Vengeance Aside (Wanted Men 0.5)(41)



“He does, but I can’t. Well, I could, but…” She shrugged. “I have a clotting disorder that my doctor says contributed to the three miscarriages we’ve suffered. My worry-wart hubby won’t try again because when he asked my doc about possible harm that could come to me, she told him if a clot forms there’s a chance it could travel up to my lungs and cause a pulmonary embolism. He heard that and snipped our chances of getting pregnant again. Didn’t even talk to me about it first. After, he said I should understand, and he tried to turn the tables and all that crap, but still…”

Dale sat there in total shock. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Farah. I had no idea.” What would she do if she couldn’t have the babies she so badly needed in her life?

Gawd. Here she was bitching about not wanting to have Lukas’s child—even though she could already feel the little beauty ghost kicking in her belly, and she’d dreamed about it and had been overjoyed giving birth all by herself and handing the baby to her father; stupid dream had given her a tiny girl with grey eyes and dark curly hair—and Farah wanted Samuel’s but couldn’t have it.

“I feel like such a bitch.” An immature bitch. She didn’t fall apart under pressure. She usually rose to the occasion and tackled her shit without fear.

But she wasn’t without fear this time because there was so much at stake. She was terrified she was doing the one thing she’d promised herself she would never do.

Care about someone other than a child who couldn’t walk away from her.

What if she nurtured these feelings, and Lukas got bored and cheated on her or broke up with her without cheating, she couldn’t imagine what she’d go through before making it out on the other side, an empty, broken person missing…

No. He wasn’t her soulmate. He wasn’t. It didn’t matter that the label had whispered through her dreams all morning, and had been so prevalent in her mind when she’d woken in his arms, feeling like she was home. She would never be so stupid and gullible to believe in that shit.

“So you don’t want kids then?” Farah said, sounding disappointed. “I kind of get that. You’re still young. But maybe—”

“I never said I didn’t want kids,” Dale interrupted, almost growling as the pressure building in her chest got worse.

Her boss’s eyebrow pulled down over one eye. “Then what’s the issue?”

Dale almost laughed. Issue? She wanted to talk issues? How long did she have? “The issue is I don’t know your brother-in-law any better than I know any other mobster!”

“So get to know him. Are you attracted to him?”

Warning! Possible talk of feelings ahead! “What does that have to do with anything?” she demanded as the pressure became almost unbearable.

“It helps to want the man you’re gonna combine DNA with,” Farah patiently explained.

“I know that!”

“Then why’d you ask?”

Boom.

“Because I’m stalling and trying to center on anything but what’s happening to me, Farah!” She jumped up and threw her arm out to point at the window in the downstairs foyer. “It’s almost noon, but instead of going to my dad’s to get my shit out of his house before his wife sees it because she doesn’t want me there the way they want her son there, I’m being held prisoner by a man I want to run and hide from as desperately as I want to stay and cuddle the fuck out of. He’s patient and sexy and nice! A murderer is not supposed to be nice! He has dogs! And they love him! He left me a toothbrush on the side of the sink, Farah! He fed me last night, and even wanted to know how I like my sex!” Her voice broke. “He didn’t get mad at me when I embarrassed him in front of his father. A father he loves like crazy and isn’t afraid to admit it.” She sucked in some air. “He killed a guy for me!” she wailed, throwing her hands up. “And the way he looked at me before he did it? Oh my God. That look did something to me! He’s done something to me! And nothing I say to myself is fixing it! I wasn’t supposed to feel this shit for anyone. I swore to myself I wouldn’t! Especially not after only knowing the fucking guy less than a day. One day, Farah! What will he do to me after a week? A month? If I have to stay with him, he’s going to make me…he’s going to make me…” Farah’s sympathetic expression disappeared when Dale wrapped her arms around her head and tucked her chin to her chest to hide her tears. “I don’t want to do this with anyone. I don’t get over being hurt. It stays with me forever, and I hate it.”

It wasn’t Farah’s arms that came around her in the next second. The scent of mountain streams and pine trees preceded a deep voice speaking quietly in Russian as she was gathered to a hard chest by arms she knew were Lukas’s. She went willingly, unable to fight the warmth. The strength. The fucking comfort she was too stressed to deny herself.

“Wow,” Farah whispered. “I didn’t think this one had it in her to lose it like that. She’s always so together. It’s okay, sweetie.”

Dale wanted to lose it all over again when she felt her boss pat her back. “Come oooon,” she moaned around a sob that got lost in Lukas’s robe, “don’t give me sympathy!” She’d never been more embarrassed in her fucking life.

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