The Prodigal Bride

He had to act. He couldn’t sit here and wait for word from her that might never come. Already nearly an hour had passed since her call.

Riley Sinclair owed him a couple days from the last time Gage had covered Riley’s shifts at the fire station. If he could—

“Yuck!” Pet shouted from the kitchen. “Raisins are gross!”

Damn. Even if he could get the time off, what was he supposed to do with Pet?

Another firefighter at the station, Cal Walters, had referred him to a babysitter that he used on the days he worked. Because his schedule at the fire station meant he was gone overnight, his sitter, Rani Ogatini, was used to extended stays with Pet.

“Uncle Gage!”

He pulled his address book out of a stack of bills on his desk and flipped through it, looking for Rani’s number. “We don’t have anything else until we go to the store. Eat the cereal.”

Pet gave a theatrical groan of discontent. Drama queen. Like someone else he knew.

Except this time. He’d heard real fear, real misery, real desperation in Zoey’s voice when she’d called.

Zoey needed him. Now. Time to act.

Punching Rani’s number into his cell, Gage set his plan in motion.

Zoey curled into a ball on the bed at the emergency shelter and tried to shut out the noise from the street. She’d cried so much in the past twenty-four hours that she’d wondered if her contacts might float away. Then she’d be blind as a bat on top of everything else. Her stomach growled, even though she’d had breakfast in the shelter’s dining hall. The baby apparently needed to be fed every two hours or her hunger and nausea returned. She’d gone out earlier today looking for a job—anything she could do for a few weeks, until she could earn enough money to get back to Lagniappe—but found nothing. She’d called to have her Visa account canceled so that Viper couldn’t run up charges on it, and because of her shaky credit history, a new account would take up to three business days to be approved. She was flat-broke until then.

Knowing Viper could come back to the motel room at any time and knowing she needed food and shelter, for her baby if nothing else, she’d swallowed her pride and headed to the address for an emergency-aid shelter she’d seen at a bus stop. Per the rules of the shelter, she could stay only two nights before finding another place to stay. But for at least one more day she had a place to regroup, a base from which she could look for work and a kitchen where she could get a hot meal. A charity shelter felt like a last resort, but because of her baby, she knew she needed nourishing meals and safe housing. She had that here. For now.

When she thought of going home, her tail between her legs, hoping her father would forgive her foolishness, a bubble of wounded pride swelled in her chest. Admitting she’d been wrong about Derek hurt. Letting her family see how low she’d sunk grated. But like the prodigal son of the Bible, if she didn’t find a job soon, she’d have to dig up some humility and face the I-told-you-sos. For her baby.

The last thing she wanted was to hurt her family. She hated the idea that her recklessness would bring shame to the Bancroft name and give her parents more reason to be disappointed with her. If she had other options, she’d jump on them. But she was at a dead end.

Her pregnancy reared its head with seesawing nausea, and she wrapped her arm around her middle and groaned. “Please, little one, Mommy’s got enough to deal with without you making me sick.” How could she be hungry and nauseous at the same time? Yet she was.

A loud pounding on her room’s door reverberated off the thin walls. Zoey sat up, holding her breath, her heart racing.

“Zoey?” a male voice called.

She froze. It sounded like—

Rolling off the bed and clambering to her feet, Zoey raced to the door and tore it open. Without hesitation, she launched herself at the man standing across the threshold.

“Gage!” Tears of joy flooded her eyes as she wrapped a tight hug around his shoulders—shoulders far broader than she remembered. In high school, he’d been downright spindly.

He stumbled back a step before catching his balance. “Oh, thank God, Zee! Are you all right? You’re not hurt or sick or—”

He squeezed her tighter, and she felt the shudder that raced through him. Wiggling free of his zealous embrace, she nodded and swiped at the moisture in her eyes. “I’m so glad to see you! I would have called you this morning, but they have some kind of block on the house phone so you can’t call long distance, and that cretin Viper smashed my cell phone,” she gushed without taking a breath. “I didn’t have enough money for a meal, much less a bus ticket home, so I had no choice but to come here. I’ve been so alone. So scared. But now …” Excitement spiked in her again. “Now you’re here and … ohmigod, I’m so glad to see you! But …” she paused and blinked her confusion, “… h-how did you find me here?”

Gage flashed his crooked grin and chuckled. “Take a breath, Zee. You’re gonna pass out if you don’t breathe between paragraphs.”

