Adored (Masters and Mercenaries #8.5)(18)

“Will, stop it. You are going to break a hand and then where will you be?” The three Daley sisters were standing right outside the door to Laurel’s room. The oldest one, Lila, was staring at both of them with a ferocious frown on her face. “Also, none of this helps Laurel.”

“I don’t care right now,” Will shot back and then returned his attention to Mitch. “You promised me she would be safe with you. You promised you would take care of her.”

Shit. This was about the incident? He hadn’t mentioned that Laurel had been shot at because she’d begged him not to and there hadn’t been anything Will could do. He’d been in Chicago at the time. No wonder the man was pissed. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t expecting it, obviously. It never occurred to me that she would be in that kind of danger. I swear if it had, I would have put a guard in front of that door.”

Will stopped. “What are you talking about? She didn’t need a guard. She needed a f*cking condom, *.”

“Oh, Mitch is talking about when Laurel got shot at two weeks ago,” Lisa supplied helpfully.

“What?” Will turned again, this time sending that glare Laurel’s way.

Condom? Why was Laurel in the hospital? “I’m perfectly clean. I had a damn checkup a few weeks ago. Call Sanctum. My blood tests are clean.”

Laurel looked so young and vulnerable standing there in a hospital gown. It looked like she’d cried off her mascara. His gut clenched. She’d been crying. She clutched at the back of the gown to keep it together. Why was she here? What had happened? In that moment, he no longer cared what she’d said about him. He merely wanted to know she was all right.

“Laurel, I swear I don’t have any kind of STD.” He kept his distance because it looked like he was the bad guy in this scenario. “My blood tests are clean and I’ll be honest, I haven’t had sex with anyone in a good long while. Anyone else, obviously. Baby, if you’re sick, something’s gone wrong, but I swear it’s not me. I would never put you at risk.”

“You don’t have the clap, *. You have working sperm,” Will said between clenched teeth. “Hence the need for a condom.”

The words didn’t compute. He stood there like a complete idiot as everyone stared at him.

His best friend waved a hand in front of his face. Ex-best friend. It looked like that was done. He was good at collecting exes. Ex-wives, ex-friends, ex-lovers who promised there wasn’t a problem…

“She’s on the pill,” he said. That’s what they were talking about, right? Sperm had been mentioned.

Yes, I am fully functional, buddy, and guess what? We flooded her that night. Is it really any wonder we’re here? And you can thank me later.

His dick was still getting him in trouble. Had his dick gotten them all in trouble? Like serious trouble. Like lifetime of being bound together kind of trouble.

Like he couldn’t give up Laurel because he’d gotten her pregnant kind of trouble?

All eyes swung Laurel’s way and she flushed.

“Did you tell him you were on the pill?” Will asked. He had the pissed-off father-figure thing down.

Father. He was going to be a father. Was he going to be a father? It wasn’t like Laurel didn’t have a choice in the matter.

“I never said that,” Laurel replied and Mitch watched as she steeled herself.

“I asked you about it and you said everything was fine.” He’d gone over that night about three hundred times since then.

“It is fine. I’m fine. You don’t have to worry.” Her chin came up in what he liked to think of as her queenly pose. When she looked at him like that he knew he was in for stubbornness. “Thank you for worrying, but I’ll be fine. I’m going to get dressed now. I would appreciate it if the two of you could stop making a scene.”

She turned and walked back into her room. Lisa gave him a grin and a wink before turning and following her sister, but Lila remained even after the door had closed behind the other two.

“Well, this is a mess. Will, you’re not making this better,” Lila said.

“I’m sorry. I lost my head for a minute there,” Will admitted.

“You knew she had a thing for him,” Lila complained.

Will shrugged. “I did. At the time, I didn’t think it would be so bad. I thought Mitch cared about her, too.”

“I do. I care about her.” Laurel was pregnant. She was carrying his very small, probably-no-more-than-a-couple-of-cells child inside her body right that very moment.

He didn’t want kids. He’d never wanted them. It wasn’t that he didn’t like them. He liked his friends’ kids fine, but he would be a shit dad. He hadn’t been close to his own but his mother never let up that he was exactly like the bastard. Unreliable. Selfish.

Two failed marriages had proven her right.

“Then what are you going to do?” Lila asked, though a bit more softly now. “Mr. Bradford, I’ve only met you a couple of times, but I’ve seen the way you look at my sister. Let me see if I can figure out what happened. Laurel is a stubborn girl and she learned early to fight for what she wants. She decided she wanted you and she pushed you to the point that you gave in. You then did something stupid and caused her to run.”

“What did you do that was stupid?” Will asked. “Wait. I want to get back to the shooting thing.”