Gina's Private Police Force [Men of Montana 3] (Siren Publishing Menage Amour) (6 page)

I tried to back away slowly, telling him that I loved him, but he was irrational. Not only did he accuse me of having an affair with Jim, but he said he knew the baby was his also. I kept trying to deny it, slowly trying to back away. I heard him cock the gun and I tried to move out of the way, but he shot me in the stomach.”

Connor cried out, holding onto her a bit tighter. Jared buried his face in the crook of her neck and shoulder, fighting a sob. The baby fussed in her arms and she realized she was squeezing him too tightly. Releasing a bit, the baby settled down.

“When I went down, I fell against the sideboard that sat beneath the window in the dining room and apparently the candles must have caught on the curtains. The next thing I knew they were on fire. I had to think about the baby so I got out of the house.” Sobs racked her body as she buried her head in her son’s chest. “I left him to die. I didn’t care. When I left, I got in the car, went to the drive-thru ATM, got some money, and drove away. I drove to Milwaukee, to my parents. They helped find a doctor that would be discreet. Not only did he have to treat the bullet wound on me, but he had to deliver Nathan and then amputate the part of the leg he couldn’t mend. Every time I look at him, I have to remember what happened but I know how much worse it would have been if I had tried to save his father. Neither one of us would probably be alive.”

Jared wept openly against her neck as she felt the teardrops run down her neck to her chest. She never would have imagined that a man as macho as Jared would cry. Perhaps they really did care about her.

“My parents protected us until Nathan was six months old. By then his leg was doing good. Then Frank’s parents came looking for me. Apparently they were unaware I was pregnant and my parents didn’t disclose that information. They had told my parents they hadn’t heard from Frank in six months and were worried about him. My parents told them that I had left Frank a year prior and was living out in California. I don’t think they believed them so I left a few days later. I was paranoid that they would try to follow me, so I drifted all over the place. I even lived in Canada for about six months. Then I came down here. You know the rest.”

With her confession, she almost felt as if she had found absolution. Her heart wasn’t as heavy and her head didn’t hurt as much but she knew that eventually they would send her away. This was the first time she had ever told her story to anyone except her parents. She knew eventually one day this would happen but she had thought it would be at a police station in a cold, impersonal interrogation room with the mirror that was really one-way glass. She had seen enough of Law & Order on TV to know the procedures.

Silence filled the room except for an occasional sniffle. She wasn’t sure who they were from but it did touch her heart that she reduced two men to tears.

Connor shifted first, rising up to his knees. Reaching out, he put his hands on both sides of her face and drew her gently to him. His eyes, pooled with tears, looked like a stormy sea. His lips covered hers so gently that a sob escaped her throat. It was a brief kiss and when he pulled away, he leaned his forehead against hers. It was overwhelming to her to have Jared holding her from behind and Connor holding her from the front. A sense of belonging and being cherished washed over, warming a heart she’d thought froze a long time ago.

“We will take care of you, Virginia Picard, you and Nathan. We both promise you that. We will raise Nathan as our own and treat you like a queen. Our lifestyles are a bit different than you are used to, but we would never hurt you intentionally. We’ll talk about that later, though,” Connor breathlessly said, trying to control his emotions.

Jared pulled away slightly but kept his arms wrapped around her shoulders. “Sugar, we need to go over all of your information to see what will need to be done, but I guarantee you, you will not go to prison. He shot you. You were confused. You didn’t know what had happened. We’ll make it work, but you have to trust us.”

Another sob escaped her as she nodded. “I will try to trust you, but it doesn’t come easy for me.”

Connor nodded against her. “We know, darlin’. We’ll work on that. Right now, we want Doc Anderson to check you and Nathan out. You have been living pretty scarcely and probably haven’t been to the doctor in a while. We just want to make sure you are both all right.”

“I’m fine,” she breathed out. “We’re both fine.”

“You were both in that freezing car for a while and we just want to make sure,” Jared pointed out. “Humor us then?”

