“Okay.” He kissed Serena’s hand, his blue eyes kind and full of concern. “You want me there with you when you talk to the cops?”
“No. I’ve got it.” She glanced over at the white sheet covering Nate’s body and swallowed hard. The guy had tried to kill her. He’d had her kidnapped and held hostage for months. She shouldn’t care that he was gone, and yet she did. Families were complicated things no matter how you sliced it. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Go take care of your business and I’ll take care of mine. We’ll meet up again after.”
“Promise?” he said, pulling her back in for one last quick kiss.
“Always,” she said, smiling against his mouth. “I’m grateful for you being here for me today.”
He frowned slightly. “Did you read my journal?”
Serena winked. “It fell open on the bed, so I saw a few pages. We’ll have to see if Gracie and I can move up to the number one slot after today.”
“Definitely number one from now on.” He chuckled. “I love you, Serena.”
“I love you too,” she said then pulled away. “See you back at the house.”
22
Six months later…
“Guess we’ve come full circle, eh Rebel?” Noah stood beside the table in the studio admiring his wife’s naked ass cheek.
“Guess so,” the tattoo artist said. “And to think I brought you two together.”
“Well, you and some family treachery and a near shooting,” Serena turning her head atop her arms to face Noah. “And stop ogling my butt. Pervert.”
“Pervert?” He snorted. “Considering I sleep with that ass every night, I think that’s a little uncalled for.”
She laughed. “Just kidding. Where’s Gracie?”
Noah glanced behind him where he’d left the kid just a minute ago, only to find her gone. “Dammit. Gracie, honey? Come see Daddy.”
He went off through the deserted tattoo studio to hunt her down. They’d rented the whole place out for the afternoon so they could relax, and Serena could get her new ink in peace without the press hounding her constantly.
In the past six months since the shooting in the park, both their worlds had undergone huge changes. He’d continued his work with the Southern Soldiers of Fortune but didn’t mind staying closer to home and Atlanta as much as possible now. While he still went out on overseas missions when necessary, he always tried to be home within a week, never wanting to be too far from his family. And Serena, as the last surviving Carson, had quickly hired a new CEO to run the day-to-day operations of Carson’s Candy. True to her word, she preferred to stick with the charitable arm of things, helping those most in need around the world and doing a damned fine job of it too. The public still saw her as the figurehead of the Carson fortune and she did her best to preserve a little privacy, especially around him and Gracie—though last week, they’d broken their own rule and the three of them had done some fancy magazine spread for one of the celebrity rags, showing off their house in Buckhead. Noah wasn’t super comfortable being in front of the cameras, but the money they’d earned from the photos went to provide healthcare and clean water to kids in sub-Saharan Africa, so he couldn’t argue.
And speaking of kids…
“Gracie, sweetie, what are you doing?” He walked over to where his daughter was playing with bottles of colorful ink on the floor and scooped her up into his arms, loving her laughter. “Are you daddy’s ornery girl? Yes, you are, aren’t you?”
Gracie giggled and squirmed in his arms, trying to push away and return to her newfound toys. And to her, just about everything was a toy. She was at that army-crawling stage and starting to get into everything. One of the best features of their fancy new digs in the suburbs was the huge, fenced-in backyard behind the enormous seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom house. It gave Gracie plenty of room to play and explore, plus all the extra space indoors gave Noah and Serena lots of room to expand their family one of these days. But first…
He put Gracie back down, then crouched beside her. “Okay, now you promised to be a good girl today, since Daddy has something important to ask Mommy, right?”
Gracie mumbled something incoherent while gnawing on the cap of one of the bottles. She was still teething too, and everything went in the kid’s mouth. He pulled a baby wipe from the stash he always kept in his pocket now for emergencies and wiped down all the bottles, making sure all the lids were on securely, before leaving his daughter to it. “Okay, Gracie. Wish Daddy luck.”
His daughter gave an ear-splitting squeal, because there seemed to be only two volume settings right now, loud and silent. Still, he loved her more than he ever thought he could love anything in this world, and he thanked God for her and Serena every day. He still wrote in his journal too. And yep. They’d moved to the top of his daily grateful list.
In truth, they’d always belonged there. It had just taken him nearly losing it all to realize it.
Noah was determined never to make that same mistake again.
After giving his daughter a big kiss on the cheek, he stood and took a deep breath for courage, patting his other pocket where a small velvet box resided.
He made his way back over to the table where Rebel was putting the finishing touches on Serena’s new tattoo. They’d sketched it out together, though she’d made a few last-minute tweaks that he hadn’t seen until today. She was getting a matching angel tattoo on her hip, the same as his except her angel had his face—one of those tweaks he’d
