Cowboy Love in Peril [Love: The Cowboy Way 2] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Luxie Ryder Page B

the best thing she had ever done. She couldn’t even imagine how Wade felt right now.
    He’d been carrying the secret with him for weeks, all alone in his grief. And he was grieving, of that she was sure. He still had the girls, but he’d lost something, too. Something very precious to him.
    The urge to restore his sense of pride and give him back what he’d lost overwhelmed her. Kimber knew there and then that she’d find a way to cope, and happily bear all the snooty receptionists in the world and anything life threw at her as a result, but she’d give Wade a child.
    She opened her eyes to find Wade looking down at her, a weird expression on his face. She realized then she was smiling like a maniac, excitement at what she wanted to tell him near bursting through her chest. But when she saw a tear roll down his cheek, the words she’d been about to say stilled in her throat and she sat up.
    “Wade?”
    He dragged a fist across his face, and turned his misty gray gaze on her, a small smile on his lips. “Aw, honey. I know you too well.” Wade cupped her jaw in his hands and kissed her, and she could still taste the salt of his tears on her lips when he pulled away. “The Kimber I know and love would be wracking her brains for a way to make me happy. And, if I were a betting man, I’d say she’d just decided that we were gonna have more kids. Am I right?”
    “Don’t you want to?” she whispered, frightened by the sadness in his eyes.
    “Of course I do, but it’s not that simple.”
    Kimber groaned inwardly, annoyed at herself now for going on so much in recent weeks about how afraid of the future she was. “Look, I know what I said, but I was just being a wimp, that’s all. So what if people talk about us? Only we’ll know for sure what is going on. The kids will be loved more than any child could wish for and we’ll find a way to explain it all to them as they grow up. There are plenty of families these days that don’t have traditional mothers and fathers—gay couples, single parents, people who have to use surrogates.”
    She stopped to take a breath, scared anew by the deepening frown on Wade’s face and the hard set of his jaw.
    “Kimber, we can’t. We just can’t.”
    “Why on earth not?”
    Wade smiled but the look in his eyes chilled her to the bone. “Because, when I realized the kids weren’t mine and began to think about all the times in the past, before Brandon came home, that you and I had been careless, yet you’d never once got pregnant, I started to think. So, rather than drive myself crazy, I got tested. The truth is, we’re lucky Brandon is here, otherwise we wouldn’t have Jessica and Emily.”
    “Oh, my God...”
    A nerve ticked in Wade’s jaw as he kept his gaze riveted to the floor for a moment, then he gave a deep sigh and braced his palms against his thighs as he got to his feet. “Give me a minute, okay?”
    Kimber tried to see which direction he went, so she could follow him if he didn’t come back soon, but gave up once he’d taken only a few steps away and she could no longer see him through the sheen of tears.

Chapter Six
     
    Brandon yanked on the straps of the stab vest, slapping the Velcro tabs down and shooting a look at the chief who was standing on the other side of a prison guards’ office, one floor above Costanza’s cell. “Boss, tell the SERT guys there’s no point in all this. He’s gonna have me take it off as soon as I get near him so he can check for weapons.”
    “I know, but humor them, will ya? The Special Emergency Response Team are running the show. Their captain is pissed off he had to stand back and let us handle this part, so don’t give him an excuse to fuck us up, Reed. Besides, worst come to worst, you could always slap that fucker in the head with it.”
    “Guess so.” Brandon grinned. Some things never changed—and Chief Roberts was one of them. No matter what the circumstances, he never lost his dry wit, nor his