Read Cannon (A Step Brother Romance #3) Online
Authors: Sabrina Paige
Cannon (A Step Brother Romance #3) (27 page)
Addy snores in her sleep – not lightly, either. She's in her third trimester and she sounds like a damn freight train. She's propped up on pillows, several behind her back and one under her knees, like she's sleeping in a recliner, and I reach over and slide my hand over her rapidly-growing belly, trying not to wake her.
I don't sleep any more now than I did before, but it's not because I'm running anymore. In fact, I've stopped running away from everything. When I told Addy I loved her, I meant it. I didn't want to let her go.
We holed up for a week after everything happened. The day after, I thought Addy would be screwed. But her fans loved the song, and the clip of her speech and the song was replayed everywhere. Addy went out swinging, too. She hired a pit-bull of an attorney and a public relations team and she fought like hell when the record label tried to claim that our relationship was a breach of her morality clause. We did the press circuit, interviewing on talk shows, and surprisingly, the public was largely supportive.
It wasn't all rainbows and butterflies. Addy settled with the studio and her contract was terminated. But she didn't wind up owing them anything, and she was free of all of it.
Addy snorts a little, and moves gently, her hand covering mine, and I snuggle in next to her, breathing her in, and closing my eyes. I might not sleep, but I'll lie here contentedly with my future wife and child. I know I have a future with them. And that's enough.
I walk across the white sand, blindingly bright in the sunlight, my hands smoothing the fabric of the white sundress over my increasingly large belly. Hendrix takes my hand, and he has the biggest smile I think I've ever seen.
"You sure you want to do this, sweet cheeks?" he asks.
"Are you sure you want to do this with me?" I ask. "My feet are swollen, and I'm not even walking anymore, I'm waddling everywhere. Like a duck. A big fat giant duck."
Hendrix turns me around, slides his arms around me, across my belly, his face in my neck. "I'm definitely sure," he says. "I've never been more sure of anything in my life. This is what I want. With you, and with our son."
We're having a boy. I'm going to be a mother. And, as of today, here on the beach, a wife. Everything is as it should be. Really, it's better than I could have ever imagined. I was prepared for it to all go badly, the fallout after the awards show.
It wasn't easy, that's for sure. I lost my cushy contract with the record label. And some friends. My mother and Hendrix's father haven't spoken to us. His father never said anything else about the fight they had, though, not to any media outlet. My mother, on the other hand, is supposedly writing a tell-all book. But my sister Grace has been one of my biggest supporters, and we're closer than ever. And I know that our son and Brady will grow up together.
I'm writing songs like crazy now. I started my own label, an indie one, and I'm going to put out a folk album in a couple of weeks. I'm also marrying Hendrix – in approximately five minutes. And we're having a baby.
When the minister says, "You may kiss the bride," Hendrix smiles.
"Hell, yeah," he whispers in my ear. And when he kisses me, it's just like the first time, under the grove. We're sixteen years old again, teenagers with our whole lives ahead of us, and the world stops spinning, and just like that, everything is as it should be.
My life might not be a total fairy tale, the way everyone – including me – thought it would be when I was first discovered. But even if it's not perfect, and Hendrix and I are nowhere close to being fictional royalty, it's our story. We'll live our version of happily ever after.
And that's enough.
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Stepbrother Romance
Inferno Motorcycle Club Series
West Bend Saints Series
Excerpt from Luke, Book Three in the West Bend Saints Series
Coming July 2015
Add it to your TBR list on Goodreads HERE
Luke Saint
I'm good at three things: f**king, jumping out of planes, and chasing forest fires.
I'm not looking to settle down. Women with baggage? Pass.
Autumn Mayburn definitely has baggage.
She's the opposite of my type -- uptight, too smart for her own good, and, shi**, she has a kid.
I don't even like kids.
She's the last thing I need.
She's everything I want.
Autumn Mayburn
I don't believe in fairy tales. Not since I caught my Prince Charming screwing his secretary while I was pregnant.
I moved to West Bend with my baby to start a new life. I'm a single mom. I'm not exactly looking for romance.
And definitely not romance in the form of a cocky, womanizing, bad boy like Luke Saint.
I hate him from the moment I meet him.
He's nothing that I want. He just might be everything I need.
CHAPTER ONE
Autumn Mayburn
Today should have been the happiest day of my life. Today was the day that Edward and I had been trying for the past four years.
The test was positive.
I took it three times this morning, just to make sure. And then I drove straight to my family doctor's office and got the blood test. Still positive.
I did a happy dance in the office room. My doctor is my family doctor -- he's known me for all of my twenty-seven years, and I think he was as tickled as I was. He knows how hard this journey has been for us.
And then,
this
. Two hours later, I got the call from my doctor again. "Now, Doc Statham, don't tell me that I have to come back for an appointment already," I said, my voice teasing. Nothing could knock me off the cloud I was floating on.
