Hayden (A Next Generation Carter Brother #4) - Lisa Helen Gray Page 0,124
an outlet. You should set him on them,” she tells me as she waits for me to lock up.
Laughter spills out of me. “Is he still calling Hayden every five minutes to make sure she took her birth control?”
“Yes,” she admits, laughing. “She’s dreading today.”
Today we’re going to a party Clayton is throwing in celebration of Hayden’s new job and success. It has been two weeks since she was kidnapped, and in that time, her life has changed. People had read her story, and she’s now all people can talk about.
Next door’s son, who not long ago turned eighteen, skids his car up the curb, over my drive and onto his. He parks carelessly over their driveaway, which is filled with upturned cobble and dirt.
“Is he even old enough to drive?”
“Yes, but I don’t think the little bastard has a licence, and I’m pretty sure the car is stolen. Not one of them work.”
“Yo, you got a problem, mate?” the guy yells, glaring over the hood of his car.
“I’m staring at it,” I tell him, grinning.
He looks behind him like the dickhead he is before turning back to us, his gaze running over Madison.
“Want to come party?”
“With you?” she squeaks.
He flashes his yellow, crooked teeth when he smiles at her. “I can show you a good time.”
“With you?” she repeats.
“Yo, you dumb?”
“If I were to go with you, yes. Yes, I would be,” she explains, wiggling her fingers at him as she laughs. “Toddle along.”
“Kayne, where’s my beer?” a woman yells from the front door, a beer can in hand. She’s in her forties and wearing a short black tank top with a pair of leggings that flash off her podgy belly.
Us forgotten, Kayne grabs a bag from the backseat before running up to his mum.
Madison whistles through her teeth. “Lovely family.”
“Come on, we don’t want to miss the fun when Clayton and Hayden share the news that they’ve moved in together.”
“They’re going to announce that?” she asks, confused when we reach my car.
“No, I am. But it’s for their own good.”
I don’t hear her reply as I stop short next to the passenger side of my truck. A car pulls into the drive across the road, a house my uncle had bought but has stayed empty until now. I had finished the repairs a month ago, and I was surprised when he didn’t sell it on.
Sheer black hair is the first thing I notice, before a woman with a banging body steps out, her back to us as she stares up at the house.
She’s wearing navy blue trousers and a blue nurse’s top, the trousers fitting snug across her round arse.
“Fuck me!”
Madison nudges me. “You don’t have a chance.”
I glare down at her. “Of course I fucking do. I’m a fucking catch. There isn’t anyone I can’t get into bed.”
“You won’t.”
“Watch me. I’ll go over there, beg her to look at my wounds, and she’ll be naked within minutes.”
A snort of disgust and amusement comes from her. “You worry me sometimes. You don’t even have an injury.”
I wink, smirking. “I won’t need one once I turn the charm on.”
“You’re shit out of luck. Your charm won’t work on her.”
I rear back, my pride wounded. “Why do you need to be so negative? Of course she’ll want me.”
“She’s pregnant,” Madison reveals, grinning.
My head swivels back to the woman. She’s standing near the boot of her car, her hand rubbing the bottom of her back. I lower my gaze to her perfectly round stomach, my shoulders sagging in defeat.
“Fucking hell.”
Slapping me on the shoulder, Madison laughs. “It sucks to be you.”
She’s beautiful, stunning, and if she hadn’t turned around, I would never have guessed she was pregnant.
Yet she is, and I have two rules. You don’t mess with pregnant or taken women. I don’t mind kids, but they scare me. Sunday scares me and I’m her favourite uncle.
It isn’t just that though. I have heard so many women bringing men in and out of their child’s life. Their children grow attached, and then boom! They break up and that child is left confused, wondering why the person they had come to love and look up to has gone. I’d never do that to a child. I never want to be that man.
I’ve felt this way ever since a young girl, maybe nine or ten, showed up at the lot, asking for a member of staff who worked for me. Her broken plea for him to see her was hard to witness. He wasn’t nasty about it, but he wasn’t nice either when he said she needed to go home, that he and her mum were no longer an item after five years of being with each other.
So yeah, that’s why I stay away from pregnant or single mums.
I shudder when her forest green eyes snap my way. Her smile drops for a second, before she composes herself, raising her arm to wave.
“Yep, you don’t have a chance. Even if she was single.”
I give the woman a chin lift before pushing Madison into the truck. “You know me, I don’t do anything other than one-night stands anyway.”
“She’s pretty,” Madison comments.
She’s wrong. She isn’t pretty. She is stunning. But that doesn’t matter. I never fuck with women who have kids.
“Want to hit the drive-through?” I ask, changing the subject as I reverse down my drive.
“Yes, I’m starving. Hope already messaged to say Max and the triplets are already on the food.”
I force a smile at the woman standing next to her boot, still watching us, her rich black hair blowing around her.