Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69775 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
The baby inside of me fluttered.
I placed my hand against my belly, then immediately removed it because I was even keeping this secret from my own sister.
Though, I had been planning to tell her today while we were at lunch.
“Okay.”
Boone’s eyes studied mine for a long second before he said, “I did some of my own research in between classes. Vet school kicked my ass. Plus, I was trying really hard not to take any of the money Dad allotted me those first few years.”
“Why?”
“Because you called me a spoiled rich kid.” He snorted. “And I was trying to prove that I could make it on my own. I could pay my own way and fund our life together if you ever decided to come back.”
My stomach somersaulted again.
I had said that.
I hadn’t meant it, of course.
Boone was the least spoiled rich kid in the world.
I’d met him while he was volunteering at the wildlife preserve where injured wildlife were sent to recuperate after they were hurt. He not only volunteered there, but he volunteered at the public library on Wednesdays, helping some of the senior citizens of Jesper County work their electronics. He also volunteered at the soup kitchen to feed the homeless.
He didn’t drive a flashy car, though his mother berated him constantly for embarrassing her with his old “rust bucket.”
I fell in love with him in that rust bucket.
It made my heart happy every time I saw him driving in it these days.
“I spent all my extra money to first look into my dad.”
I looked over to Sawyer.
He shrugged. “It was something I would’ve done. I mean, we were very close. He had to know that he could trust me.”
“And I could,” Boone sighed. “It took me another year to figure out that I could trust him. And when I finally came to him about my suspicions about what my mother had done to you, he’d been shocked, but not surprised.”
“I knew that she was already doing some things that she shouldn’t have been,” Sawyer murmured. “I had my own private investigator on her. Mostly because I was gathering evidence of her dalliances so that I could file for divorce and not have to pay her half of my company since she was with me when we started it.”
“Whoa,” I said.
“I fired my private investigator because he was obviously not doing a good enough job. Then I hired a retired SEAL to do the investigating.”
“Who?”
“Me.”
I looked behind me to see Denver standing there.
Well, I knew him as Boone’s Uncle Sinclair first. Denver, president of the Dixie Wardens MC Montana Chapter, second.
“Sinclair!” I smiled and got up, walking into his arms.
He wrapped me in a hug and kissed the top of my head.
When I pulled away, his warm honey eyes sparkled.
Then he whispered, “Congrats.”
I blinked.
He winked.
And I knew somehow he knew.
Like he always knew.
He let me go, and I walked back to my seat next to Eddy and across from Boone.
Boone’s shoulders were stiff, but his words weren’t.
“Denver had already been poking his nose around. There were some things that didn’t quite line up when it came to my mother’s and dad’s relationship.”
“A lot,” Denver cut in. “I never knew that Boone wasn’t biologically related to Sawyer until they told me, though.”
My breath hitched.
Sawyer was such a good dad.
No one would know that Felicia and Boone weren’t his by the way he treated them.
They were his kids, no matter if they were biologically his or not.
“When we started to look into her more fully, we found a much bigger mess than we could’ve ever expected,” Sawyer stated, steepling his fingers over his chest. “Did we find evidence that she was complicit in your miscarriage? Yes. But that wasn’t all. Nor the worst.”
I couldn’t think of anything worse.
I mean, my child was killed.
What could be worse than that?
“And don’t think that I’m downgrading what happened to you.” Sawyer read the thoughts that were crossing my face.
I looked over to Boone to see his hands fisted on his knees, so tight that they were bloodless.
“It started out when she was sixteen and dropped her baby off at the fire station.”
I inhaled deeply.
“She decided that she couldn’t be a mother, and just poof. Gone,” Boone said.
“She got caught up with a couple of guys that ran long cons. They were fleecing old people out of their life savings. Young people out of their homes. Then they met Gail, and they started to aim higher. When she turned seventeen, Gail ran her first long con. She targeted a rich dude that liked young girls. They got married. Then he would die of mysterious circumstances. She did this four more times before she met me,” Sawyer explained.
“Why didn’t she kill you already?”
Eddy snorted at my words, but it was an honest question.
I mean, why had she spent that long with Sawyer after she’d found such a good thing marrying and killing off her husbands?