The Bodyguard's Baby (Billionaire Bodyguard Series) (13 page)

Lindsey charged inside. “We’re here,” she exclaimed to the roomful of people.

“Welcome!” He heard his sister Maggie’s voice before she raced to the door and drew Lindsey into her arms.

Humbled by his family’s instant acceptance of his girl, he stepped aside and toed off his boots out of force of habit. Then his sister turned and threw herself into his arms. “You better hug me like you mean it, Slone.” She nearly squeezed the life out of him. “I’ve missed you, big brother.”

Clearing his throat, Slone wrapped his sister in a bear hug.

“That’s better,” she wheezed, and he loosened his grip. She grinned up at him, her fluffy dark hair framing her gray-blue eyes so similar to James’s.

He leaned down and hugged her again. “I’m sorry. I should’ve been here for you. For everyone.”

She sniffed tearfully. “You’re here now. We couldn’t ask for anything more.”

When his sister tugged on his arm, dragging him out of the foyer and deeper into the house, he was met with cheers and squeals. His sister’s four kids, plus Makayla, bombarded him. He’d never received so many hugs in all his life.

Above the throng he met Maggie’s gaze. “You’ve got some great kids. You done good, little sis.”

She nodded, her chin trembling with emotion. “Glad they finally have a chance to meet you.”

Eventually he became old news, and the kiddos drifted off to do their own thing. Except Makayla. “Hi, Uncle Slone.” The words sounded like music capable of repairing all the grief in his heart. God, she looked so much like James. “I got something for you today at the store.”

He squatted lower so they were face to face. “I’m the one who brought presents for you. I don’t need a gift.”

She shrugged her thin little shoulders. “They’re from the quarter machines. Can’t take ‘em back.” Holding them up to him in her palms, she lifted two plastic balls containing two prizes toward like she’d offered him twenty-four karat gold jewels. “For you,” she said.

“Wow, all this for me?”

“Look,” she said, doing the honors of opening the plastic and withdrawing the prizes. “It’s a ring pop. Purple. My favorite.”

“If it’s your favorite, then you should have it.”

Her forehead puckered with a frown. “No, that’s why it’s for you—‘cause it’s my favorite.”

Pretty selfless for a nine-year-old. Slone started to get a little choked up. “It means even more to me now. So, what’s this other…thing?”

“It’s a foam capsule,” she said. “Put it in water, and it turned into a big dinosaur.”

“Wow, awesome.” He smiled until his cheeks hurt and tousled her hair. “Thanks, kiddo. Means a lot to me.”

“You’re welcome.” She beamed like his own little sunshine. “Okay, bye.”

Off she went to join the other children playing a board game on the living room carpet. “She’s cute as all get out. I’m so proud of her.”

Maggie came to stand beside him. “You should be. She’s an amazing little girl. Now you can make up for lost time with her.”

He muttered low, “What about Adele?”

Maggie waved. “Oh, she’s around here somewhere.”

“Uh-huh.” Not part of the welcome wagon, no huge surprise.

Then he watched Maggie’s face slowly drain of color. “There’s something you need to know, Slone.”

“Regarding Adele?”

“No, no. More important. More serious. It’s Uncle Jimmy. He’s…not well.”

Shit.
Slone raked a hand through his hair.

“He doesn’t have much time left. I think he’s held on this long because he knew you were coming. You’d better say what you need to say, before it’s too late.”

“Okay.” Slone swallowed hard. “Thanks, Maggs.”

After he confirmed the time his parents were supposed to arrive home after dinner for their surprise party, he went down the hall to the spare first-floor bedroom. There he found Uncle Jimmy in a sickbed with rails, like in a nursing home, but he couldn’t calibrate his brain to accept the sight before him.

The man had always been on the slender side. Now, his uncle resembled a skeleton more than a living, breathing person.

“Uncle Jimmy,” Slone murmured in the darkened room, his throat constricting with emotion. He sank onto a chair beside the bed and reached for one of his uncle’s frail hands. It weighed as much as a bird’s wing. “I’m sorry I didn’t know…”

“Is that my boy?” Uncle Jimmy wheezed and coughed as he tried to raise himself in bed. “Did yer come home at last?”

