Knees weak, I collapsed against him. His arms came up like steel bands and locked me in place, and we rocked there silently for a few moments until I heard a knock on the door. “You guys should probably come out now,” Bo called, humor evident in his words. Apparently our attempts at being quiet weren’t very successful. Noah lifted me up and then set me back on the bench. He carefully wiped me off between my legs and then himself.
“We’re going to get pregnant if we aren’t more careful,” I mumbled.
Noah stilled in the act of throwing the towel in the corner. “Or we could just wing it.” His eyes glowed with a strong emotion that could’ve have been love or want or both.
“Or we could just wing it,” I replied softly. His return smile was brilliant. We’d handle whatever life threw at us whether it was bad professors, bigger fighters, or even unplanned pregnancies—because our love was stronger than all of those foes.
We dressed and Noah slipped the Christmas present I’d given him over my shoulders, covering my damaged dress.
“Is this why you accepted the gift without a fight? You figured I’d be wearing it most of the time.” I snuggled into the warmth, the scent of Noah surrounding me like an embrace.
He threw on his suit coat and pulled down the sleeves of his dress shirt so that the white cuffs just peeked out underneath the superfine wool. He looked utterly delicious.
“No, I accepted the gift because I’m done being a douche about the money thing.” He grabbed the lapels of the winter coat between his fists and dragged me close to him. “I’m going to get used to being a kept man. I’ll expect gifts regularly.”
From another person, this statement would sound avaricious, but from Noah it was a sign of his acceptance, not just of me, but of everything that I came from. It was a sign of his true surrender to our love.
EPILOGUE
Noah
Many years later
OUR PLAN TO WING IT lasted only until Grace’s senior year and that was kind of a minor miracle given how lackadaisical we were about birth control. Pills made her sick and I hated using a condom after being inside her without barriers. Some higher entity was probably protecting us from our own stupidity for a while. Professor Billings left Central after the spring semester following the New Year’s fight. Lana and I had come forward and that opened a floodgate of student complaints. He was out before spring break hit.
I was glad that I graduated a year ahead of her because ironically I had more time after I was done with school. I’d sold my franchises to the manager Grace had hired for me. While they turned a profit, they weren’t making enough passive money. My attention was better focused on my endorsement deals, my fighting, and my woman.
Between training and reading stock portfolios, I had time to walk a pregnant Grace to class and it was a good thing too because the rounder she got, the more easy she would cry. Everything tipped her off from commercials to greeting cards. One day on the way to class, she broke down because a squirrel was struggling with nuts. If I hadn’t been there, I think she’d have spent the whole day collecting nuts for the animal. Her doctor explained that her newfound teariness was due to the excess of hormones in her system. But tears were the last thing on Grace’s mind when she was birthing our first born, Nathan.
“I wish we were in the Octagon right now,” Grace bit out between pants of breath.
Wiping a cool cloth over her brow, I tried to soothe here. “Shh, honey, don’t talk. Just breathe.” And then I panted like we’d be taught in class and smiled at her.
She whipped her hand around so fast, it was just a blur of motion and plucked the cloth out of my grip. Tossing it aside the room, she gave me a look that would have killed a platoon. “You pant at me one more time and the next thing that gets ripped away from your body is your dick.” She ended the sentence with a high pitched scream of pain and then squeezed my fingers so tight I thought one of them might fall off.
My opponents in the cage had never inflicted as much pain as Grace did during Nathan’s birth. But it was all worth it, even from Grace’s point of view. So worth it she willingly had another kid. She’d never been sexier than when she was round and full our babies. We’d have had enough to field of baseball team if Grace hadn’t had such a difficult time in labor. She was too important to lose and I made her promise we would stop after Nicholas.
Marriage was full of compromises, big ones and little ones. The big ones were agreeing not to have more kids. Little ones were me taking control of Grace, Josh, and Lana’s trust funds when they turned twenty-five. That combined Bo’s money and his girlfriend, AnnMarie’s sharp mind, we formed Freedom Funds, a hedge fund that started out with ten million and grew to a billion dollars in a little over ten years.
I’d bought that house on the North Shore not too far away from where Grace grew up but ours was much smaller. That was another small compromise. Initially I wanted the biggest house with the biggest lawn and the biggest dock until she convinced me that no one was doubting the size of my dick anymore except, maybe, me. So we had a smaller house but my boat was still massive, as was my dick.
But with my family around me, I knew that even if I had only two cents to rub together, I’d still be a rich man. It wasn’t the lack of money that made my life miserable growing up. It was the lack of love. My dad had lost his Grace and because of that, his whole outlook on life had been snuffed out and he hadn’t been strong enough to pull himself together for his son.
Huffing a bit, Grace slid into the seat beside me. I tucked her under my shoulder and dropped a kiss on her forehead. “All set?” I asked.