Nothing, that is, except the words that came out of his mouth after that. "Your father," he said. "I'm sorry, Autumn."
I shook my head, trying to get my brain to process what he was saying. His voice sounded like it was far away, like he was speaking to me through some kind of tunnel. "No," I said. "It's not possible."
"It was sudden, Autumn," he said. "Heart attack on the golf course."
"Where -- is everyone at the hospital?" I asked. "But -- they'll fix him. He's in surgery, right?"
"I'm sorry." It's all he kept saying, the phrase I continued to hear later, echoing in my head, rattling around in my skull.
I'm sorry
, over and over and over.
I hadn't gone straight to the hospital. I drove to Edward's office in a daze. I called his cell phone, but he didn't answer. On the passenger seat in the front of the car was a little gift-wrapped box, pink and blue paper, my "surprise, we're going to have a baby!" box. It seemed tainted somehow. I contemplated not bringing it with me, but decided I couldn't keep it a secret, even if I were intermingling the news with the news of my father's death.
When the elevator reached the thirteenth floor, I stood there, staring at the number like it was some kind of omen. The floor was empty, lights under the doors of a couple of the offices down the hall visible. Edward's secretary had gone home, and I wondered if he were at the golf course.
Maybe he'd been with my father,
I thought. Except that wasn't true. My sister said he was missing at the hospital. Not like that's any big surprise, she'd said bitterly.
My family had never liked Edward. But that was all going to change after this news. More than anything, my father wanted a grandchild.
Past tense, I realized. He would never see his grandchild. The thought brought a fresh wave of tears to my eyes, and I didn't care that they were streaming down my face when I reached the door.
I didn't bother to knock before turning the handle.
I should have.
I stood there, holding the pink and blue box with the ribbon on the top, the one that contained all of our hopes and dreams, the words on the tip of my tongue: I have news. Good news and bad news.
I'll take the good news first,
Edward would always say.
Because I'm an optimist.
I anticipated it, my mouth forming the words before my brain had even processed the scene before me:
I'm pregnant.
But I didn't speak those words. I stood there, staring at them. Edward's pants were around his knees, his pale ass thrusting into the woman on the desk. His secretary. Brittany. Her legs were wrapped around his waist, her clear -- yes, clear, like stripper shoes -- shoes, heels digging into the small of his back.
"Oh shit," she said. I wasn't sure at first if the words were meant for me or him. Her arm flailing, she slapped Edward's forearm repeatedly.
"Oh yeah, your fucking pussy is so tight," he groaned.
"Your wife," she squealed.
His head finally turned. "Oh shit."
I stood there, holding the box and watching my husband fuck his bimbo secretary. I opened my mouth to speak, and the words finally came out. "I'm pregnant," I said. "And my father is dead."
***
Catch up on the other books in the West Bend Saints series before Book Three is released!
Elias, Book One in the West Bend Saints Series
River Andrews
Call me Cinderella. I’m a rags to riches story - girl from trailer park becomes Hollywood starlet. And I’m about to get my happy ever after.
That is, until I walk in to my house, three hours before my wedding, to find my rock star fiancé sticking his c**k down my sister's throat.
With cameras behind me, filming.
I’m running from the whole humiliating thing. I’m not prepared to run straight into him- Elias Saint.
He’s completely wrong for me- damaged, dirty, and demanding.
But once he touches me, I can’t walk away.
Elias Saint
Some people carry their wounds on the inside. Every f**cking step I take, I’m reminded of mine.
I lost my leg in Afghanistan. Since then, I’ve just been lost.
Now I’m going back to West Bend, Colorado, the place my brothers and I ran like hell to get away from.
And she’s hitched a ride- River Andrews.
A f**cking movie star.
This isn’t a fairytale. Happy endings don’t exist. And I’m no f**ing Prince Charming.
But, for her, there’s a chance I might be.
***
Silas, Book Two in the West Bend Saints Series
Tempest
Call me Robin Hood.
I'm a grifter. A con artist.
I don't just steal from the rich. I take from the worst of the worst, the people who deserve to be hustled.
I have two rules - keep moving and never fall in love.
I only ever thought about breaking them for one boy. And that boy just walked right back into my life, a ghost from the past. Silas Saint.
Now he's a man. Arrogant and sexy as f**k, he's sure as hell not the person I fell in love with, a lifetime ago.
But when he touches me, it's enough to make me forget my own name. He makes me want to break all my rules.
Silas
I've been fighting as long as I could remember. Sh**, I think I came out of the womb swinging. I even tried to go legit until trouble sent me out of Las Vegas and back to West Bend.
I never expected a different kind of trouble to come waltzing back into my life, all curves and tattoos and sass. Tempest Wilde.
Any idea what "tempest" means? A violent f**cking windstorm. That's s**t I don't need.
I loved her once, a lifetime ago. Before I knew better.
Love is for suckers, and I'm sure as hell not a sucker.
But the way she looks at me? It makes me want to give her everything I have.