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And there was Duke, sitting in the car next to me, wearing his tux, holding my hand, and looking at me in that way that melted my heart.
“Anything,” Duke promised.
I waited for the prime moment. It was cruel and dramatic of me, but I couldn’t help it. “Well, I hope that’s true, since you’ve got eight months to get ready to be a father.”
The door opened the second I finished the sentence. Cameras flashed and a hand extended to help me out of the car. The fact that I shocked Duke enough for him to let another man help me out of a car said something.
Although I will say, he recovered quickly.
He was out of the car and kissing me in seconds. Obviously, he didn’t care about the camera flashes, or that we were on the red carpet of one of the biggest award shows of the year, or that this was our first red carpet together.
Turned out I didn’t either, since I kissed him back.
He stopped the kiss but didn’t release me. His face was inches from mine. I knew that there were people yelling things, chaos going on all around us, but it was nothing but a dull roar.
Duke’s eyes were full of that intensity I’d come to relish, full of love. They shimmered with tears. “You’re having my baby?” he asked against my lips.
“I sure am.”
Then he kissed me again.
That photo was on the front page of every newspaper, blog, and magazine for the next week.
I won the Oscar too.
Eight Months Later
The sun was setting over the mountains. The air was crisp as winter rolled in. Soon, there would be snow, which was why my husband was late tonight. There were many things to do on the ranch as winter approached.
I tried to help with as many things as I could, but the second I lifted something heavier than a coffee cup—decaf, of course—there was at least one person shouting at me and asking what they could do for me.
That person was more than often Duke. Despite all the cowboy-type things he was doing, it seemed he had an inbuilt macho-man sensor telling him his pregnant wife was trying to reach for a bag of sugar on the kitchen shelf.
We’d had many fights over the months about him turning into an insane, protective alpha male with every passing day.
“You’re my entire world and you’re growing another one inside your body,” he’d growled. “If I wasn’t doin’ everything in my goddamn power to protect you both, I wouldn’t deserve you. So forewarning you now, baby, that’s something that’s gonna happen for the rest of our lives, no matter how much you yell at me.”
I’d stopped yelling then, naturally.
My pregnancy was an easy one, which surprised me. I was either growing a mini alpha male or a little diva inside me, and I’d figured they’d give me a lot of crap. But no, I’d had barely any morning sickness, tiredness, or swollen feet.
Pregnancy suited me, it seemed. Duke made sure to make that known every moment he could. If he was near me, he was touching me, touching my belly, kissing me, whispering in my ear how beautiful I was, growling at me for picking up whatever he deemed too heavy.
The press had picked up the story…somehow. Not all of it, of course. If that were the case I’d be paying a defense attorney a small fortune to keep me out of prison. No, the Sons of Templar and their resident hacker were far too careful to let anything about what happened in Amber leak.
With everything going on, I hadn’t even worried about the possibility that I’d be connected to Kitsch’s death. Not that he’d died, publicly, just “disappeared.” I’d trusted the Sons of Templar and Rosie—trusted them with my life—despite barely knowing them.
Duke trusted them too, since he didn’t seem too worried about me getting hauled in for interviews. The FBI and detectives had been in touch when I appeared back in time for the trial—which was announced days after the ordeal in Amber. I’d attended, of course. Kitsch was a no-show. They’d tried to get me to go into protective custody. I’d argued that I now had private security. Keltan had made phone calls.
At some point, someone talked. Someone told the media that I was the key witness in the case. Not just that, but that I was pregnant.
And there had been many attempts to get interviews. Millions of dollars for the first photos of the baby. Greenstone Security handled everything to do with our privacy and somehow, not one reporter had discovered the location of the ranch.
In this day and age, in this industry, such a thing was almost impossible.
Almost.
When you had a team of badass macho-men looking to protect their buddy and pregnant wife…anything was possible.
