get through and then I could take her away on the special mini honeymoon that I had planned. Our real one would happen after we had the babies and things were safer. 

We had just sat down after cutting the cake when all of a sudden, there was a change in the security men that we could see inside the tent. Some of them stood ready, and a couple of the ones outside ran past the tent and toward where Ren’s property was. I made eye contact with Baz who looked tense, but also not majorly concerned and when he met my eyes he shook his head to let me know that it wasn’t that bad that I had to carry out the backup plan that we’d formulated for both Ren and my weddings to get the girls out of there.  

“What’s going on?” Isla sounded scared. 

“Nothing major,
sayang
. It might be an animal tripping one of the sensors.” I knew it wasn’t, but right now I didn’t want her worrying. 

Not long after it, I saw Coleman approach Brett and whisper in his ear and then move onto Ren whose lips thinned as he listened to what Coleman had to say. I was about to get up and walk over to them when Baz appeared beside me and whispered, “We need you to come and ID someone Luke. It’s not urgent, but the sooner we sort this out the better.” 

Standing up, I turned and smiled at Isla. “I’ll be right back, Angel; Baz needs me to look at something.” She looked worried, so I winked and gave her a quick kiss before following Baz out of the tent. 

When we got to the outhouse where the intruder was being held, I didn’t expect to see who was handcuffed to the chair inside. 

“Dick?” Ren and I said at the same time. 

“Says his name is Richard.” Coleman stood glaring at him with his arms crossed over his chest. “Caught him creeping near your house Ren. When he was picked up, he said he was a guest, but his ID doesn’t match anything that we have on our lists or the approved list either.” The approved list was people and workers who were approved to come onto the property without someone calling us to ask us if we agreed to their presence on the land.  

“What did you want,
Dick
?” Ren asked, deliberately stressing the nickname to piss him off. 

“I got lost.” 

“Did he have anything on him?” I asked Coleman. Baz had left Graham in charge of Isla, and at the moment there was only a handful of us in the outhouse, but Coleman had taken center stage and was standing close to Richard while Baz and the other men stood back watching.  One of Coleman’s guys threw a bag at my feet and I picked it up and looked inside to find women’s panties and bras and a couple of items of clothes.  

None of it looked familiar so, I passed it onto Ren. “What the fuck?” He exploded. 

“These are my fucking wife’s!” He took a step toward the asshole in the chair who actually looked afraid now, but Coleman held him back. 

“We knew he was an issue of a different kind from Brett, so when we saw him coming through the trees toward the property we allowed him to continue so that we would have evidence to press charges.” Ren glared at him and if I was honest I would have, too. That asshole had been through their property and had stolen some of my cousin’s things. It even pissed me off!  

“She was mine, you just had to get in there first. It should have been my bed that she was in,” the dick started yelling and bouncing the chair up and down. His words had Ren taking another step towards him, getting held back by Coleman again.  

“Think hard man, you have a pregnant wife that you need to get back to. Right now, he’s fucked, but if you beat the shit out of him, you’ll be in shit, too. Clean remember?” After what had happened with the shooter, we had agreed, from now on that we were going to keep our noses as clean as possible. 

I could see Ren’s jaw working away as he tried to calm down, so leaning around him I met Richard’s eyes. “Right now, the only reason that he isn’t trying to kill you is because he’s being held back. Whatever delusions you have about my cousin, stop now or we’ll make sure that there are so many charges pressed against you, that it takes
years
for you to have a shower where you’re not scared to death of turning your back to the room. Do I make myself clear?” 

“She was mine. She was into me!” The asshole actually believed what he was saying, was he insane? 

“Have you done anything like this to her before?” Baz asked from the sidelines, looking at Dick as if he was a science project. 

“I couldn’t get close enough because of
him
,” he spat in Ren’s direction.  

“He’s followed her a couple of times,” one of Coleman’s men added. Ren didn’t look overly surprised by this so obviously he’d been made aware of it. “But we’ve always managed to intervene before he could get close to her.” 

“Call the police,” Coleman directed and Dick started to panic. 

“You can’t! I’ve done nothing wrong!” 

Coleman lifted his chin at us and Ren and I walked out of the outhouse after giving Richard one last glare. The whole way back to the tent, Ren was silent and I could feel the justified fury coming off of him.