A short giggle escaped her. “All right.”

“Good,” Jared said pulling away from her. “He’ll be here any minute, but right now I hear the tow truck coming in with your car. I’ll show him where to put it.”

Kissing her on the top of her head, he left out through the front door. She smiled at the gentle attention he gave her. Connor pulled away slightly and tilted her chin up so she could look into his eyes. They still glistened with unshed tears but he smiled.

“I know you don’t believe us, that we’ll take care of you, but we will. We both already love you. We are going to move your stuff here and you can sleep in the room you were just in or you can sleep in the master bedroom with me and Jared.”

Naïveté caressed her features. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“I know. It’s a lifestyle to get used to, baby.” His eyebrow went up when he realized what she was implying. He chuckled and shook his head. “No. Jared and I aren’t lovers like Lawrence and Wolf. We will share you. Make love to you together. We will sleep in the same bed as you when you are ready to. Until then, Jared will have the guest room.”

Nodding shyly, she chewed on her bottom lip. She knew he could sense her nervousness, so before he could say anything, she reassured him. “I have all my belongings in the car. The cottage came furnished.” Sheepishly she looked at him. “How did you know I was leaving?”

“Glen came and chewed me out for scaring you away. I coerced him into giving us your address and we went and found everything gone. Well, everything but two items.”

Gina didn’t have to ask what two things. She knew where she had left them but now she feared the cottage was in a disheveled state due to the men trashing the place. As if reading her mind, Connor chuckled. “No. The cottage is just as you left it. The mattress moved when one of us leaned on it and we found the birth certificate along with the tiny christening gown. We actually thought the baby must have died because you never mentioned it and we never saw you with a baby.”

Tears filled her eyes at the tenderness with which he spoke. He didn’t know how close she had been to losing Nathan, many times. But she hadn’t. It had been a task convincing the landlady to promise never to tell anyone about Nathan, but the woman finally agreed. She also had been kind enough to babysit for her at an incredibly reduced rate.

Gina had to admit, she hit the mother lode in Polson on the kindness of strangers and the love of not one, but two men. She knew she should be thankful, but with her skeptical nature, she still had to protect herself and her heart. Most of all, she had to protect her son.

A knock at the door heralded the arrival of the doctor. She dreaded the visit. She did have to admit that she hadn’t been to the doctor since her eight week postpartum checkup and Nathan hadn’t been seen in about a year. She had worried about his scars and the growth of the remaining part of his leg, though everything looked pretty good. Vaccines were sure to be due.

Doc Anderson wasn’t a stranger to Gina. She had seen him around the diner. He usually ordered a steak, medium-rare, along with a baked potato and a side salad. Being a doctor, she was surprised he ate red meat and indulged in the starches. The biggest surprise came at the end of the meal when he would order dessert. He would always smile mischievously and say, “Tomorrow is never promised to us, so I will indulge today.”

Connor had gone to let the doctor in. The two stood at the door talking lowly as Gina watched intently. When the doctor nodded and smiled, she felt a little less nervous, but nervous none the less. Doc Anderson walked her way with his black bag, “Well, little lady. I heard you have a new patient for me.”

The older, gray-haired man’s smile was genuine. Setting his bag down on the couch, he held his arms out for Nathan. After a quick glance at Connor for reassurance, Gina relinquished her hold on her son and let the doctor take him. He removed the blanket for the first time since her parents and the people who babysat him, and Nathan was exposed to the world. The baby with the one leg that ended just below the knee.

Connor had come up behind her and set his hands on her shoulders in comfort, and she instantly relaxed. She watched the man look around and before she could ask, Connor did it for her. “What do you need, Doc?”

Holding Nathan in the crook of his arm as the boy gurgled up at him, he said, “Is there a room I could use? Somewhere I can spread everything out?”

“Sure. Use Angela’s old room,” Connor answered. Walking over he grabbed the man’s bag and escorted him down the hall to the room where Gina had woken in.

