Page 5 of Outlaw

I stood and moved her back, feeling the need to shield her from any of the cruelty he could spew from his mouth. The very mouth I had once thought was perfect. Not anymore. He was the enemy.

“Go back to the car,” I told her, my focus on Linc’s face.

He’d better not say one word to upset her.

He didn’t respond to her innocent question, but his eyes were studying her too closely. There was little about her that I felt gave away who her father was. She was my mini me, all except for her eyes. Panic began to seep in, and the thought of him figuring it out had me grasping at something I could say to veer his thoughts in another direction.

“Awah you the outlaw?” she asked him, narrowing her eyes and glaring at him as intently as he had been doing to her.

I froze. I should have never called him that in front of her. She repeated everything. I just hadn’t imagined she would see him. Speak to him. This was supposed to be quick. Anoops, the marriage was real, now sign, and goodbye, have a nice lifekind of thing. Instead, Linc was being difficult.

His eyes shot back to me, and I said nothing. It was just a description. Maybe he wouldn’t remember the little girl who had worshipped him. At least, I prayed he wouldn’t. Because Stevie was a replica of that girl.

We stood there for what was probably less than a minute but felt like an eternity. I struggled to breathe normally. I was planning out my escape in my head.Pick up Stevie and run. Never look back. Figure out a way to get a divorce withoutLinc’s signature. Maybe I could forge it.

“You marrying her father?” he asked me.

The way he was scowling at me made me feel as if he could read my thoughts. The sun seemed to have gotten hotter as it beamed down. I started to sweat.

“Yep!” Stevie blurted out when I said nothing. “I get to be a flowah gawha and wayah a pwetty dwess like Mommy,” she informed him proudly. “Then, Hudson will be my dad ’cause I don’t have one wight now.”

Linc held out his hand to me. “Give me the papers,” he said.

The rush of relief crashed over me, and I wanted to weep with joy. He was going to sign them. Everything was fine.

“Thank you. Just sign, and we can go,” I told him.

He raised an eyebrow at me. “I’m still having my lawyers look at them.”

A slight inconvenience, but how long could that take? A couple of hours?

I nodded. “Okay. We can go get something to eat. Look around town.”

“You’ll need to get a hotel room,” he interrupted me. “Might take a day or two.” His eyes dropped back to Stevie. “How old are you?” he asked.

I opened my mouth to tell him a lie and haul her off to the car when she replied, “Fowah yeahs old!” She held up four tiny fingers.

When his eyes came back to me, he said nothing, but I could see it. The words he wasn’t saying. Would he ask? Would I tell him the truth? If I did, it would change Stevie’s world. Her safe bubble I kept her in. The life that was just within our grasp would crumble.

Please, God, don’t let him ask me if she is his.

Two

Linc

With my chosen figurado clamped between my teeth, I glared out over the front lawn of the house from my office window. That fucking blue car had long since driven away, yet the tension that had come with it hadn’t. Instead, it coiled tighter inside me, like a rattlesnake just before it struck. I should have kept her here. Demanded more information. If she wasn’t after money, did it mean that the marriage was real? Sure, I’d been messed up that night. But had I been that out of it?

The opium I’d had in the hookah pipe just before walking into one of the many clubs inside the casino that the family owned had been a poor decision, but I’d needed to release some stress. It had sent me to a place where I didn’t give a fuck about anything. The peace I had been searching for came so easily. Then, I saw her, and she took my breath away—literally—just like when I woke up in my suite with her beside me, naked inbed. The woman was possibly the most beautiful female I’d ever laid eyes on, and I’d fucked a lot of gorgeous women.

I let the cigar smoke linger in my mouth as I swirled it, enjoying the flavors. This specific cigar had become my comfort crutch. When I needed to take off the edge, this was what I reached for. Probably more often than I should.

Letting the smoke go with an exhale, I replayed all that I could remember from that night. Most of it was clear. So damn crystal clear in my mind that I’d used that face to get myself off more than a few dozen times over the years. She was still the most stunning creature I’d ever seen when she orgasmed. Thinking about the way she’d looked when she got off had my cock hardening in my jeans. Long blonde curls, the color of the finest champagne, sliding over her shoulders like warm caramel had been a sight that took the top spot on the mental highlight reel for best fucks of my life.

The fascination she’d held for me was the main reason I ran like hell the next morning. Because for the first time in my life, I had wanted to stay. I had wanted to fuck her more. Put her on my face and drown myself in that sweet, tight cunt.

Taking the cigar from my teeth, I glared at it for failing me. The stress wasn’t ebbing away. Only the storm of emotions that ranged from frustration to disbelief, to doubt, to full-blown fury.

Not because the number one memory from my spank bank had walked back into my life. And not because of the way her eyes had seemed to knock me on my ass. Hell, even the marriage certificate—if it was real—could be handled easily enough. It was the little girl I was struggling with. I hadn’t pressed because I was afraid of the truth. The what-if. She looked nothing like Levi had as a child, but then she was her mother’s mini me. There was just something…a gut feeling. A draw to her. As if my instincts were screaming at me that I should know her.

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