Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,80

that I’m coming along to dinner. I don’t want her feeling sandbagged.” That Sarah was pregnant with Abe’s baby would be a big enough shock as it was.

Abe ran a hand down her back, the piercing in his eyebrow glinting in the sunlight. “It won’t be so bad. My mom’s not the type to interfere in her son’s life.”

“No,” Sarah admitted. “But she adores you, Abe.”

“I think she likes you a lot more than you realize.”

Sarah wanted to believe that so much, but she wasn’t hopeful. “Go on, call her.” Get the first shock over with.

Frowning a little at her no doubt wary expression, Abe pulled out his phone.

Sarah walked ahead a little so he could talk to Diane in privacy, Flossie bounding along the very edge of the water a couple of feet in front of her. After jumping back with a yelp at being splashed by a rogue wave, Sarah’s drenched and bedraggled dog padded back to Sarah with a highly offended look on her face.

“Don’t you dare shake yourself off near me,” Sarah ordered.

Since Flossie didn’t exactly look convinced by the laughing warning, her body held in position for a hard shake, Sarah bent down to pick up a piece of driftwood, threw it as hard as she could. “Go! Get the stick!”

Flossie took off like a rocket just as Abe’s hand landed on her lower back, the warmth and strength of his big body a silent caress and his voice a familiar rumble as he asked, “When did you get Flossie?”

“Not long after our divorce was final.” Sarah wanted to cuddle into him… but part of her remained skittish, afraid of giving him even more pieces of herself.

Then Abe wrapped his arm around her and tugged her close. Her heart ached.

Sarah was glad when Flossie returned with the stick in her mouth and Abe broke contact to wrestle it from her, throw it again. It felt too good to have him treat her as precious, as beloved. She couldn’t bear it.

Yet when he cuddled her again, she couldn’t say no, couldn’t pull away. Because much as her feelings scared her, Abe was her greatest weakness, the only man who’d ever seared her to the soul.

“You get her from the pound?” Abe held her close as they walked, just another couple taking a lazy Sunday walk with their playful pet.

Eyes stinging, Sarah swallowed. “I found her on the side of the road,” she said, thankful her voice sounded normal. “She’d been hit by a car.” Sarah could still feel how Flossie’s broken body had trembled under her touch, her poor dog so scared and hurt.

“I took her to the vet, stayed with her until she was sedated.” She hadn’t even thought of just dropping Flossie off and leaving her there alone. “Then, since she wasn’t wearing a collar and had no microchip, I went back to the residential street where I’d found her, knocked on doors—but nobody knew where she’d come from. I even made up flyers and distributed them in the area.”

Like Sarah, Flossie had been lost and alone in this huge city. And like Sarah, she’d had so much love to give, her eyes lighting up every time Sarah went to visit her at the vet’s. “When no one claimed her…”

Throat thick with the memories, Sarah reached down to pet a huffing Flossie just returned from her latest stick retrieval. “I took her home, and it was like she’d always been mine.” Another petting rub before Flossie abandoned the stick in favor of playing in the water again. “She was my strength after I lost Aaron, always there, nudging me out of my sadness and forcing me to get up, take her for walks, interact.”

“What about Vance? Where the hell was he?”

“He hadn’t really bonded with the baby,” Sarah said, thinking back to how quickly Jeremy had shrugged off the loss. “It was hard for him to understand my grief.”

“Jesus Christ, Sarah, I can’t believe you’re defending that asswipe.” Abe’s voice was harsh.

Sarah understood his response, hadn’t actually been defending Jeremy: she’d just been stating a fact about the other man, one that had exposed a lack in him she’d been unable to truly comprehend. However, like most people, Jeremy had more than one aspect to his nature, wasn’t just a one-dimensional villain.

“He was kind to me after I left you.” She’d been so fragile, so fractured, her love for Abe a thousand pieces of shattered glass inside her, cutting and making her bleed with