Supporting his uncle’s shoulders, Slone propped pillows behind his bony spine and eased him back against the cushion. “I’m home.”

“If you ain’t a sight for these sore eyes. You’re somethin’ fancy, like you done landed in high cotton. City life treating you good?”

“It is, Uncle Jimmy. I made something of myself. I have a good job and a great girl who’s here with me. I want you to meet Lindsey, the mother of my child.”

“You expectin’ a child? Lawd, never thought I’d see the day. Maybe won’t, I come to s’pect. Breathing’s getting harder. Lungs ain’t gonna last much past the week. But while I still got breath in ‘em, wanted to tell you…you made me proud, son.”

Slone’s jaw tightened. His nostrils flared. He blinked, glancing upward, desperately trying not to lose it in front of his uncle. “I know what you did for me. You treated me like your own. I see it now.”

“Boy, your Pa would’ve given anything to be here for you. Just like you would’ve given anything for James.”

Slone held the man’s trembling hand between both of his, shocked by the difference. Uncle Jimmy had always had such powerful hands.

After a fit of coughing, Uncle Jimmy said, “I never said to you what your daddy told me in the jungles of ‘Nam.”

Jesus. Slone hadn’t even known his father and uncle had been deployed at the same time. Just like him and James. Slone breathed deep. “What did he say?”

“‘Take care of my boy,’ he said. So I did. I reckon I did the best I knew how. I wasn’t right, I wasn’t your daddy, but I gave you what I could.”

Taking a red and white quilt from the foot of the bed, Slone unfolded the blanket and
gently tucked it around Uncle Jimmy’s feeble
shivering body, as the man coughed and hacked uncontrollably. He held a handkerchief to his uncle’s lips to catch the spray of phlegm. While they sat quietly together, he let his uncle’s words fill the old, festering holes inside him, coming to a place of wholeness within. Something
he’d never experienced, and never would have, if he hadn’t come home.

He held his uncle, held all the memories the man had given him, and said thank you. Told him he loved him. That’s more than a lot people have with the folks who’d most impacted their lives. He wouldn’t have had this chance to say goodbye, if not for Lindsey. He knew he couldn’t do this life without her.

His pulse slowed, and he wondered if his heart had a hard time
pumping all the emotion shooting through his bloodstream. He thought he might crack apart any second. Tears filled his eyes, threatening to spill over. Even though he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t break down.

“You were the most amazing role model a kid could ask for, Uncle Jimmy. You changed my life in the best ways. All the ways that make you count your blessings. I love you for that.”

“You, too, son.” His uncle patted his shoulder. “You, too.”

*

After watching Slone’s heartfelt reunion with his uncle, Lindsey quietly backed out of Uncle Jimmy’s sickroom. She reentered the hallway, then stopped in the kitchen to add a few more marshmallows to her hot chocolate.

Within seconds a heaviness wrapped around her as if an invisible noose had garroted her neck. Her head snapped up. Her eyes met Adele’s determined stare.

Instead of avoiding the woman, Lindsey wanted to reveal the truth out in the open. Now that she and Slone were here at his parents’ place, she found no reason to keep Adele’s letters to her a secret anymore.

Or, what she had assumed were threatening letters from Adele. If she’d been the one sending the cruel, dark messages to her, Slone and their unborn child, then this confrontation needed to take place. Preferably before Slone and Maggie’s parents arrived home, so they could clear the antagonism hanging in the air.

As Adele approached her with rapid strides, Lindsey guessed she’d uncover the truth any minute. Just before Adele reached Lindsey, her daughter Makayla bounced up to her mother. “Mommy, Mommy, I won the game!”

“That’s nice, sugar pie. You can tell me about it later. Right now I need to talk with Uncle Slone’s mistress.”

Charming.
Lindsey shook her head.

Makayla wrinkled her nose. “What’s a mis-trays?”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” Adele said in a sweet as sin southern accent, then turned her sharp eyes on Lindsey. “Can you meet me, darlin’, on the front porch?”

Determination overcame her initial prickle of warning. She nodded.

Oh, yes, I will.

