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Chapter One
Cadence turned the worn teddy bear in her hand. Mousy. Why had she called a bear such a name? It had long since lost its fur in some places where she’d rubbed it off with her mournful hugs as a child.
Mousy had gotten her through her toughest times. She’d embraced Mousy in each strange bed as she moved from foster home to foster home. The bear was smudged with her tears. She’d used him to cover her ears while she listened to familiar shouts with unfamiliar voices. She’d used Mousy as a shield, even as she grew bigger, and he somehow smaller, but still he stayed wise as he’d looked on her with big embroidered eyes that never judged, only loved her.
Oh, how she’d wanted to be loved.
He’dsaid that he loved her. Was that enough to get them through this? She sat on the edge of her tub staring at the pregnancy test in her other hand. Her heart thudded as she waited for the results. She’d never thought she would repeat the mistakes of her mother. She was wiser, stronger… knew better.
Lacy Lynch was a complicated man, a powerful one. At times he seemed so hard, almost cold, but that was the hard outer shell that he showed the world. He was a businessman and her boss, the CEO of WhiteBoulder Private Equities. His job was to command respect, but when they were alone?
Well, when they were alone, Lacy was the gentlest, sweetest man that she’d ever known. She got to see his true face, the one he didn’t show to anyone else. They had a connection that was unbreakable.
When Cadence had first joined the company, she was definitely the lowest in the pecking order. Newbies always had to fight their way up for respect, and she used to joke that she had a business degree to pour coffee. Lacy always took it easy on her, meeting her eyes from across the room and smiling.
It turned out that Lacy liked having her “angel face” around. Whenever he brought her to his major business deals, the clients trusted him more and the deals always went through. He claimed “his angel” was his lucky charm, and so he started taking Cadence everywhere.
Before she knew it, Lacy was jetting with her all around the world on his business trips. That’s how they’d ended up together. They’d been strictly professional at first, though Lacy later admitted that the second he’d set eyes on her that he’d always hoped she’d see him as something more. He began leaving flowers in her room, ordering dinners on the terrace at their hotels, surprising her with private tours in Venice, Bahamas, Paris.
He was possibly the most romantic man that she’d ever met. Her life in those foster homes had been lonely, horribly scary sometimes, but Lacy? He’d protected her, cherished her. She’d never felt anything like it, even after she’d set off on her own at eighteen and tried to make something of her life. Lacy had taken her from her sad and lonely existence and showed her the world.
She watched the lines form on the pregnancy test. Pregnant. She was pregnant. Her heart felt like it was exploding out of her chest.
It would be okay, wouldn’t it? Lacy had told her that he loved her plenty of times. He’d talked about their future and marriage. She warmed at the thought of his arms around her.
Oh, hedidlove her! She absolutely knew that he loved her. Would he love their child?
Yes… yes, without a doubt. Lacy had cried with her when he’d heard about the things she’d gone through growing up. He was stable, secure, and undeniably protective. Once he’d thrown a man out of his establishment for looking at her wrong. He would never allow any child of his not to feel the weight of their worth. Her lucky, lucky baby!
Cadence set the pregnancy test aside. She would never end up like her mother, abandoned by everyone who loved her, overdosing on drugs. No, this was the beginning of normal—she and Lacy and this baby were destined for an extraordinarilynormaland fulfilling family life. Never in her wildest dreams had Cadence ever believed that being a mother and having a family would be her destiny, ever! It might be illogical to think, and she should’ve known better, but because she’d never really been adopted, she thought she was unlovable. Despite her education, her honors, her successes, she still felt like that kid getting turned away from yet another home.
And now this? Everything had changed in the blink of an eye.
How was she going to tell Lacy? He was holding a party tonight with his Nashville investors—it was a big deal; he was trying to impress Devlin Trout for the biggest transaction of their lives. Trout was a rich oil tycoon with deep pockets, and Lacy wanted his Angel with him to bring him luck.
She picked up her phone and texted Lacy. “Hey, baby. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“What’s up?” he answered back.
This wasn’t something that could be texted. She needed to see his reassuring nods and feel the warmth of his tender looks because a part of her felt insecure and anxious. But of course, he would welcome this baby; this child was a part of her, a part of himself, the product of their love.
He had to!
Cadence took a deep breath, sliding her phone back into her jean pocket. She squeezed Mousy. She imagined tiny fingers holding the stuffed bear, not hers, but another’s.
Her heart broke for that little girl that she once was, but her child? Her child would live free of the sort of fear and sorrow that had once been Cadence’s existence. All at once, a rush of instinctive protectiveness washed over her, stronger than anything that she’d ever felt before. No, this baby would never feel that sort of pain.
She had no idea if this baby growing inside of her was a boy or a girl, but she knew this child intimately all the same.
Nothing will ever get in the way of my love, baby.
Chapter Two
“It’s kind of weird seeing you without your twin.”
Porter glanced over at Old Man Funches. The weathered man trained a shotgun past the broken fencing where they’d first heard the growl. There was a black bear in these parts and they’d attack fast. The cattle ranging nearby were the most vulnerable, especially the mother cows with their babies.
Porter ran a hand down his Appaloosa’s long speckled nose to keep the horse from spooking. He wrapped the reins around a slender tree so that he wouldn’t bolt when the action went down. “It’s okay, Gus.”
