Free REMEMBER US by Glenna Sinclair

fluttered, and she focused on me. When she saw the wound on my shoulder, she immediately sat up, but then she did something of a swoon and fell back again.
    “Are you hurt?”
    “My leg.”
    Her leg. I looked down and realized it’d gotten trapped under the edge of the couch. She must have reinjured it in the fight. I gently pulled it out and saw that it was already swelling.
    “They told you not to walk around without the boot.”
    “Yes, well, I wasn’t planning in wrestling on the floor tonight.”
    I lifted her leg and kissed the swelling area. She winced but giggled a little at the same time.
    “My hero,” she said.
    An ambulance arrived a few minutes later. I didn’t have a chance to ask Jonnie how she happened to be there, or how she happened to have a gun. She disappeared before the ambulance arrived. When asked what happened, Harley gave them an abbreviated version that didn’t include Jonnie. Being the good boy that I sometimes am, I followed suit.
    I wouldn’t find out until later that Philip’s help hadn’t been all bad. It turned out that Jonnie, my trusted office manager, was once a prodigy for the CIA. But after some inner-office politics left her out of the promotion game, she quit and applied to work for my fledgling company. And me, being the super-security-conscious guy I am, got the wool pulled over my eyes by a few friends that she had left at the CIA. But one of those same friends also clued her in to what I was up to, and Philip’s contacts got in touch with her, giving her information about both sides of the investigation.
    She was the one who’d come to Harley this morning, and she’d told Harley the truth about who she was and what she was up to. But she begged Harley not to tell me because she liked her job and wanted to keep it.
    Like I would have fired her for being a bad ass.
    And then Harley speed dialed her when Margaret had the gun on her, so she came over. And disappeared for the same reason. She wanted to keep the life she’d built here in Los Angeles. Having the cops writing a report about how she killed a civilian wouldn’t allow for that.
    It was finally over.
    I’d said that before, but I believed it now.

Chapter 13
     
    Harley—Nine Months Later
    I started to laugh as my little sister twerked her way down the aisle of my parent’s Baptist church. If Daddy walked in and saw that, there would be hell to pay.
    Xander pulled me back against his chest as he, too, laughed, a rumbling laugh that came from deep in his chest. I loved to hear him laugh like that.
    “Do you dare me to do that during the ceremony tomorrow?” Shelly asked.
    “I’ll pay you five hundred dollars if you do,” Charlie called to her.
    I smacked my brother on the arm.
    “What?”
    “Don’t encourage her.”
    “Hey, someone’s got to inject a little levity into this whole affair. And it can’t be at my wedding because if you think our parents are bad, wait until you meet Vanessa’s.”
    “When’s Vanessa going to be here?”
    “In the morning.”
    “Cutting it close.”
    Xander’s arms tightened around my waist, his hands wrapping around my swollen belly. “I think we all are, aren’t we?”
    I groaned. This whole wedding thing wasn’t my idea. It was my dad’s. He insisted that we be married in a church. A ceremony on a beach, no matter who the preacher was, was not good enough. The marriage vows had to be sanctioned in God’s house.
    Especially with a baby due in three months.
    I just wanted to go home, curl up in front of the television, and enjoy my new life as a couch potato, but Xander had agreed with my dad. We should do it properly.
    The men in my life were beginning to take over everything.
    Bonnie walked in, her expression softening when she lay eyes on her son. She looked good. She had just come back from a long cruise to the Bahamas. After the trial and everything that followed, everyone agreed that she deserved the break.
    Grant followed close behind her. He’d cut a