NFH 03 Checkmate (47 page)

“
Sure thing, Uncle David,”
Darrin said as he and his identical twin, Reese, stepped in front
of the elevator and stood side by side, standing guard and blocking
her view of Connor getting his ass kicked by her
brothers.

“
Shit!” she heard Connor
groan a few seconds later.

“
Dad, please tell them to
stop,” she begged, panicking as she placed her hands on her face,
struggling to keep it together.

“
I’m sorry, Rory, but he has
this one coming.”

“
They’re going to kill him,”
she said, trying to stay calm.

“
Probably,” her father
agreed with a shrug.

“
Dad, please-“

“
Why didn’t you call me when
you were hurt? For that matter, why don’t you call me when you need
help? And why the hell did you just get married without me there to
give you away?”

“
What?” she asked, taken off
guard. “Why would I call you?” she blurted out before she could
stop herself.

“
Because I am your goddamn
father!” he shouted, losing his temper for the first time in her
life. While her father could get pissed, really pissed, he never
lost control, never shouted, never at her.

“
When you’re hurt or need
someone, I should be the first person that you call! Do you have
any idea how fucking scared I was when I found out that you’d been
rushed to the hospital by ambulance? I had to hear it from the
fucking mailman that my daughter was seriously injured because no
one called me!”

“
Dad, I-“

“
Do you have any idea how it
feels to have to sit outside your child’s house, scared to death
that they were in pain or worse that they might not make it through
the night? Do you?” he snapped, looking angrier than she’d ever
seen him before.

“
But, you taught us to be
self-reliant. I didn’t think that-“

“
That’s bullshit your
brothers shoved down your throat! You are my daughter and there
will never be a time when I don’t worry about you or want to take
care of you. You were stubborn and didn’t want to let your brothers
think that you were weak so you tried to act tough. You were my
little girl, my little princess and you used run into my arms
crying my name every day when I got home from work until you turned
five and your brothers decided to treat you like a little brother.
From that moment on, you thought that you had to be as pigheaded as
they were and you stopped being my baby girl,” he said, his voice
softening, his expression turning sad.

“
You are my baby girl, Rory.
I love you more than you will ever know, but you are so damn
pigheaded,” he said with a sigh. “You need to know that you can
always call me,” he said, stepping aside only to pause and shoot a
glare at her. “And the next time that you’re hurt, sick or you need
help, you better call me, because if I have to hear it through the
mailman again, you and I are going to have words, young lady,” he
said, shooting her a wink to soften his words, making her relax as
he stepped back.

“
I will, Dad,” she said,
feeling close to crying. Her daddy loved her and she’d probably be
rubbing it in her brothers’ faces if she wasn’t very much afraid at
the moment that they were killing her husband.

“
Step aside, boys,” her
father said, reaching back and taking her hand into his and leading
her off the elevator. The scene that met her had her heart skipping
a beat and her stomach dropping.

Johnny and Brian held back a struggling and
still weak, Andrew while Craig and Sean held Connor up as Bryce
pulled back his fist and let it go flying, connecting with Connor’s
face and splitting his lip.

“
Stop!” she screamed,
releasing her father’s hand and tried to go help him, but Reese
grabbed her before she could so much as take a step and pulled her
back. She went to elbow him, but the large bastard was fast, too
fast and he had her arms behind her back and restrained before she
could take her next breath with a simple hold, but a damn effective
one.

“
Okay, let’s clear this up,
shall we?” her father said, gesturing for Jacob, who looked like he
wanted to take a swing at Connor, to come forward. He didn’t look
like he was going to listen, but one hard look from her father had
him swallowing hard and stepping forward.

“
Okay, tell her what you
told my boys,” her father said, gesturing for him to get on with
it. She was just thankful that Bryce had stopped punching Connor to
listen.

“
Connor’s plan was to use
you to get your brothers. He was using the relationship to look
good in your brothers’ eyes to win them over and when the project
was finished, he was going to get them to come work for him and run
you out of business,” Jacob said, shooting Connor a murderous
glare, which explained why he’d been acting like such a jerk for
the past couple of months. He’d known about the plan and knowing
Jacob, he wasn’t happy about it, but he’d obviously trusted her to
handle it on her own.

“
Don’t fucking listen to
him, Rory!” Connor yelled, but he was quickly silenced by a punch
to the gut from Bryce.

“
And how exactly did you
find out about that?” Darrin asked.

“
Because I overheard Connor
explain it to Andrew,” Jacob said, gesturing to Andrew who closed
his eyes in resignation and cursed.

“
When?” Reese
demanded.

“
In June I think,” Jacob
said, looking thoughtful, “he was just using her. He wasn’t in love
with her. As long as he didn’t hurt her, I stayed out of it. I
didn’t know that marrying her was part of the plan. I thought he
was just going to screw up and Rory was going to end their
deal.”

“
That’s bullshit!” Andrew
snapped, but thankfully no one hit him, probably because none of
them were mean enough to strike a man recovering from a life
threatening illness.

“
I heard every word!” Jacob
said firmly, crossing his arms over his chest.

“
I love her!” Connor
shouted.

“
Then why are you after her
company?” Jacob demanded.

“
Okay, let’s get this over
with, I have somewhere to be in an hour,” her father said,
gesturing to her brothers to drag a bloody and panting Connor
forward.

“
I’m a little confused about
something,” Johnny said. “If he was trying to get on our good side,
then why didn’t he try sucking up to us?”

“
He only kept telling us to
fuck off,” Sean said, sounding confused.

