SWNOVELS Chance: Chapter 1
Aurora Harper staredat the test stick like it was a stick of dynamite.
This could not be happening.
But maybe it was. Her heart certainly felt like it was.
Staring back at her, very clearly, were two pink stripes. The little key on the handle helpfully told her that two pink stripes meant pregnant.
“Oh my God,” she breathed, sinking onto the closed toilet to process the information. She couldn’t be pregnant. What about her stupid birth control implant? What’d happened to it?
She didn’t need this right now. Not on top of everything else in her life.
There was the Salty Dawg Tavern where she bartended six nights a week and took care of the books and ordering supplies. Her big brother, Theo, was the chef and part owner, but her skills were more suited to running the business than his were. They were doing really good after years of mismanagement by the person her grandmother had hired to oversee the business. She could almost taste the black columns on her spreadsheet, they were so close now.
Then there was this farmland and the house, forty acres of rolling green pastures and woods. She and Theo had inherited the property and the Dawg when their grandmother died a few years ago, and they’d worked hard to keep it in the family.
Sure, they could have sold off thirty-five acres or so and let the developers move in to build a subdivision, but she didn’t want that. Theo didn’t want it either.
He lived over the Dawg and she lived here. She felt guilty about wanting to hold onto the farm sometimes because selling the land would eliminate all their problems with the Dawg, but Theo was adamant that selling was a last resort.
Unless it got her a cure for the diabetes she’d had since childhood, which they both knew wasn’t possible.
Rory looked at the pregnancy test on the counter again.
Pregnant.
She swallowed. Type 1 diabetics didn’t have the risks they’d once had, but it was still more than usual. Which meant she was going to have to make an appointment with a gynecologist—or an obstetrician?—ASAP.
She was thirty-four, thirty-five in two months, and she’d all but given up any idea of having a child. She’d been planning to marry once, four years ago, but the asshole had left her a couple of weeks before the wedding for one of her bridesmaids.
Humiliating didn’t begin to cover it.
Mark and Tammy had gotten married and moved across the river to Decatur—thank God—where they procreated with stunning regularity. Rory tried not to look at their social media, showcasing their perfect life with their perfect kids in the historic district, but it sometimes slipped through.
They were up to two kids with another one on the way.
Ugh.
Rory blew out a breath. She had choices, she knew that, but she was running out of time and there was no potential husband on the horizon. If she was ever going to have a baby, it was now.
Except it wasn’t as easy as that. She damned well knew who the father was, and he wasn’t likely to be thrilled at the news.
She pictured Chance Hughes with his stunning good looks and Southern drawl. She’d known he was a player when she’d fallen into bed with him, but she’d just had a brush with death and she’d been in a huge fuck-it-all mood.
When you nearly died thanks to a madman who pretended to be someone he wasn’t—not to mention pretending interest in you when you were feeling pretty lonely—then you pretty much said fuck it and did what you wanted.
At least for a few crazy days.
Hot, steamy, insanely crazy days.
Rory shuddered with the ghost of remembered orgasms. Emma Grace Sutton, her bestie in the whole world, had told her to grab Chance’s ass and see where it went. She’d had no intention of doing it until he’d stormed into that tent where she’d been chained up and went all Conan the Barbarian on the place.
He’d gotten her free, cradled her against his massive body, and hadn’t let go until they’d gotten to the hospital. She’d liked it more than she should have. Liked it enough that she’d pushed away her reservations about him and let herself enjoy the attention.
And when she’d gotten out of the hospital and he’d brought her home, he’d stayed by her side every moment he wasn’t at work. Theo had been hospitalized too or he’d have been the one to take care of her, which meant she wouldn’t be in this predicament now.
Because Chance wouldn’t have been swaggering around her place with his perfect face and his fine ass and his firm muscles, and she wouldn’t have been tempted beyond reason. She’d held out for a few days, at least.
Chance had installed an alarm system in her house, cameras on her long driveway and the barn—she’d insisted on paying for all of it even though it’d been a pretty penny—and stayed as close to her as she’d let him. He hadn’t said Hotty Toddy even once.
Not that she really cared about him being an Ole Miss fan. Or, rather, she did care, but it wasn’t a deal breaker if everything else was right.
When she’d felt recovered enough—and horny enough—she’d grabbed that fine ass, at least metaphorically, and Chance Hughes rocked her world with probably the best sex of her life.
She’d craved him. And she’d been terrified of him, too. Of what he could do to her if she let him mean more than she should.
So she’d ruined it between them. Not at first. She’d enjoyed him spreading her out on the bed and making every inch of her body tingle with pleasure.
She’d enjoyed his big cock, the way he groaned when he came, how he gasped when she took him in her mouth, the way he thrust into her so slowly she wanted to scream before he drove her into the mattress with powerful thrusts that blew her mind and stole her breath.
It’d been so, so good.
Too good.
That’s why she’d had to tell him it’d been fun but it was over. She couldn’t risk the heartache if she fell for him.
Been there, done that.
He’d frowned at her. Tilted his head like a dog that’d heard a strange noise.
Her heart had hammered in her chest as he’d studied her with those green eyes. She’d been prepared for his anger, for him to fling insults at her.
He’d done none of those things. Instead, he’d nodded once, firmly, came over to kiss her on the forehead, and walked out of her life as if he’d been walking out of the Dawg at the end of an evening.
