Free The Return of Brody McBride by Jennifer Ryan Page B

Roxy held against Rain.
    “Simple. Look at Roxy’s life. Look at what Rain’s life was supposed to be. Rain had a chance to leave small-town-nowhere behind, go to college, build a dream life with an education behind her and opportunities in front of her. Roxy had been stuck here all her life, raised in that bar by her father before he died the year after she graduated. She wanted more. Never got it. Always looking for the easy way, she never considered working hard to earn it. Then, she set her sights on you. Probably because she wanted to take Rain down a few pegs, or just because she wanted to take one of those good things away from Rain.”
    “Yeah, I was real good for Rain.” Actually, Brody thought, the only person who’d ever thought he was any good was Rain. And he’d had to go and prove her wrong.
    “You weren’t then,” Eli began, “You need to do better now. You’ve got two daughters to consider.”
    Brody turned to Owen. “Two daughters you could have told me about any time during the last six years.”
    Owen frowned. “She asked me not to.”
    “What? Why?”
    “She had her reasons,” Owen said, not telling him anything.
    “She had no right . . .”
    “You weren’t around to tell.” Eli crossed his arms over his chest. “She spent three years trying to find you, but you made damn sure you couldn’t be found. She loved and took care of Autumn like she was her own. The minute she sees you, she tells you about the girls. She didn’t hide it from you. In fact, she’s terrified you’ll try to take them away from her for no other reason than to be ornery about the fact you didn’t know about them.”
    “I’d never do that. I want us to be a family.”
    “Yeah, I got that from the kiss you laid on her. Not fair, by the way. Since you’ve been gone, she’s been a mother. It’s been a long time since she remembered she’s also a woman,” Eli said, giving him a nod when the shock registered on his face.
    His brain was on overload. Brody decided with Eli present, better to stick to his daughters than the fact Rain tasted as good as ice cream on a summer day, and he had plans for that delectable woman. Hot, sweaty plans with lots more kissing.
    “Okay, forget everything else. How did Rain end up with Autumn?”
    “Because, dumb-shit, you had sex with a viper,” Owen said scathingly. “Rain had to—”
    “That’s for Rain to tell you,” Eli interrupted. Owen clamped his jaw shut, daggers shooting out his eyes all aimed at Brody.
    Brody bit back a hot retort and the demand someone give him a straight answer. Apparently, the only one who’d do that was Rain. “Okay. What about Rain and the girls? Where are they living? Are the girls healthy? Do they need anything?” He tried to cover all the bases, but he’d just become a father and he wasn’t sure where to start. He’d planned on coming here, finding Rain, convincing— begging , if he had to—her to marry him, and then they’d have a family. It seemed so easy and brilliant in his mind. Reality sucked. Well, maybe not. He had a child with Rain. Two, by the looks of the bond between her and Autumn. That was his ticket in the door. Now all he had to do was keep her from tossing him out on his ass again.
    “The girls are perfect,” Owen said, smiling for the first time since Rain left. “They live in Eli’s old house. Eli moved to the apartment upstairs after the girls were born.”
    “I wanted her to have a place of her own, to be on her own. I couldn’t give her college and the freedom she’d worked so hard to earn, but I could give her the freedom to run her own household and raise her girls without my interference.”
    “When I moved back to town, I offered to help her financially.” Owen’s eyes grew sad. “She wouldn’t accept, except a few times when she was short and didn’t have a choice but to ask for help.”
    “So, she’s had Autumn since she was a baby?”
    “Yes. But that’s a long, ugly story. One