Checkmate

“That’s because I didn’t want any of you!” Connor snapped.

“What the hell do you mean that you didn’t want us?” Johnny demanded in outrage.

“We’re a f**king catch!” Sean snapped.

“You’d be lucky to get guys like us! Lucky!” Bryce said, sounding pissed and insulted.

“I don’t want any of you!” Connor snapped.

“You bastard!” Johnny gasped as her brothers glared at him.

“Rory?” her father said, drawing her attention, but not enough to look away from Connor who was looking up at her through one swollen eye.

“Yes?”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes,” she said softly with a small nod that had Connor noticeably relaxing.

“And what are you willing to do to prove to my daughter and my boys that you’re telling the truth and that you love her?” her father demanded, watching Connor intently as he waited.

For a minute, Connor stood there, not saying anything as dread twisted in her gut. She wanted to tell her father that he didn’t have to prove anything, but she needed to know that their deal was truly a thing of the past.

Connor looked up and met her eyes as he said, “Anything. Everything. She can have my house, my business, everything that I have. I don’t care about any of it. The only thing that I want is her.”

In that moment, she knew that their deal truly was a thing of the past. Connor loved his house and would never willingly give it up. She'd been expecting a fight over it. Giving it up wasn't easy for him. It wasn't something that he'd ever planned on doing, but to prove how much he loved her, he gave it up, gave up everything for her.

She bit back a smile as she walked over to him, making a show of thinking it over. “What about the bathtub?”

“It’s yours.”

“Will you stop stealing my hot chocolate?” she asked, reaching up to cup his slightly bruised handsome face.

“No,” he said, turning his head so that he could press a kiss against her palm. “But I’ll learn to make it the way that you like it and make it for you.”

“Highland Construction is mine?” she asked, already having decided a month ago to combine the companies and run it with him.

“Yes,” he said with absolutely no hesitation.

“You’ll work for me?”

“Yes.”

“Fetch my drinks?”

“No.”

“Be at my by beck and call?” she asked, loving the way his poor abused lips kicked up into a grin.

“No.”

She sighed heavily as she said, “You really suck at interviews.”

“Do I have the job?” he asked, giving her that bad boy smile that she loved.

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said with a shrug as she turned to walk away.

“Uh, Rory, what do you want us to do with him?” Johnny called after her.

“Give him the official welcome to the family,” she said, laughing as she walked away.

“Rory?” Connor called after her, sounding uncertain and for good reason. “Rory!”

She paused long enough to look over her shoulder and wink as she announced smugly, “Checkmate.”

Epilogue

1 Year Later…..

“Who do you think we should call?” Rory asked as she snuggled closer to him.

“Your dad?” Connor suggested, not sure that calling his father-in-law at two in the morning to come bail them out of jail was the best idea, but that’s all he had at the moment.

“No,” Rory sighed, laying her arm across his chest as she did her best to get comfortable, but the bench in the holding cell made that pretty difficult.

“Why not?” he asked, pressing a kiss to the top of her still damp head.

“Because I’d have to explain to him why we got arrested,” she said with an adorable little pout.

Connor chuckled as he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer. “In a couple of hours everyone in town is going to know what happened.”

“This town sucks,” she muttered, making him laugh.

“You have no one else to blame but yourself,” he said, wincing when she poked him in the side, hard.

“You could have just said no,” she said, tilting her head back so that she could glare up at him.

“True, but you would have gone for my ni**les if I had said no,” he said, laughing when she poked him again.

“At least it’s not the worst thing that we’ve ever done,” she muttered, giving up on trying to get comfortable on the wooden bench and moved to sit on his lap.

“Put some space between you both, now,” the police officer manning the desk barked at them.

Connor placed his hand on the large swell of Rory’s belly as he stared the officer down, “If you want to put some space between us, let my wife out of here.”

“I can’t do that and you know it,” the officer said, not looking too happy about having a pregnant woman locked up in a cell. Connor wasn’t exactly thrilled with it either. If his hormonal wife hadn’t reached over while he’d been driving them home, after making another late night run out for burgers and shakes, and started rubbing him through his pants, he would have used better judgment and not turned into their old high school’s parking lot to help her take care of another craving.

In his defense, he really hadn’t thought that anyone would be able to spot his truck from the road, not with that storm going on and making it difficult to see anything. At least this time they hadn’t come banging on the window until after they’d finished and Rory was dressed. He hated anyone else seeing his gorgeous wife’s body, but it did happen on occasion when things got out of hand, kind of like tonight.

“Let’s call my brothers,” Rory suggested, laying her head on his shoulder.

“Can’t. They’re refusing to bail us out for five years, because of what happened last month at the Halloween Festival.”

“That wasn’t my fault!”

“Shhh, I know, baby,” he lied. It was completely her fault, but he wasn’t about to point that out to his hormonal wife. He wasn’t a f**king idiot after all.

“Andrew?” she suggested, sounding hopeful.

“Nope, he’s down in Boston for the weekend, helping with the walk to raise money for leukemia research”

“Oh, damn,” she said, sagging his arms. “What about Jacob?”

“Not until after six. You know his rules,” Connor said, pressing another kiss to the top of her head as he shot another glance at the clock, wishing it would speed up so that they could call their assistant. If the man wasn’t so damn good, Connor would have fired the bastard’s ass months ago, but the man was a freaking god with a computer so they were screwed.

For a few minutes she didn’t say anything and he actually thought that she’d fallen asleep, so when she climbed, with difficulty, off his lap and waddled over to the door, he was taken by surprise, but her next words had him groaning.

“I have to use the bathroom,” she announced, cradling her stomach as she leaned against the wall.

“You have to wait for a female officer,” the officer said, shooting her a sympathetic look, probably thinking that would be enough to make Rory waddle back over and sit down.