No big deal, see ya later.
Rory squeezed her eyes shut at the knot forming in her throat.
Dammit.
It’d been the right damn thing, so why did it still hurt to remember it?
Her phone dinged with an alert from the camera that Chance had installed on the fence post at the end of her driveway. She swiped her hand beneath her nose and reached for the phone.
A white truck with a decal on the side moved up her drive. She couldn’t quite make it out, but she went to grab Liza Jane, the 20-gauge shotgun she’d inherited from Gramps. Her heart pounded a little more than it used to whenever someone came to her house unexpectedly. She slipped down the stairs to the front windows.
There was a porch running the length of the house in front and wrapping around one side. There was a swing, built by her grandfather for her grandmother, and a table, but she was sorely lacking in furniture and plants otherwise.
She kept telling herself that one day she’d make the space as pretty as Granny had, but she never seemed to have the time.
A commodity that was about to get a whole lot more scarce if she had a baby.
Oh God, what would Theo say?
Rory swallowed and watched as the truck swung into the circular drive in front of her house.
D&B Properties
A man in jeans and a cowboy hat got out of the passenger seat. The man in the driver’s seat had on a ball cap with the company logo on it. He also wore jeans. He gestured to the land in front of him, to the barn, and around to the other side of the house.
Rory’s blood boiled. She told herself to simmer down, that she didn’t yet know what these men wanted, but she could guess.
She thought about going back upstairs and staying put until they left again, no matter how hard they knocked on her door. But instead she pumped the shotgun once and stepped out on the porch.
“Morning, gentlemen,” she called.
The men turned almost in unison. Cowboy hat dude pasted on a smile as wide as Texas and marched toward her, hand out.
“Hello, ma’am. I’m Ronnie Davis of D&B Properties. How are you today?”
Rory leaned against a column and rested the shotgun across an arm. “I’m not selling, Mr. Davis. Not an acre. So no need to waste your time.”
His smile didn’t falter. He came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs and gazed up at her. He had a mustache with a touch of gray in it and dark eyes that seemed to bore into her. She swallowed and tightened her grip on the gun.
“I’d just like to talk to you a little bit, ma’am. Maybe offer a number that could change your mind.”
“I don’t want to talk, thank you. And you don’t have a number that’ll change my mind. This land has been in my family for five generations, and I intend to hold onto it for at least one more. So you’ll forgive me for being abrupt, but I don’t want to stand out here and explain it anymore than I already have.”
The intensity in his dark eyes unnerved her.
“Well, now, Ms. Harper, I think that’s a mighty big mistake you’re making. What could you and your brother do with the one-point-seven-five million dollars I’m prepared to pay you?”
Rory stiffened. She didn’t like that he knew anything about her, but of course he did. She moved the barrel of the shotgun from her arm to her palm.
“Is that all?” she said as breezily as she could manage with rage simmering in her belly. “I’m not sure after taxes and expenses, it’d be worth the hassle. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.”
Davis’s smile had dimmed a bit, but it wasn’t gone. His eyes, however, bored into her in a way that made her shiver. She thought of Simon Marsh, aka Kyle Hollis, the man who’d broken into her house, hurt her brother, and then held her and Emma Grace captive not quite two months ago now.
She made herself take a slow breath. Just because Ronnie Davis was annoyed and trying to hide it didn’t make him the same as the psychopath who’d ripped her insulin pump from her body and nearly killed her by denying her insulin.
If Chance and his friends from One Shot Tactical hadn’t found them when they did, she’d be dead.
“I think you’re making a mistake, Ms. Harper. I’m prepared to discuss increasing my offer. But why keep all this land? Why not let other people have homes out here in this beautiful landscape? More residents equals more dollars in town. Surely you wouldn’t mind more money coming into the Salty Dawg Tavern?”
Rory leveled the shotgun at him. She wouldn’t shoot, not unless he tried to attack her, but the surest way to piss her off was to refuse to hear a word she’d said. It wasn’t salesmanship. It was disrespect, pure and simple. He thought he was smarter than she was, thought all he had to do was keep talking and she’d change her mind.
“Off my property. Now. And don’t come back.”
Davis backed away, both hands lifted. The man who’d been driving the truck put his hand behind his back and she knew he was about to pull a gun.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Rory growled, aiming her shotgun at him instead. He was younger than Davis. The look he gave her wasn’t nearly as civilized either. “You’re on private property and I’ve asked you to leave. I’m within my rights to defend myself if you don’t. You pull a weapon, I’m dropping you where you stand.”
“Stand down, RJ,” Davis said. “We’re leaving, ma’am. No need to get hostile.”
RJ lifted both hands and went around the truck to climb inside. Davis joined him. RJ stomped the gas pedal, throwing rocks toward the house before he sped down the driveway in a cloud of dust. The rocks didn’t quite reach her, but gravel landed in her granny’s flower beds and across the lawn. There were also two deep grooves where the truck had been parked.
Assholes.
Rory sighed and lowered the gun, her body beginning to tremble. Those men weren’t dangerous, not like Simon Marsh, but they were a nuisance. She didn’t think she’d seen the last of them, either. Not with the way this part of Alabama was growing.
She was tired suddenly. She slumped against the column, tears filling her eyes as she looked at the land she loved.
Why was it that every time she thought things in her life were looking up, something had to come along and remind her that she wasn’t that lucky?