Gina had followed the two men, and now as she stood watching the activity of Doc laying her child out on the bed and then opening his bag, Connor noticed her unease. Taking her by the elbow, he sat her in an overstuffed chair near the window. Trying to relax, she crossed her knee over the other one and crossed her arms over her chest. Upon hearing her man’s groan, she smiled to herself, knowing her breasts looked plumper.

Jared entered, wiping his hands on an old rag. Shoving the strip of material into his pocket, he came over to stand on one side of her as Connor stood to the other side. The three watched as Doc examined the child. When he was finished, he grabbed a diaper from the diaper bag that was on the floor near him and wrapped it on Nathan as if he had been doing it all his life.

Reaching in the ever-present black bag, he pulled out some vaccine vials along with a couple of syringes. Standing, Gina went over to Nathan, picked him up, and held him, offering his leg for the vaccines. As expected, the baby cried when the needles were injected and Gina held him, trying to soothe him. Bouncing him up and down, she had him settled down in a few minutes.

Doc Anderson had been there about a half hour working with the baby when he turned to Gina. Connor had taken Nathan from Gina’s arms and was now sitting in the chair playing peek-a-boo with him. Jared stood next to her, her protector. The doctor had to smile.

“Did you want privacy, little lady?”

Looking first at Jared and then Connor, she thought if they saw what her body looked like under her clothes then perhaps they wouldn’t want her. She could drive away when her car was fixed and then move on.
You have to trust us
, echoed in her head and Gina shook negatively, trying to give her men a chance.

Deciding to try to give them the chance they wanted with her, she put her best foot forward although it did worry her about what they would think about her C-section scar along with the bullet wound. Doc left the room after telling her to strip down to her panties and a shirt and then get under the sheet on the bed. When she reached down to undo her jeans, Jared turned her toward him and undid the button and pulled the tab on the zipper down. Squatting down he pulled the denim down her thighs, letting his thumbs glide down her legs along with the material. He moved over her knees and then past her calves. When he reached her ankles, he tapped one foot with his hand and she stepped out of the jeans. Tapping the other foot, she stepped out the other leg and then he stood.

Her face flushed bright red when he brought the jeans to his nose and he sniffed the crotch. Grinning, he leaned over and kissed her. “I know what you two were doing while I was babysitting. It’s my turn next, baby.”

With her body shaking from his comment, she willed herself to calm down so the doctor wouldn’t see her in such a state. The tank top she wore had ridden up her torso and the arousal took a nosedive when Jared looked down her body, stopping at her stomach. Trying to hold her hands in front of the damage, she felt ashamed.

Jared grabbed her hands gently and pulled them away. Mistaking the look of concern and anger in his eyes as disgust, she tried to turn away, but he still had hold of her hands, which caused her to stay still. Sinking to his knees, he threw his arms around her waist and laid his head on her stomach. She felt tears on her skin, which caused her to feel miserable for thinking the things she had about them. She felt alive and wanted for the first time in ages with his head against her.

Tears welled in her eyes as she looked over at Connor who was watching her intently. He stood and moved over to her, pulling her into him with his one free arm. She was surrounded by their love while one of them held her child. Their child. With an open heart, she would give them Nathan to raise as their own.

A knock at the door brought them out of their tender moment. Jared let go of her and Connor sat back in the chair. She slid under the sheet on the bed quickly, not wanting to hold the good doctor up. Jared opened the door and let the doctor in.

Doc Anderson did a thorough external examine on Gina, pleased with the way her wounds had healed. When he pulled a needle out along with an empty vial, she cringed when he explained, “I want to do a blood panel on you. Make sure you’re healthy to take care of that little one.”

Jared moved over and took the hand that wasn’t attached to the arm that was going to be pierced for the doctor’s experiment. She knew she was squeezing too hard as the needle penetrated her skin when Jared shifted next to her. She had always hated blood tests or shots, but these men had told her they would protect her, so the least she could do was be brave for a little needle prick.