Page 61 of Joy Ride

While it had been incredible, what they’d shared, her maternal instincts were kicking in, questioning if Arden had enough bottles or if she was fussy or if Gavyn would know what her favorite blanket was.Did it make her a terrible mom that she’d passed her baby off to their friend so that she could make love to her two soul mates for the entire day?

Probably not.But mom guilt started to creep in anyway.

“That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced,” Dane said, breaking her out of her thoughts.“When can we do it again?”

Walker ruffled his hair then said, “Not now.”

“All I know is I’ve had more sex today than the whole rest of my life put together.”Joy laughed, then turned to Dane.“I might take you up on that massage later if you’re still offering.”

“Yeah, of course.”He smiled softly.

“Why don’t you do that and I’ll go get your daughter?”Walker said as he rose from the bed, stretching.

Maybe it was an innocent slip of the tongue, but it instantly set Joy on edge, erasing some of the lassitude in her bones.“What do you mean?”

“Gavyn’s probably ready for some relief…” Walker trailed off when he caught the way she was looking at him in warning.

Dane cleared his throat.“I think she means you should go getourdaughter.”

At least Dane understood her even if Walker wasn’t fully in agreement.

“Oh.Right.”Walker scratched his chin through his beard.He had his back to them when he said, as if it were an innocent comment, “Don’t you think we should get a paternity test done soon so we know who she really belongs to?”

A scalding knife stabbed Joy right in her newly unfettered heart.

Walker obliterated the warm fuzzy feelings she’d been harboring about their future and how what had happened today might make things better or at least different.

“Walker, shut the fuck up,” Dane barked, his face reminding her of when he’d charged the other man earlier.He reached for Joy, but she rolled away, then swung out of the bed.

How stupid had she been to think they were interested in being a family simply because they’d been down to get off?

“Walker, you idiot!”Dane raged as she bolted from the room.“Don’t you get it?Arden is better off with three loving parents than two, no matter which two those are.”

“Not if one of them has a bounty on his head,” Walker hissed, though not too low for her to catch it as she crossed the hall to the bathroom.

She wouldn’t risk anyone hurting her daughter the way Walker had hurt her, intentionally or not.

Arden shouldn’t be allowed to learn to love him if he was only going to vanish on them when he got scared, because she now recognized that was his problem.He wasn’t as tough as he’d like to be.As he pretended to be.

He’d never be able to deal with it if something bad happened because they loved him.

No amount of sex was going to fix this, because the closer they got, the more the possibility scared him.

Joy slunk into the bathroom and shut the door behind her, not with a slam but with a very quiet click.She felt defeated, emotionally abandoned if not physically, and somehow that was even worse than the times they’d vanished.

They were never going to be able to make this work.

She turned on the water to the hottest setting she could stand and attempted to scrub away any reminder of how foolishly and completely she’d given herself to someone who didn’t deserve her…ortheirdaughter.

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