The Other Man (36 page)

He was happy about the baby, I could tell.
 
It was obvious by the way he couldn’t keep his hands off my belly for more than a few minutes at a time.
 

Sometimes I’d wake to find him lips pressed to my stomach, a near peaceful look on his face.
 

But we didn’t talk about it much at first.
 
We didn’t talk about a lot of things.
 

There was one thing, though, that Heath
loved
to talk about.
 

“We’re getting married,” he told me, bringing it up out of the blue.

“What?”
 

“You’re having my baby.
 
We’re getting married.”

I couldn’t believe what he’d just said, or how he’d said it.
 

A few pounding heartbeats later, I managed to get out, “I’m forty-one years old, Heath.
 
I don’t need to be married to have a baby.
 
This isn’t the fucking fifties.
 
We can co-parent without being husband and wife.”
 

“Then don’t do it for the baby.
 
Do it for me.
 
I need this.
 
I need to know that when I go out there, I have this to come home to.
 
You’re mine, and I
need
to make it legal.”
 

My heart was hammering in my chest, but I just stared at him.

And he kept going.
 
“This isn’t negotiable.
 
I let you go once.
 
I went against every instinct I had and walked away from you, because I thought it was the unselfish thing to do.
 
Now you’re stuck with me for as long as I’m alive.
 
You’re mine, that baby is mine, and we’re going to make it legal.”

“We don’t even have our own identities.
 
It wouldn’t mean anything.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed with a rough swallow as he stared at me, his expression raw, cold eyes stark.
 
“It would mean something to me.”

God, he knew how to get to me.
 

“Tell me something sweet,” I urged him with a smile.
 

“I need you,” he rasped, voice weighty with feeling.
 

“And?” I prompted.
 

He looked confused, so I made it easy on him.

“Do you love me, Heath?”
   

“Of course I do.
 
What do you think all this is, if not love?”

That stunned me, stopping my heart, then sending it slamming wildly back into life.
 

And still, I felt the need to say, “You never would have taken me with you if you weren’t forced to by circumstance.”

His brows drew together, making him look stern.
 

Mean and magnificent.
 

The combination I found most irresistible on him.
 

“You’re absolutely fucking right I wouldn’t have.
 
If I hadn’t been so careless, because I was
obsessed
with you, you wouldn’t be in this situation right now, trapped, confined, in danger.
 
I’d have spared you that.
 
But I’d have done it for you.
 
Not for me.
 
If I were a completely selfish bastard, I’d have chained you to my side from the start.
 

He stared me down for a solid minute, then continued, “And another thing, I was always planning to come back for you, when it was safe.
 
If you’d moved on, if you hadn’t, I didn’t give a
damn
, I was going to come, shake up your life, and take you back when this was all over.
 
That’s a fucking fact.”

“Yes.
 
Yes, I’ll marry you,” I said suddenly, impulsively, because he’d given me what I needed.
   

This man loved me how I
deserved
to be loved.
 

I’d been waiting a long fucking time for that.
 

EPILOGUE

We were married in a church.
 
Heath, who remained constantly and consistently unexpected, insisted on it.
 

It was a tiny gathering, just us, Iris, Raf, Gustave, and a few bodyguards standing witness.
 

Heath’s face was unsmiling and serious as he recited his vows solemnly.
 

I had no doubt in my mind that he meant them.
 

None of it was anything I could have even pictured a year ago, but I recited mine back with tears in my eyes and joy in my heart.
 

Life on the run was not as expected.
 

It was chaotic and a little scary, sure, but there was something unutterably beautiful about it, the living each day like it could be torn from you.
   

They were rough times, yes, rough years, but roughness was not the nucleus of it.
 
At the center of it all were memories of joyful reunions and meaningful goodbyes, of holding on to the man I loved for dear life and knowing how precious every single moment we had together was.
 

It taught us to love in a new way, one that we’d never forget.
 
Having a love that was endangered made it all the more precious.
 

And enlightening, because I learned so much about what love should be, how it should be treated, made me learn to express it as often and elaborately as I could.
 

Love is all that matters.
 
Every other thing in life is a detail.
 
Love is both your legacy and your salvation.
 
If you have the right kind of love, you can get through anything.
 
That’s what those years taught me.
   

We were a strange little group, with our new names and identities.
 
Heath installed us all in a huge house in the northwest, so it started out as five of us, two pregnant women in different stages of their lives and pregnancies, two college boys, and Heath, who came and went often.

Well, nine of us, if you counted the fact that we each (with the exception of Heath) got our own personal bodyguards.

Iris and I hit it off right away.
 
It was one of those friendships that required no effort at all.
 
It just worked.
 
Our age difference was drastic, but it didn’t matter; we got along famously, almost from the beginning.

Like sisters.
 
And, when we were having fun, partners in crime.
     

It was Iris who told me just who she was testifying against that had made their lives so dangerous.
 

“The vice president?” I repeated back to her, not quite sure if she was messing with me.
 

She
loved
to mess with me.
 

She nodded, biting her lip.
 
