CALLIE (The Naughty Ones Book 1) (28 page)

I see him stiffen before he looks up, his eyes nailing me to the spot. He’s pissed, angrier than I think is possible for another human being to be, and it makes me pause, regretting telling him my plans at all.

“You will never take my children from me. Never. As far as games? Who’s playing games, Shaw? I knew from that very first day that you were a liar. I should have trusted my instincts instead of allowing myself to see only what I wanted. And now…what could you possibly get from telling me that Robert pushed you?”

He sounds so bewildered that I have the urge to apologize and assure him that…what? Either I
am
right, which is physically impossible, since his brother is stone cold dead and in the ground, or he’s engaged to a woman who is losing her marbles.

There’s no comfort in any of those things. Nothing I say will help me here, not with him.

“Leave me alone. Just go to work and leave me alone.”

I’m no quitter, not since the summer Gloria had sold the goldfish I’d bought with money I’d earned waiting tables for the two bucks she was short on another bottle.

I’d worked even harder and bought another one, this time hiding the poor thing in the shed out back. Too bad it had been ice cold and no environment for a fragile animal. I’d had to flush it a day later, but it had been a victory for me.

Now, I don’t stop until I get what I want. At least I never did before. Now I’m too tired to actually care.

“So that you can ring your brother and plot some more? You want to take my daughter and my unborn child from me, Shaw? Is that what you’ve planned this whole time? Get as much on me as you can so I’ll do or pay whatever your greedy little arse wants?”

He’s getting more furious, and I realize that I don’t want or need this around my girl. I see she’s finished and drooping, so I lay her down gently with a kiss before stalking back to the room, Cameron hot on my heels.

“Look,” I say, holding my hand up not only to shut him up but also to halt his progression and keep some distance between us. “I don’t know what our relationship was before, and right now, I don’t think I care. All I know is that I got out of the hospital and you fed me so full of bullshit that it’s a miracle I’m not fertilizing half the freaking island! You’re tired of pretending now? Fine. Let’s be real. I’m miserable here. I don’t know anyone because I can’t remember them and I am terrified that—”

I stop and shake my head. I’ve been vacillating, but I know that what I saw was real. I won’t try and convince myself otherwise just to make him feel better, and I sure as hell won’t keep driving myself nuts.

I saw that man. I know that he was there. I just have to prove it. I can’t do that if he’s on me twenty-four seven so I do something I haven’t done in a long time, not since I left Gloria. I lie.

“Let’s just call this what it is. I got pregnant and you did the right thing. Great. Thanks. You deserve a badge. I, however, am not accustomed to walking around wearing a hairshirt. I’ll stay.” I lie. “We can just be two ships passing in the night. That means you stay on your side of the bed and stop groping me, and I won’t have to shut my mouth in the morning when you blame me.”

His jaw drops open at that, and I give a mental high-five.

“I’ll be sleeping in Angel’s room from now on, and I’d appreciate it if we could talk later about some of the stuff I don’t remember. Yeah, I know you don’t believe me about the amnesia, and now what? I don’t care. You can answer my questions, or I’ll ask Margery or Victor. End of story.”

Because I need to know what the hell is going on before I can start piecing shit together. It’s that or I’ll be committed sooner or later, and I won’t give this idiot the satisfaction.

Cam

Sleeping beside Shaw when I can’t touch her is the worst feeling in the world, a torture that I didn’t think could be trumped until she left my bed and started bunking with the baby.

Now I know what real pain is, and I don’t fucking appreciate it. I haven’t slept in three days, and I’ve tossed and turned all through last night, thinking things over.

I’m not hotheaded, never have been, so the fact that I went so crazy…unthinkable. I blamed her, part of me still does, and yet, no matter how much I despise her lies, I want her all the more.

It turns me on to no end that my baby is inside her, and I find myself watching her, unconsciously reaching for her at all hours, having to stop myself from contact.

Not because of me. No, now that I’ve calmed down, I’ve gone out of my way to be softer, maybe try to lure her back, but the woman shoots me glares so hot I feel myself sweating.

Okay, so maybe she was partially right about me getting up to feed Angelica. I enjoy spending time with my daughter, and part of it
had
been not wanting to awaken a clearly exhausted Shaw.

