Blackout After Dark (Gansett Island #21) - Marie Force Page 0,9
deflated him.
“Let’s get moving to the OB appointment so they can tell me how in the hell I’m supposed to carry four babies.”
Adam got up and used his free hand to help her down from the table. When she wobbled, he put his arm around her until she was steady. “Just hold on to me, sweet girl. I’ve got you.”
“It’s a very good thing I love you so much.”
“It’s a very good thing indeed.”
Chapter 4
In Los Angeles, Stephanie McCarthy had been up since four in the morning, sitting in front of a huge window that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. Grant’s Malibu house, the one thing he’d held on to from his previous life in LA, was one of her favorite places in the world. But even here, she couldn’t seem to relax. She couldn’t eat or breathe or do anything other than worry about how she would possibly sit through the premiere of the film he’d been working on for the better part of two years.
He’d written her story. Hers and Charlie’s, and from all accounts, he’d done a masterful job of bringing their story to life on-screen.
But after having spent fourteen years desperately trying to free her beloved stepfather from prison, she and Charlie were now so far removed from that nightmare that it almost seemed as if it had happened to other people.
Almost…
Some scars couldn’t be ignored no matter how well the wound had healed.
She rested a hand over the small bump of her abdomen where her baby was growing bigger by the day, even if she wasn’t showing much yet. Victoria Stevens, the nurse practitioner-midwife on Gansett, had told her that was perfectly normal for someone of her slender build. She was right where she should be, or so Vic said, with her baby due in late December.
In truth, she never had shaken the feeling that she had no business having a child after being raised by a woman who thought nothing of beating the hell out of her own daughter. Her mother had been both wonderful and monstrous, and Stephanie had grown up navigating her mother’s ever-changing moods.
Charlie’s arrival on the scene when she was eleven had been the best thing to ever happen to her, until he’d been accused three years later of the abuse her mother had inflicted.
Stephanie shook off those memories, unwilling to fall into that rabbit hole when her life today bore no resemblance whatsoever to what it had been then. From the minute she’d fallen for Grant McCarthy—which had happened almost the second she met him, if she was being honest—everything had changed for the better. It was only thanks to him and his lawyer friend Dan Torrington that Charlie had been freed and exonerated, and that was the story that would be told in the film Indefatigable, set to debut that night.
Tears burned her weary eyes. Her beloved husband had worked tirelessly to write and coproduce the film that would share their story with the world. He’d gone all out to do justice to the epic war she’d waged to free Charlie.
And she couldn’t bear to watch it.
“Hey.” Grant’s voice startled her from the disturbing thoughts. “You’re up early.”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
He sat next to her and turned so he could see her face. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Not much.” With her head resting against the back of the sofa, she turned to look at him. “Are you excited for tonight?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t know for sure?”
“I’d be more excited if I didn’t sense you melting down about it.”
“I’m not.”
He gave her a quelling look that made her feel silly for trying to downplay it. He always saw through to the heart of her. “Talk to me, Steph. Tell me what you’re thinking, and let’s figure it out.”
Her eyes flooded with tears that infuriated her. She didn’t want to be an emotional disaster area, but past agony resurrected by the film coupled with pregnancy hormones made it impossible for her to combat the overload.
He gathered her into his warm embrace. “Aw, baby, come on. Don’t cry. You know it kills me when you cry.”
She rested her head against his bare chest, loving the soft fuzz of chest hair under her cheek and the steady beat of his heart against her ear. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I actually expected this to happen.”
“Expected what?”
“That when push came to shove, you wouldn’t want to see the finished product, and that’s totally fine. I understand.”
“I wish I did. You’ve worked so hard for so long. This is the