Protecting His Kidnapped Family - Leslie North Page 0,57
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 not seen before—and held a baby Gracie in its arms. She’d told him when he’d first seen it an hour ago that it represented everything they’d been through the past year and what they’d triumphed over. He couldn’t argue with that. He probably wouldn’t be standing here now if not for Serena and Gracie’s love. He certainly wouldn’t be as happy without them.
He stood beside the table, going over the speech he’d prepared in his head. Man, this was more nerve-wracking than the time he and the guys at SSoF had had to defuse that bomb with just thirty seconds on the clock.
“How’s it look?” Serena asked him. “I can’t see it in the mirror yet.”
“Um, yeah,” he said, distracted.