But then I’d still been so angry that part of me had reveled in it. See, I can do everything you can, she doesn’t need you. And things had snowballed from there. Now she acts as if I’m trying to steal the child from her.

I should probably apologize, or at the very least explain some of these feelings to her, but every time I even contemplate it, she gives me that same look, that cross between distaste and betrayal, and I feel myself pull back a little more.

If this continues, we’ll be so far apart that I will never find my way back to her, the woman who I will make my wife any day now.

“Tell me again why I’m sitting in a gentleman’s club at ten on a Friday, looking at your morose face, when I could be balls deep in my woman right now?” Kent mutters, signaling for another drink.

When the waiter comes round, I order myself a bottle and start getting serious while we wait for the others to arrive.

Dougal and Griff are due in a minute, and I’m bloody itching for them to get here so I can get this all out. I only have it in me to say it once so I’m not saying a bloody thing as much as Kent wants.

“Cam.”

“Shut your whining gob and wait, will ya? Surely you can go without your girl for a bloody hour without your dick falling off?!”

Maybe I’m bitter and frustrated that he’s getting everything he wants while I’m forced to struggle for happiness at every turn. Doesn’t much matter that it’s through my own doing that I’m at odds with my woman, just irks me to see him so at peace while I’m forced to jack off in an empty bed every night.

“Ho lads! What brings two of Britain’s most pussy-whipped blokes to our fine establishment late on a Friday night?” Dougal asks, grinning as if he’s a bloody comic.

“Shut it, you toff. Cam needs help. Or so he bloody says.” Kent gripes, taking another swallow of brandy. “He wouldn’t say a bloody thing until you all got here so I’ve had his sterling company all to myself about a solid bleeding hour now. Thanks much.”

I roll him a look before signaling for drinks for the blokes.

“You still chewing yourself about who pushed our lass then?” Dougal groans. “Told ya he wouldn’t quit till he knows, Griff. Bloody bulldog this one.”

“Yeah, but I can’t figure it. Fanny didn’t do it since this arse finally confessed to being tongue deep in her at the time. Letitia, well, I had her tied up at that stage, literally.” Griffin grins, licking his lips with a leer. “I left her for a few minutes to get the hunt done, and when I came back, she was still there. I checked everything again, and I’m pretty certain it wasn’t her. That leaves that toff, and since he was with a partner, we’re shit out of suspects.”

“Well, hold on! Why didn’t you rule Lettie out from the start?” Kent demands, scowling darkly.

Griff colors and coughs before giving us all a shit eating grin.

“Didn’t want to confess to setting up some video. Looked over it all, and I can guarantee it wasn’t her.”

“So that leaves us where?” I demand, feeling a cold slice of foreboding pierce my gut.

We’ve been through it all. Griff, me, and the blokes, and my security. Short of one of the females, we have no other suspects, almost as if she was pushed by a ghost.

Short of suspecting Shaw herself—I’ve ruled that out thank you very fucking much! That female would die before hurting Angelica, and I know it so…

“Fuuuck.”

“Sorry, mate. We tried, but it’s as if a bloody—”

“Ghost pushed her?” I finish, shoving a hand through my already mussed hair.

I can’t bloody believe I’m even considering this, but the doubts that have been plaguing me of late have only multiplied, made that much worse by the fact that I’d caught Shaw reading a massive stack of baby literature that I know for a bloody certainty she’d read not months ago while she cuddled against me in bed.

I can’t deny it any longer. The woman isn’t playing a part; she’s truly been floating around, muddling her way through things, like which car is hers and where exactly she put her diary.

Fuck.

“Well, yeah.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of lads. She woke up one afternoon a week ago, hysterical and bloody sick. She was crying so hard I couldn’t make out half of what she was saying. But one thing was clear.”

They share a look, obviously picking up on my tone before zeroing in on me.

“She still hasn’t regained her memory, but she says she saw who pushed her and—”

“Well, who was it then?! If I get my hands on that fuck and—”

“She said it was Robert.”

Dead silence. The kind that makes my skin crawl as they sit back, their mouths hanging as if they can’t quite believe what they’re hearing.

“You’re having us on, mate.”