Back in Slone’s parents’ three-season front porch, she noticed a Native American mandela or dream catcher in every window. Had they sensed an evil in their midst? Would they have ever guessed the source?

On high alert, Lindsey sat down on a rocking chair covered with a sheep skin throw. Across from her Adele sat in a rocker without the benefit of warmth from a blanket. Lindsey would’ve traded places with her in a heartbeat, not condoning the slaughter of animals for food or clothing. But for Slone’s benefit, and to maintain a steady internal body temperature for the baby, she stayed where she was and faced Adele.

“I feel it’s my Christian duty to warn you about the man you think you know as Slone. You have to understand, he is tarnished goods,” Adele said with a great show of concern. “If you have his baby…well, you’ll put yourself and that child at risk.”

“Is that so?” Lindsey deadpanned.

“At heart he’s a bad, bad man.” Adele worked herself into more of a frenzied state as the story unfolded. “Right after he got back from his first tour, he went huntin’ with some fellas I’m friends with around these parts. Y’all know Slone wasn’t ever right in the head to begin with, but when he came back from his first mission as a Navy SEAL, you could see the hate in his eyes.”

Lindsey stared at Adele evenly. “What
about
the hunting trip did you want to tell me?”

“My men friends told me Slone showed all the signs of a cold-hearted killer. When they went huntin’ with him, they said he shot innocent animals, picked off squirrels for no reason. Just for the sport of it. And they said he laughed! Oh, it’s frightening.”

“That’s not the Slone I know.” Lindsey may have been the tree-hugger, but Slone had carefully removed the cracked branches from their backyard pine tree, taking every measure to spare the tree itself. Killing innocent creatures for sport? Never. “Maybe your memory has lapsed.”

Adele cupped her hand over her mouth. “Oh, no. I swear he did those things. Everyone knows about it. That’s why I’m afraid of him coming near my girl Makayla. God knows what violence he has in him. He’s killed hundreds, maybe thousands of men in the dark parts of the world.
You must be terrified of him, deep down. Even just a little?”

Lindsey laughed. “No, I’m not scared one bit.”

“You’re flirting with danger, girl.” Adele waved her hand at her throat. “Why aren’t you scared?”

Lindsey pinned the woman with a steel-eyed glare. “Because the only person who’s threatened me in the past four months is
you.
”

Adele appeared flabbergasted by the accusation. “Well, I never. That’s absurd. The rudest thing I ever heard.”

“Oh, it won’t be the last. You’ll have to take me into town so I can meet these men folk friends of yours. Then I can ask them directly about your tall tales of Slone’s killer instinct.”

“Now, that won’t be necessary. I assure you—”

“The only assurance I want from you is that you’ll quit sending me horrible letters bashing Slone and calling my baby atrocious names. It’s despicable. The immature actions of a bully who can’t fight fair, worried about salvaging her lies instead of facing the truth.”

Adele’s eyes blazed. “You’re the one who won’t face the truth.”

Arching an eyebrow, Lindsey said, “I don’t know where you got the idea I care what you think. All I want is for the nonsense to
stop.
”

Adele shot to her feet and wagged her finger in Lindsey’s face. “Then you tell Slone he better
not stop
sending me the money he promised. He promised!”

Lindsey blinked. This was news. She hadn’t realized he’d changed his personal policy toward funding Makayla’s future. Although she suspected all these years his generosity had funded her mother, not the girl. Why else would Adele be infuriated by Slone’s money well drying up?

“Just before the new year, he sends me a letter out of the blue with the last check. He has set up come kind of a college fund for Makayla, instead of sending me money. But what about my new car payment? My cell phone bill? He had no right to pull the rug out from under me like that.”

Putting together a timeline, Lindsey discovered the dates matched up perfectly. She’d sent a letter with their home address to Maggie. While working on her parent’s anniversary invitations, Maggie likely mentioned it to Adele, who’d recently learned Slone had turned off the financial spigot, and asked to see the letter in person—where she spied their home address. She’d probably also read that Slone had received a promotion, strengthening her resolve to extort money. A week later they received the invitation sent to Slone’s work. And a few days after that Lindsey began receiving the hate mail from an “anonymous” source. Adele wasn’t nearly as clever as she thought she was.