“Go tell your dad; he’s strong enough to lift you up to the limb.”
“Okay.” Satisfied that his request would be granted, he turned around, searching for his father in the crowd. Her son was becoming a little spoiled. Sawyer leaned her face up to the sun, hiding her smile at Roxi and Axel’s disgruntled looks.
“Colton hit a homerun.” Vida stood up, jumping up and down on the bench.
Sawyer sat up, jerking her friend back down.
“Jeez, Vida. You trying to make them babies come early?”
“From your mouth to God’s ear. I haven’t seen my feet in a month.”
“Enjoy it while you can. I don’t envy you. Two crying babies at night. It was bad enough when George and Grace had ear infections and there was a year separating them in age. If Kaden hadn’t been so much help and so good about getting up at night, I would have been terrified adopting them.”
“I don’t know why. You’re a fantastic mom, Sawyer.”
Sawyer grinned at her friend. She was blessed and she knew it as she watched George complain to his father.
Kaden picked up George, and with Colton’s help, lifted him into the tree house with Grace. Roxie and Axel quickly climbed up the ladder, on the side of the tree, to play with their friends.
Both men started walking toward their wives.
“Did you ever think when we were little that we would get this lucky?”
“No. I didn’t.” Sawyer picked up her glass of tea, her tattoo catching her eye. The word freedom had several forget-me-nots wound through it, connecting it to a birdcage. Inside the birdcage, a tiny Robin sat on the perch, staring back with golden eyes. The cage was covered with flowers, and the vines spelling out Vida, Kaden and their children’s names. The ink work was beautiful; Colton had done his best work on her. He had even scrolled Callie’s name on the dangling cord, holding the key to the open cage door.
Coming in Spring 2014 by Jamie Begley
Shade’s Fall (The Last Riders, #4)
Prologue
“Shh… baby, you’re going to be fine.”
Shade stood in the corner with his brother, Razer, from The Last Riders standing tensely by his side. He knew Razer had come to care a great deal for his sister-in-law.
Both of them were watching with grim expressions as Lily tried again to get out of the hospital bed. Beth, her sister, prevented her with a soothing voice, murmuring words over and over again that neither men could hear over Lily’s cries.
The doctors had relieved the pressure on her brain last night, saving her life. Her hand that had been broken had been put in a cast that morning. The trauma combined with the pain and medication had left her disoriented.
Every cry and whimper that passed her lips increased his resolve to take his vengeance out on the two men who were responsible for her injuries. The police had them in custody and they wouldn’t be getting out anytime soon, but Shade had every faith that the judicial system would release them on parole. He would be waiting for them when it happened, just like the biker who had dared to touch her and the deputy from Treepoint. Both had disappeared just as Joker and Dale would.
Lily finally slipped into a fitful sleep, tossing and turning on the hospital bed while Beth continued sitting by her side, holding her hand.
Shade stepped forward. “You should both go and get some sleep. I’ll stay until you get back.”
“I’m not leaving her,” Beth protested.
“Go and get a couple hours rest at Sex Piston’s parents house; it’s just a few blocks away. I’ll call as soon as she wakes.”
It was another hour before exhaustion had Beth leaving reluctantly with Razer.
After they left, Shade sat down in the chair by Lily’s bed, looking at the woman who had been on his mind since the moment he had seen her come out of the diner across from the sheriff’s office. He and Razer had gone there to get their bikes inspected and the sisters had both appeared eating ice cream. Shade had taken one look at the stunning woman and known that he was going to have her.
His lips twisted wryly. He hadn’t known then that he was going to have to wait, but patience was his one and only virtue. He waited, planned and plotted to attain his prize, and Lily was a prize. He hadn’t been in her company for more than a few seconds before he’d realized that she was perfect for him; however, Lily and her sister both had dreams for her, and Shade wanted her to have that time of freedom before he took it away.