She nodded, tears pooling in her eyes as the wedding march started. We stood together, hands clasped. Everyone else watched the bride walk down the aisle, but I looked at my two strong sons standing side by side at the altar. My heart nearly burst with pride at the sight of them and tears pricked my own eyes as I saw the love shining out of my eldest son’s face as he watched his beloved come to him.
We’d never had a little girl of our own so Charlotte, Bo and AnnMarie’s daughter, had become the girl of our hearts. And today, Charlotte would become a legal part of our family. It was worth shedding a few tears over.
Need more Noah and Grace? Read how they first fell in love in Undeclared. Even better, sign up for the Jen Frederick newsletter to read the love story of Charlotte and Nathan.
About Jen Frederick
Jen Frederick is the USA Today Bestselling author of The Woodlands and the Amazon #1 Romantic Suspense title, Last Hit, written in collaboration with Jessica Clare. Sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on all your favorite characters at http://jenfrederick.com. You can also find her on Twitter @JenSFred or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJenFrederick.
Read on for an excerpt from Unspoken, Book 2 in The Woodlands series. Unraveled, Book 3 in The Woodlands series will be released on January 20, 2014.
Unspoken Excerpt
Copyright © 2013 by Jen Frederick
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.
Chapter One
BO
“TAMPONS SLOWING YOU DOWN THIS morning?” I taunted the young businessman who’d volunteered to spar with me this morning. We’d been dancing around each other for the last five minutes. I wasn’t here to carefully gauge the length of his reach or the power of his jab. I wanted him to hit me, and I wanted to hit him back.
My smear on his manhood worked better than a fist to his gut. He jerked out of whatever fantasy he was concocting of being the next king of the Octagon and rushed me. I waited, slid slightly to the side, and then kneed him in the ribs. As he was bending over from the impact, I brought up a left uppercut and then a right punch. He crumpled like a tin can at a recycling center.
As he lay face down at my feet, it occurred to me I’d made a big strategic error. My third of the morning. I was a slow learner. I looked up to see Noah Jackson shaking his head at me. Noah was my best friend, Marine battle buddy, and roommate. He knew me better than anyone else.
He knew the lightbulb had just gone off over my head. There would be no more hitting in the Spartan Gym today, which meant my hope for a good match was as sunk as the guy at my feet.
With a groan, yuppie number three rolled over. I pulled off a glove and offered him a hand up. He looked at it for a couple of heartbeats like I might punch him again. Christ, I wasn’t a jackass. I didn’t mind fighting dirty if the situation called for it, but I wasn’t going to hit someone who was weaker than I was, who couldn’t fight back. You got smacked around here at the Spartan Gym. That was the whole point.
At least that was why I was here. I woke up every morning with an itch under my skin. I could work out that irritation a couple of ways. My preferred method was fighting. But the downed businessman with the soft hands was my third opponent this morning and not one of them had laid a hand on me outside of a few glancing blows that slid off my protective headgear.
I pulled back my hand and walked over to the corner, shaking my head in disgust. Pauli Generoli, the owner of the gym, climbed into the ring and glared at me. I wasn’t supposed to damage the merchandise. These rich guys were the way he paid for his gym and when they weren’t given enough opportunity to feel like conquerors, they didn’t want to come back. I ignored his summons to come over and jumped down off the platform. Noah was on the mats to the side, practicing some Brazilian jiu-jitsu moves.
Noah used to partner with me. Or actually, I sparred with him to ready him for a world of professional fighting. I wasn’t allowed to do this anymore, as Noah had been invited to be part of the UFC, the officially sanctioned group of mixed martial arts fighters.
Paulie, who trained Noah, said I was too dangerous and undisciplined to fight Noah. I thought it was better for Noah to face down dangerous and unpredictable in the safety of a gym setting before facing it inside the Octagon, where the UFC fighters battled for fame and money, but I never voiced any opposition.
If it were anyone other than Noah, I wouldn’t have kept quiet, but I wasn’t going screw up Noah’s opportunities here. Even if I wanted to because Noah could put a beatdown on me like none other, and we both felt better after. None of the other amateur fighters could get in enough blows to make a difference and my fight instinct was too strong to just stand there and take it.
I pushed open the door to the locker room, and the stifling smell of ball sweat and ass swept over me. Stripping out of my shorts and jock strap, I leaned into one of the two tiled shower stalls at the back to turn the water on. Paulie was not a generous owner. Complain about the cold water and he’d tell you it was called Spartan Gym for a f**king reason and that if we wanted some goddamned hot water we could go to the meatbars out west. Didn’t seem like much of a difference these days, with the infiltration of yuppies thinking they could grow a bigger dick by putting on a pair of boxing gloves.
The cold water washed away what little sweat I’d generated, but the excess energy inside me still pulsed just under the surface. The tension I’d woken up with hadn’t been pounded out of me, and I felt as agitated now as I had at the start of my workout. With all the good fighters off limits because I wasn’t supposed to hurt anyone while they were training, I was left with few options.