She soft-punched his arm, then took a hard look at him. He had a couple of days’ growth of dark brown beard. His mahogany eyes were rimmed with red. Lines of fatigue creased his face, and hair that hadn’t seen scissors in too long curled in rumpled disarray. He’d never looked better to her. In fact, he looked … sexy. She shook off the unexpected reaction and opted for the safer, familiar ribbing that had served her so well in high school.

“Jeez, Gage, you look like crap.”

He arched an eyebrow and grunted. “Gee, thanks.” He took her elbow and guided her inside, closing the door and frowning when he saw the dingy room. “You’ve been living here?”

“Only for the last day. Since Derek pilfered all my money for his gambling debts, free is all I can afford.” She crossed her arms over her chest and swallowed hard to loosen the knot of emotion in her throat. “I know what you’re thinking. Oh, how the mighty Bancroft princess has fallen.”

He stepped closer and brushed a tangled wisp of her hair behind her ear. “That’s not what I was thinking. I was thinking it’s a good thing I came after you. I was thinking how grateful I am that you’re safe. That piece of conversation I overheard with the guy I can only assume was this Viper you mentioned scared the bejeezus out of me. For all I knew, you’d been beaten and were lying bleeding to death somewhere.”

Almost of its own volition, her hand lifted to her eye where Viper’s slap had left a small bruise. Mistake. Gage narrowed his gaze and pulled her closer to the bathroom light.

“Gage, it’s nothing. Don’t—”

He tensed, his mouth firming to a taut line. “Son of a—! He did hit you, didn’t he?”

“Gage, chill. I’m okay.”

Jamming a hand in his hair, he turned to stalk toward the bed where he dropped heavily onto the mattress. “It’s not okay, and you know it. A man never has the right to hit a woman.” His face paled, and his gaze shot back to hers. “Especially not a pregnant woman. Are you … Is it—”

She grinned at his obvious discomfort with her pregnancy. “If my morning sickness is any indication, the baby’s fine. And for the record, morning sickness is a grossly erroneous term. I’m sick all day. All. Day. Especially when I don’t eat.”

Gage dragged a hand down his stubbled cheeks, and the scratchy sound of his beard abrading his palms sent a tingle down her spine. Had his jaw always been that square? Zoey tilted her head and studied him. No, he definitely had a more masculine cut to his cheeks and chin now. And his exercise regimen with the fire department had helped his chest and shoulders fill out. Her breath caught in her lungs. Sexy filtered through her mind again before she could stem the absurd thought. This was Gage, for Pete’s sake.

He lowered his brow in a scowl. “Stop looking at me like that. I know I look like crap. You told me that already. But I haven’t slept in more than forty-three hours.”

Zoey straightened. “What? Why not?”

He made a face that said the answer should have been obvious. “Like I was going to sleep before I found you. After driving through the night to get here, I spent the last twenty-two hours visiting every damn motel in Sin City with your picture, trying to track you down. When I explained the situation to one desk clerk, she suggested I try the shelters, too … which is what led me here.”

A warm fuzzy feeling flooded her chest. “You mean you drove out here with no idea where I was and have been flashing my mug shot around all day to find me?”

He gave a casual shrug.

More tears pricked her eyes. Damn, but pregnancy made her emotional. “That is so Daniel Day Lewis from Last of the Mohicans. ‘Stay alive, whatever may occur. I will find you!’”

He snorted. “Whatever.”

Zoey laughed and rushed to his side, throwing her arms around him and pressing a kiss to his bristly cheek. “My hero!”

He scoff-laughed. “Give me a break.”

“You know that is my favorite movie of all time. You can’t tell me that scene didn’t come to you during the whole drive out here or anytime during your motel search.”

“No, Zee. It didn’t.” He faced her, his eyes a shade darker than normal. Under his piercing stare, her stomach performed a giddy flip-flop. “I was way too preoccupied with wondering if I would be too late to help you, deciding what to do once I found you, what to do if I didn’t find you …”

She squeezed his hand between hers and gave him her brightest smile. “You are the dearest, sweetest guy ever. I’m so lucky you’re my friend.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and he shifted his gaze away. “Yeah, well …”

Shoving to her feet, Zoey tugged his arm and hauled him off the bed. “Speaking of which … if you want to help me, I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You’re going to take me to the nearest restaurant that has cheeseburgers and buy me lunch. I’m famished!”