Colton 911--Family Defender by Tara Taylor Quinn

Author:Tara Taylor Quinn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2020-03-24T17:26:56+00:00

Chapter 12

Charlize needed to go home. She had some things to pick up, her blow-dryer for one. And some different clothes. She’d packed in such a hurry the day before she’d just grabbed and thrown in.

Those things were the excuse she gave Riley for needing to stop by her house after they left the clinic. But the deeper truth was that she needed to breathe in her own space for a few minutes. To look at the room upstairs that was going to become a nursery. To walk where she was going to be living, as the realization of what was happening to her sank in.

She was going to be a mother.

Already was a mother.

That picture on the screen, the sound of the heartbeat filling the room, had solidified in her mind what her body had already known.

She had become a different person, forever. Fantasyland as she’d always lived it, believed in it, waited for it, was gone forever. She wasn’t married to the love of her life, having their child.

She was a single mother, having her own child.

And she wanted it more than she’d ever imagined. She needed a few minutes in her own space to absorb it all. The feelings. The changes.

To accept them. Take them on. To begin the new journey.

She let Riley practically wrap himself around her as he walked her to the car, with not only his back half covering hers, a leg insinuated between hers, as though they were dancing, her back to his front. He had an arm around her shoulder, too, as though ready to push away anyone who might could come at her that way.

“Duck your head into me,” he said, his voice not quite urgent, but deadly serious, and she did as he’d instructed, heart pounding. She was not going to lose her new life just as it was beginning.

She was not.

When she was safely in the vehicle, and saw him come around and get in, rather than go chasing after someone, she asked, “Did you see something?”

“No,” he said. “But I didn’t see a shooter yesterday morning, either.”

Of course he hadn’t. He’d been in the house, behind her.

And...crazy hard to believe that the shooting had just been the day before. She’d moved out of her house. Slept in a new bed. Seen her entire life change before her eyes that morning. The shooting...seemed part of a distant past.

Funny, though, that her night in the hotel room with Riley didn’t seem that way. If anything, it seemed more recent than all the weeks it had been.

He didn’t drive straight to her house, saying he wanted to check out the neighborhoods first. And make certain they weren’t being followed.

She wanted to know what he thought about the morning. They’d just witnessed the miracle of life. A life they’d created together. And he hadn’t said a word.

“I can’t believe how formed the baby was,” she said when she couldn’t sit silently with their miracle unspoken between them. “I was expecting to see

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