“Our grandmother.”

My eyes narrowed on her, looking for a lie.
 
“Your grandmother is the VP, and you’re testifying against her?”

She nodded again.

“What’s the charge?”
 

“The better question would be:
 
What isn’t the charge?
 
I’ve got so much dirt on that woman I could start a farm.”
 

Now I was pretty sure she was messing with me, but she kept going.

“But the reason I devoted my life to taking her down is that she murdered my parents and my sister.
 
I’d die to bring them justice.
 
They’re worthy of that.
 
And even if she kills me, they’ll still have a case.
 
My testimony will help, but I gathered so much concrete evidence that it can speak for itself.”
 

The way she spoke, how into it she was, had me finally buying it.
 

The fucking vice president.
 
Holy shit.
 

One thing you could never deny about Iris and Heath— they both had enormous balls.
 

The first house we stayed in was basically in the middle of nowhere, but there was a college nearby, and both of my boys quickly found their own lives and were gone more often than not, which was for the best.
 
They were grown men.
 

That left me spending more time with Iris than anyone else.
 

Neither of us ever complained about that.
 

Powerful bonds were made when women were pregnant together.
 
And we did a hell of a lot of bonding.

Over time, she became like a little sister to me.
 

With nothing but time on our hands, we got plenty of talking in, and it wasn’t long before we were telling each other everything.
 

I told her all about my strange courtship with her brother.
 

And she told me all about her enduring obsession with Alasdair Masters.
 

“Why couldn’t you ask Dair to come into hiding with you?” I asked her once.
 

“He has too much of a public profile.
 
There is simply no way to hide him.
 
The best we could do was to keep him out of it.
 
Also, I don’t think he’d want to.
 
I’m pretty sure he hates me now.”
 

I doubted that very much.
 
I didn’t know him well, but I did know that Dair was not a man with hate in his heart.
 
Not for anyone, but particularly not for one of the sweetest women I’d ever met, who also happened to be pregnant with his child.
 

And also, who wouldn’t fall for a girl like Iris?
 
She was young and sweet, funny and joyful, and of course, there was her extraordinary beauty.
 
Sure, like her brother, she had some fascinating and troublesome quirks, but I was guessing that a man like Dair would find those quirks well worth the payoff.
 
Hell, with what I knew of him, I thought he’d find most of them endearing.
   

We had fun together, Iris and I, but always under her bright surface, I could see that something weighed heavy on her, and I knew that it was Dair.
 

“I wonder if he’s moved on.
 
It seems likely.
 
We didn’t part on the best of terms, so I doubt he’d even think of waiting for me,” Iris lamented.

I didn’t know what to say to her.
 
I wanted to reassure her, but I also knew it would be cruel to give her false hope.
 

“You know, for a while I thought it’d be you he moved onto,” she added.
 

I’d gathered that much, but she wasn’t done.

“And then I looked into you.”

“You mean Heath did.”

She cringed just enough to look guilty as hell.
 
“No, I mean I did, too.
 
Pretty extensively.
 
I just wanted to know what kind of a woman you were, if he was going to end up with you.
 
And everything checked out.
 
Everything
.
 
You’re just good people.
 
You make friends everywhere and treat people well as a rule.
 
Hell, you even give a Christmas bonus to your gardener.”

God, she was scary sometimes.
 
How could she have possibly found that out?

“Eventually, I was even kind of okay with the option.
 
I saw you out with your boys—”

“You followed me, too?”
 
For some reason when Iris said she’d checked me out, I’d thought it was all internet dirt.
 
The idea of her following us around just struck me as several shades more crazy.
 

“Only a little.
 
It didn’t take much.
 
I saw you having dinner with your boys, and I knew I’d seen enough.
 
Dair couldn’t do better than you.
 
I knew
I
wasn’t better.
 
I know I’m as fucked up as Heath, in my own way.”
 

“He couldn’t do better than you, either,” I told her gently.
 
“Any man would be lucky to have a woman like you.”
 

And she had her pick.
 
Just about every man within ten miles from my sons to her bodyguard were more than a little smitten with her.
   

But just any man wasn’t an option for Iris.
 
She was devoted to Dair, whether he was a lost cause or not.
 
She was a go down with the ship kind of girl.
 

And it wasn’t all pining and sadness for her.
 
We had our share of fun.
 

We both loved to dance.
 
Whenever we were feeling particularly stir crazy, we’d put on some music, turn it up loud, and have an impromptu dance party.
   

Her obsession with Beyonce, or as she called her, Bey, was contagious. We drove my boys crazy, randomly singing the lyrics from her latest album.

And we loved to coordinate pranks.
 

Bubble wrap on the toilet seat, the mayo jar refilled with vanilla yogurt, just to name a few.
 

 
The two of us pregnant at the same time was not something anyone would want to mess with.
     

 
And we were both obsessed with bad reality television.
 
The worse the better.
 
We’d binge watch it together, though I was pretty sure it lowered both of our IQs.
 

We kept each other busy, which was good.
 
We both needed to stay busy to stay sane.