His control had almost broken twice. Once when they had gathered for the Fourth of July picnic and he had looked across the backyard to see Lily holding a toddler while Charles, her high school boyfriend, stood close by, touching her. They had looked, for all appearances, like a happy, young family. If his brothers hadn’t held him back, he would have ripped the dumbfuck apart. He could tell Charles thought he was staring into his future with Lily. Shade had planned on showing him once and only once that Lily would never have anyone other than him. She would never carry anyone’s child but his. Charles still remained to be a thorn in his side, though Shade had a plan to deal with him when the time was right.
No one was going to stand in his way when it came to claiming Lily.
The night of Razer’s bachelor party had been another time he’d lost control. She had come to Rosie’s bar to talk to Razer; she wanted to protect her sister so badly that she had faced her fear of being around alcohol. He had been in the back of the bar with Bliss on his lap trying to convince him to let her and the stripper take turns later that night when one of the brothers had given him the head’s up that Lily had entered the bar. Half drunk, he had barged forward, tired of trying to fuck her out of his mind, but Knox had held him back when he had come close enough to hear her true age. He had gone ape shit.
He was just drunk and horny enough not to care anymore what anyone said. If he could have gotten to her, Lily would have been the one in his bed that night. Of course he would have had to lock her in and barricade the door against his whole MC, but he wouldn’t have had any compunctions about doing either one.
Unfortunately, they had managed to hold him back; however, he’d had the satisfaction of his fists pounding out his frustration on each of them, especially on Razer because Shade still didn’t trust that Razer had told the truth of not knowing Lily’s true age.
After last night, when Lily had coded, there wasn’t anyone who didn’t know that he had reached his limit. He was done waiting. He had sworn that if Lily survived, she would be his. No more waiting, no more fucking around. He planned on getting Lily the way he would have taken on one of his missions in the SEALS. It was why, behind closed doors, he was known as the deadliest sniper in the US armed forces with over two-hundred–and-twenty-six confirmed kills, and those were the ones they knew about, not the privately contracted ones by the government that he’d still carry out when the price or the reason was motivating enough. He had been given the nickname Shade because of his ability to blend into the shadows, hitting his targets with cold-blooded precision that others considered impossible.
Part of what made him so successful in taking out his target was learning everything about them, knowing their strengths and weaknesses. Especially their weaknesses.
To gain Lily’s trust, he had to find out her weakness. Her sister and she had secrets that they hid from everyone, refusing to talk about Lily’s past. No woman had as many anxieties and fears as Lily without a reason. To reach her, he would have to overcome those fears.
Each time he had tried to find out about the cause of her panic attacks, he had been thwarted. Neither had she confided in Razer or Penni, his sister, who he had managed to bribe into transferring colleges to become Lily’s roommate, not even the therapist Beth had hired. He had broken in to her office several times, searching, but each time he had read through her chart, none of the reasons had been addressed. The therapist was trying to build Lily’s trust slowly. Fuck that. She was for shit as a therapist, something else Shade intended to change. The only thing the woman ha
d done was put a rubber band on Lily’s wrist, teaching her to give herself pain as a way to relieve her anxieties. Shade had every intention of teaching Lily the same thing except in a more enjoyable way.
Shade sat by the bed, watching Lily sleep as the day slipped into night. When the nurses had checked on Lily and tried to get him to leave the room, his cold gaze had intimidated them into silence, sending them scurrying from the room.
When the outside had been completely swallowed by night, Shade got up from the chair, going to the door and closing it after the nurse. Determined to find out Lily’s secrets, he only had one option left. Razer had let it slip that Lily slept with her bathroom door open, depending on a nightlight. Twice since Razer had moved in with Beth, their electricity had gone off because of storms during the middle of the night. Both times, Lily had become hysterical when she had awakened in the dark. Beth had to go in both times to calm Lily down.
Lily was beginning to wake; he had noticed she had begun to move about beneath the covers. He prayed the drugs would keep her disoriented enough that, when he was finished, she wouldn’t remember what he was about to do. Shade’s fingers flipped the light switch, plunging the room into darkness.