Page 69 of The Bodyguard and the Bombshell

It wasn’t a bad thing to be at all.

He led his parents into the bar to join their extended family.

Epilogue

Years later

Dallas, TX

“I’m going to run to the store, love.”

Avery glanced up from her work. Casseroles. She’d already made three. One breakfast and two for lunches or dinners. Her daughter’s freezer was going to be well stocked for the coming weeks.

Damn, but she loved Liam O’Donnell. He’d aged some, but she still saw him in the prime of his life. So gorgeous she could barely stand to look at him. Sometimes she still felt the moment her eyes had locked with his and she’d known she wanted to be with him forever.

Or maybe it had been more complex and the years had softened the actual history. Maybe it had been harder, but there was nothing hard about loving Liam O’Donnell now.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

Anything she’d needed, she’d been given.

“Hey, love, what’s this about?” Liam moved into her space, cupping her cheek, and when he looked down at her she was young again. He used his thumbs to gently wipe away the tears clinging to her. “I don’t have to go to the store, but you know Brody and Steph are on their way from the airport right now, and Brody’s been on a plane for twenty-four hours. He’s going to be hungry. Besides, our Daisy asked for chicken salad.”

Their Daisy. Their smart, funny girl who’d recently given them even more joy. She laughed. “I’m baking a couple of weeks’ worth of food for her, but she needs chicken salad. Her postpartum cravings are worse than her pregnancy ones.”

A brilliant smile crossed her husband’s face. “Well, you have to admit she deserves it. Our little granddaughter is perfect.”

Their first grandbaby. Wilhelmina Avery Carter. Billie.

Their first but not their last since they’d gotten good news the night before.

How new the world felt. She’d loved raising her family, but there was something so sweet about watching them go out into the world and find their places. Nate had moved up to an investigative team at McKay-Taggart, and he seemed to love solving mysteries with his partner, an intellectual guy who reminded Avery so much of Brody’s friend Walter. Daisy had graduated with her master’s, and she hadn’t even burned down Kai’s clinic yet. She was helping kids, and now she had one of her own.

“She is indeed.” Avery went on her toes and kissed her husband. “Are they sleeping?”

Liam nodded. “They were up all night with Billie. Are you sure we should go home tomorrow?”

The birth had been hard, but Daisy had come through it like a champ. Like all new moms she needed help, so Avery and Liam had stayed for the first week ensuring all Nate and Daisy had to do was take care of themselves and the baby. They’d cooked and cleaned, and Liam had tried to hog the baby as much as possible, rocking her and singing her Irish lullabies. But it was time to let her other grandparents help.

“It’s Steph and Brody’s turn,” she said firmly. “You know how much it killed them that they couldn’t get here until today.”

Steph’s clinic in Sierra Leone had grown. She ran it with Faith Smith, and they’d recently opened a women’s wing. Steph had been caught in a bureaucratic tangle when Daisy had gone into labor two weeks early. They’d only been able to arrange their travel in the last few days. They lived a block away when they were in Dallas, but Steph liked to be hands-on at the clinic several months out of the year.

He gave her one last kiss and stepped back. “Well, I suppose I can share. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Billie’s asleep in the bed in the nursery. Nate snores, and I won’t have him waking my sweet granddaughter.”

He winked and walked out.

The man never learned. Billie was already a saint of a girl. Just like her mother. She was fairly certain her granddaughter would end up as wild as Daisy. As troublesome as her grandfather. Trouble in the best way.

She heard him drive away, and then there was a chiming sound. Avery rushed to the front door because her husband was right. Daisy and Nate needed sleep.

She threw open the door and Steph stood there.

For a moment she saw another Stephanie. A teenaged Stephanie Gibson who’d shown up at Avery’s hospital bed, skinny because she hadn’t eaten, wracked with guilt. She’d only met with the girl because Steph’s mother had begged her. Stephanie had been driving the other car, the one that had plowed into hers. The one that had taken her first husband, Brandon, and her little baby, Madison, away from her. She’d been planning on telling Stephanie Gibson to go to hell.

She was transported to the moment when she’d looked at the girl who’d wronged her and known she had to make a choice.

A choice that brought her here. A life-changing choice.

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