“
He punched me,” Bryce
bitched.

“
That’s because I didn’t
want any of you!” Connor snapped.

“
What the hell do you mean
that you didn’t want us?” Johnny demanded in outrage.

“
We’re a fucking catch!”
Sean snapped.

“
You’d be lucky to get guys
like us! Lucky!” Bryce said, sounding pissed and
insulted.

“
I don’t want any of you!”
Connor snapped.

“
You bastard!” Johnny gasped
as her brothers glared at him.

“
Rory?” her father said,
drawing her attention, but not enough to look away from Connor who
was looking up at her through one swollen eye.

“
Yes?”

“
Do you love
him?”

“
Yes,” she said softly with
a small nod that had Connor noticeably relaxing.

“
And what are you willing to
do to prove to my daughter and my boys that you’re telling the
truth and that you love her?” her father demanded, watching Connor
intently as he waited.

For a minute, Connor stood there, not saying
anything as dread twisted in her gut. She wanted to tell her father
that he didn’t have to prove anything, but she needed to know that
their deal was truly a thing of the past.

Connor looked up and met her eyes as he
said, “Anything. Everything. She can have my house, my business,
everything that I have. I don’t care about any of it. The only
thing that I want is her.”

In that moment, she knew that their deal
truly was a thing of the past. Connor loved his house and would
never willingly give it up. She'd been expecting a fight over it.
Giving it up wasn't easy for him. It wasn't something that he'd
ever planned on doing, but to prove how much he loved her, he gave
it up, gave up everything for her.

She bit back a smile as she walked over to
him, making a show of thinking it over. “What about the
bathtub?”

“
It’s yours.”

“
Will you stop stealing my
hot chocolate?” she asked, reaching up to cup his slightly bruised
handsome face.

“
No,” he said, turning his
head so that he could press a kiss against her palm. “But I’ll
learn to make it the way that you like it and make it for
you.”

“
Highland Construction is
mine?” she asked, already having decided a month ago to combine the
companies and run it with him.

“
Yes,” he said with
absolutely no hesitation.

“
You’ll work for
me?”

“
Yes.”

“
Fetch my
drinks?”

“
No.”

“
Be at my by beck and call?”
she asked, loving the way his poor abused lips kicked up into a
grin.

“
No.”

She sighed heavily as she said, “You really
suck at interviews.”

“
Do I have the job?” he
asked, giving her that bad boy smile that she loved.

“
I’ll have to think about
it,” she said with a shrug as she turned to walk away.

“
Uh, Rory, what do you want
us to do with him?” Johnny called after her.

“
Give him the official
welcome to the family,” she said, laughing as she walked
away.

“
Rory?” Connor called after
her, sounding uncertain and for good reason. “Rory!”

She paused long enough to look over her
shoulder and wink as she announced smugly, “Checkmate.”

Epilogue

1 Year Later…..

“
Who do you think we should
call?” Rory asked as she snuggled closer to him.

“
Your dad?” Connor
suggested, not sure that calling his father-in-law at two in the
morning to come bail them out of jail was the best idea, but that’s
all he had at the moment.

“
No,” Rory sighed, laying
her arm across his chest as she did her best to get comfortable,
but the bench in the holding cell made that pretty
difficult.

“
Why not?” he asked,
pressing a kiss to the top of her still damp head.

“
Because I’d have to explain
to him why we got arrested,” she said with an adorable little
pout.

Connor chuckled as he wrapped his arm around
her and pulled her closer. “In a couple of hours everyone in town
is going to know what happened.”

“
This town sucks,” she
muttered, making him laugh.

“
You have no one else to
blame but yourself,” he said, wincing when she poked him in the
side, hard.

“
You could have just said
no,” she said, tilting her head back so that she could glare up at
him.

“
True, but you would have
gone for my nipples if I had said no,” he said, laughing when she
poked him again.

“
At least it’s not the worst
thing that we’ve ever done,” she muttered, giving up on trying to
get comfortable on the wooden bench and moved to sit on his
lap.

“
Put some space between you
both, now,” the police officer manning the desk barked at
them.

Connor placed his hand on the large swell of
Rory’s belly as he stared the officer down, “If you want to put
some space between us, let my wife out of here.”

“
I can’t do that and you
know it,” the officer said, not looking too happy about having a
pregnant woman locked up in a cell. Connor wasn’t exactly thrilled
with it either. If his hormonal wife hadn’t reached over while he’d
been driving them home, after making another late night run out for
burgers and shakes, and started rubbing him through his pants, he
would have used better judgment and not turned into their old high
school’s parking lot to help her take care of another
craving.

In his defense, he really hadn’t thought
that anyone would be able to spot his truck from the road, not with
that storm going on and making it difficult to see anything. At
least this time they hadn’t come banging on the window until after
they’d finished and Rory was dressed. He hated anyone else seeing
his gorgeous wife’s body, but it did happen on occasion when things
got out of hand, kind of like tonight.

“
Let’s call my brothers,”
Rory suggested, laying her head on his shoulder.

“
Can’t. They’re refusing to
bail us out for five years, because of what happened last month at
the Halloween Festival.”

“
That wasn’t my
fault!”

“
Shhh, I know, baby,” he
lied. It was completely her fault, but he wasn’t about to point
that out to his hormonal wife. He wasn’t a fucking idiot after
all.

“
Andrew?” she suggested,
sounding hopeful.

“
Nope, he’s down in Boston
for the weekend, helping with the walk to raise money for leukemia
research”