By the time the girls made an excuse to leave, I was silently seething.
Darcy really was pregnant and using this wedding to push her unborn baby off on me. Did she really think she could get away with that and I would just fall in line with her plans?
Fuck that shit.
“We need to find out who the father is,” Lyla said as we rode back to the house. “I think we should put a tail on her.”
“Whatever. Just do it. I want to know everything she does ASAP before I confront her.”
Mia leaned forward to look at me over my cousin. “What do we tell Nevaeh?”
“Fuck,” I groaned, remembering my promise not to keep anything from her. But I doubted she would be happy to go along with Lyla’s plan for me to play excited groom for my mother and Julia Hamilton until I figured out the rest of Darcy’s game. With finals only a week away and her dad’s illness and upcoming surgery, I didn’t want to add more stress to her already heavy load. “Mia, what do I do?”
Her brow scrunched up for a moment before she blew out a frustrated sigh. “I don’t think we should tell her about any of this yet. She seems so fragile right now. I hate keeping her in the dark about anything, but after seeing how she was on the flight home and then yesterday…”
“Yeah,” I muttered, my gut twisting in dread. “After next week, we will be back in California until the holidays are over. I can tell her everything once she’s done with finals and has had time to chill for a few days.”
Both Mia and Lyla agreed it was the best plan for the moment, but even though it was mine, I wasn’t sure if it was actually the right thing to do. If Nevaeh found out I was keeping this from her, she was going to be pissed—and maybe hurt. Which I couldn’t fucking stand. No matter what kind of pain my kitten experienced, it drove me crazy. And if I was the one to cause that pain…
It would kill me.
Chapter 16
Nevaeh
Mom taught me to cook from a young age. She loved it when my sisters and brother and I helped her in the kitchen. Of everyone in our extended family, I liked to think my parents and siblings were the closest unit. When I was a kid, they would take me everywhere with them, and even though Daddy had a crazy-busy schedule and they could have easily afforded a dozen nannies, they never used one.
Cooking was one of my favorite things to do, especially when I was missing Mom. Mia and the guys loved that I could and would cook for them. Otherwise, it was breakfast foods or takeout for every meal.
Pulling out the freshly baked cookies from the oven was like starting a stampede. I heard Braxton’s and Barrick’s feet stomping as they sprinted into the kitchen and grabbed themselves one before I’d even placed the tray of cookies on top of the stove.
“Fuck, if I didn’t love Mia so much, I would marry you, Nevaeh,” Barrick told me around his huge bite of scalding-hot cookie.
I laughed, because that was what he said every time I baked something decadent. Transferring the rest of the cookies to the cooling rack, I turned to find Braxton leaning against the sink beside the refrigerator. He was eating his cookie a lot slower than his cousin, which made me stop and take better notice of him.
By this point, he should have been working on his second or third cookie, despite their being so hot he would burn his tongue on the melted chocolate chips. He didn’t care, though, because he would wash them down with ice-cold milk and keep eating until either the cookies ran out or I took them away from him. Instead, he just stood there, barely nibbling on the first cookie that was rapidly cooking in his hand, a deep frown between his brows, almost as if he were in pain.
Concerned, I crossed to him and touched his forehead. “Are you feeling okay?” He didn’t feel hot, and his skin wasn’t pale. Yet I got the feeling something was seriously off with him.
He caught my hand and pulled it down so he could press my palm to the center of his chest. “I love you.”
Everything inside me melted. Stepping closer to him, I wrapped my free arm around his waist. Since the first “I love you,” he’d been saying it often, and every single time felt just as good as that first one. I was never going to get tired of him saying those three words. “I love you back,” I told him. “But that doesn’t explain why you are barely eating your favorite cookie.”
“Kitten, you’re my favorite cookie, and I would rather eat you than anything else.” With a heated, wicked gleam in his eyes, he stuffed the rest of his cookie into his mouth and swept me up into his arms. I barely had time to realize Barrick had left the kitchen before Braxton was carrying me to my room.
Our room, now that Braxton had moved his things in there. Sasha lifted her head off the bed when we walked in. “Sasha, out,” he commanded gently, and she slowly climbed off our bed and trotted out of the room.
Shutting the door with his foot, he carried me to the bed and set me down carefully. It was as if he thought I might break, and that made me smile even as he was lowering his head to devour my mouth.
“Love you so fucking much, Kitten,” he said with a groan as he started pulling off my clothes. “Never going to let you go.”
“Good.” That single word turned into a moan when he pushed my legs apart roughly and lowered his head. His lips latched on to my clit, and for a long, long while, he didn’t treat me like I was fragile at all.
Hours later, I lifted my head from his chest. He didn’t look like he was in pain any longer, but there was a pensiveness to him that told me he wasn’t completely with me in the postcoital blissfulness I was curre
ntly enjoying while he rubbed his callused fingers up and down my naked back.
“Is something wrong?” I asked, worried about him. Braxton didn’t go dark often, but when he did, he drew into himself. I hated the distance I felt him putting between himself and everyone else.