Page 76 of Desperate Actions

Damn.

She’s cute.

So fucking adorable wearing my clothes.

It takes everything in me not to drag her against me and kiss her senseless right here, in front of her murderous father and my own very amused dad.

But I restrain myself.

Barely.

Chapter 20-Aella

“Are we late?”

Andres Ramirez unfolds himself from the driver’s seat of his sleek, silver and black Mercedes-Maybach, his tone casual as he surveys the situation. But his eyes are anything but as he takes in the bruise blooming across Sammy’s cheek.

It’s a beautiful car, obnoxiously powerful and ridiculously expensive, and for a second, I get lost in watching the sunlight as it glitters across the hood like something out of a story.

Fairy dust or some such thing.

Sammy says nothing as his father rounds the car and opens the door for his mother, Ellie, with the kind of gentle reverence that makes my stomach flutter.

I know Andres is technically Ellie’s second husband and Sammy’s stepfather, but you would never know it watching them. The three of them are as close and solid as they are with Sammy’s sisters.

He has four. Andrea, Elena, Merida, and Julia. Only Andrea came to Vegas on this trip. But I know them all, of course.

“Fuck,” my dad mutters, jarring me from my wayward thoughts.

And just like that, I am here in the moment.

Mom elbows him sharply in the side, making him grunt.

“That’s what you get,” she says, giving him a pointed look before catching my eye and winking at me.

I barely have time to react before, “Sammy!”

Ellie practically shrieks his name, closing the distance between them faster than I thought possible in those designer heels.

Sammy barely has a chance to brace himself before his mother crashes into him, throwing her arms around his broad chest.

He lets out a soft grunt, arms instinctively coming up to hold her, his voice sheepish, small in the way only a grown man can sound when his mother is fawning over him.

“Hi, Mom.”

He’s a good son. Bending down so she can kiss his cheek on one side and slap him on the other.

“How could you keep this from me,” she says sharply, but the smile and tears that follow tell me she isn’t angry. Not really. And that is a relief.

She turns to me.

“Aella!”

Suddenly, I am yanked into the same embrace, my face squished against Sammy’s back, inhaling his clean, woodsy scent as Ellie smothers both of us in motherly affection.

“I am so happy you two have finally come together. I just wish I was there!”

She’s crying.

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