“No. I bloody wish I were, Dougal lad, but she was bloody insistent about that. I caught her looking at albums with Mum, and I swear she turned white as a sheet when she saw his picture. I can’t…she’s pregnant…I can’t have her afraid.”

The news sets off a round of congratulations and back slapping that I have to admit makes me swell with pride before they get serious again, their eyes going stony.

“You believe her?” Kent asks reflectively.

“I didn’t. I went off on her like a madman. Bloody treated her like shit for days, to the point she’s sleeping in Angelica’s nursery, but she’s not budging. I don’t know what to think. Maybe we’re looking for a man who fits Rob’s description.”

“Not many men who look like Rob though.” Griff points out, signaling for a refill. “One of the best looking blokes I ever laid eyes on, and that’s saying a lot with what I get to see in the mirror every morning.”

“Vain bastard,” Dougal mutters, just stopping short from flicking at the scar at the right corner of his lips. “Real men have scars.”

“Oy, I have scars. On my back. The ladies really like me.” He volleys back with a wiggle of his brows.

“Shut up, the both of you. We have better things to discuss,” Kent says with a growl, shooting them both a glare. “Be serious. We just learned that whoever pushed Ducky looks like Rob.”

“Or bloody well
is
him,” Griff mutters, drinking deeply. “My money’s on our girl. She says she saw Rob, then she bloody well saw him.”

His utter faith in her shames me, deeply, and I sigh, closing my eyes in true pain. I’m a fucking idiot! I verbally bullied the woman I lo—

Shit. Fuck and bloody damn!

“Oh Goood!”

They’re all grinning like loons when I finally open my eyes in defeat and not a little amount of dread. How the hell am I, the biggest idiot in the world, going to fix my monumental fuck up when my woman will only deign to look at me when she’s glaring or pretending I’m not that crud she’s trying to scrape off from under her shoe?

Bleeding fuck.

“Aaah, and he finally succumbs. Took you long enough, considering. Want to tell us the whole story so we can piece this all together?” Kent asks, smirking when I slump and order another bottle.

“I met Shaw when I flew to the U.S.—”

“Yeah, yeah, skip the bloody lust at first sight shit—”

“No, Doug, I flew there after the poor woman had been ringing us non-stop, searching for Rob.”

“Rob?”

“Yeah Rob. Look, what I tell you all now stays between us. Yes?”

“Yeah, man. Mum’s the word.”

“Course.”

“Pain of death and all that.”

I breathe deep and just say it even though it kills me to let that fucker have any claim over my daughter.

“Shaw met Rob one night and…he started dating her. Yeah, I know, completely new for the wanker, but true all the same. So she ends up sleeping with him and true to form—”

“Fucking dick up, he pulled a runner, leaving her holding the bag.” Griff growls, giving me the distinct impression that he had about as much time for Rob as I did, which was basically none, truth be told.

“Yeah. She called, was desperate really since she lost her job after upchucking all over an exhibit. Not only was she bloody living in a shelter, she was really sick those first few months, and I swear to God I thought she was dying the first time I saw her.”

“Some poor women are that way when pregnant. Hormones or some shite, yeah?”

We all give Dougal a ‘What the fuck?’ look but he just shrugs and waves to urge me on.

“I was not very nice to her at the beginning.”

“Big surprise there, arsehole.”

I throw Griff a glare before continuing, my drink the lifeline I need right now.

“But I couldn’t…fuck, I couldn’t resist her. That woman is one beautiful creature, irresistible really. I took what I wanted, all the while telling myself that it was okay because she was using me as much as I was using her.”

Stupid. I should have known that she is not capable of it. Any woman who would subject herself to my brand of “kindness”—and still tell her brother that I’m nice is a freaking angel.

“So let me get this straight. Your brother impregnated her, left her, and then you decided to go and get her. Not only was the poor girl sick and homeless, but you gave her your red carpet roll out. And she’s still here? I knew she was a fucking saint, and now you’ve just proved it.” Griffin growls, giving me a nasty look.

“Now, now lads,” Kent mutters, looking intrigued. “How did the whole engagement thing come about, especially if Angelica is Rob’s—?”

“She is not his!
My
daughter.”

“Whoa there, papa. Just saying.”