Page 70 of Knockout (Whiskey Dolls 2)

She whipped around on me, shaking my arm off her shoulder. “No!Someoneneeds to say it! They were lucky to have you, Jude. Fucking lucky! And I’m going to make these gargoyles see it if I have to shove it down their throats!”

I would not laugh. I wouldnotlaugh, damn it!

“Who the hell do you think you are, little girl?” my father hissed. He tried to get in Layla’s face, but I pulled her behind me, putting myself between her and anyone who would dare to even look at her crossly. “You aren’t even a part of this family—”

“That’s enough!” Gram snapped, her whipcrack voice cutting off all sound in the restaurant. She stood slowly, everyone’s rapt attention on her. “That girl is my grandson’s fiancée, which makes her more my family than you could ever hope to be, especially after those loathsome words you just aimed at your very own son. I’m ashamed to call you my blood. If this weekend has proven anything, it’s that I was right in the decision I made to disinherit every last one of you. Except for Jude, of course.”

At that, my father’s face turned an unnatural shade of white, them morphed into a disgusting green as my mother pulled in a sharp breath and slapped her hands over her mouth.

“That’s right,” my grandmother continued, her lips pulling into a wrinkled smile. “As of yesterday, you’ve been cut off. Your credit cards have all been cancelled, which means whatever is currently sitting in your accounts—and given you are who you are, I’m guessing that’s close to nothing—is all that’s left. The gravy train has officially left the station. My will has been rewritten to ensure that not a single one of you gets your grubby little hands on what rightfully belongs to Jude and Jude alone. And before you think up some hairbrained scheme to try and take him to court, you should know that it’s ironclad. Not that you’d be able to afford the attorney’s fees to fight it anyway. You’ve played your last hand, son. The game is over, and you’ve just lost.”

With that, she lifted her chin, squared her shoulders and started toward the exit. “Come on, kids. This sham of a reunion is over. Good luck paying for your luxurious weekend, freeloaders!”

I cast a glance to Layla as she pulled her lip into a grimace and shrugged a single shoulder. “Nifkin?”

“Definitely nifkin. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

* * *

Layla

Jude’s whole mood had been off since that failed joke of a dinner the night before. When we’d returned to our room we’d both agreed that it was too late to load his Jeep and head home, so we’d opted to stay the last night and get up bright and early the next morning to beat any of the other Kingsleys to the door.

I’d tried my hardest to get some sleep, but I had felt him stirring all night long, felt the tension coiling his muscles and radiating off of him, his breathing uneven. The emotional whirlwind of the evening had left me so exhausted I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer and finally fell asleep some time after three in the morning.

In the car on the way home he’d barely said more than a handful of words since we left the hotel. He hadn’t even cracked a smile when I pointed out Chandler and Leah at the front desk arguing with the attendant over how they were going to cover their bill.

Jude was lost inside his own head, swimming in darkness. The gruff, hard man I’d met the day I’d moved into my apartment was back, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t seem to pull the Jude I’d come to know and love—wait, did I love him?Ah crap. I’d gone and fallen in love with him—back out into the light.

After the fourth vague, short answer to the questions I’d been asking in an effort to pull him out of his shell, I decided to give him until we made it back to the complex before trying again.

As he pulled the Jeep into his designated spot and killed the engine, my stomach was a riot of fluttering, hyperactive nerves. I moved at a much slower pace as I climbed out of the passenger seat and rounded to the back to grab my bag.

“I’ve got it,” Jude said as he lifted both our suitcases from the back and started toward the elevator, the fabric of his tee stretching over his muscles as his biceps bulged and stained with the extra weight.

The silence was nearly suffocating by the time we reached my floor. “Jude, please talk to me,” I pleaded once we were in front of my door. I fiddled with my keys, unwilling to unlock the deadbolt until he saidanything. “I know something’s wrong. Just tell me what it is and maybe I can help.”

“I told you, everything’s fine. I’m just beat.”

Frustration coursed through my blood. “All right then, come in and we can take a nap together. I don’t have to be at rehearsal until later today.”

He deposited the wheels of my rolling suitcase on the floor and reached around to scratch the back of his neck. “I think I’m just going to head up to my place. I’ll give you a call tomorrow, yeah?”

My stomach plummeted to the floor. “Tomorrow? But it’s not even noon.”

He let out a sigh that sounded like it weighed a ton. “I know, Layla, but I’ve got a lot on my mind right now that I need to sort out. I need a little bit of time.”

Panic wrapped its icy fingers around me, making it hard to breathe. I could barely hear anything over the blood rushing through my ears. “Is this because I freaked out a little bit about the whole not wanting to have kids thing? Because that was nothing, seriously. I don’t even know why I reacted the way I did. I mean, it’s not like I’m even thinking about that stuff right now—”

He cut me off, his tone insistent. “It’s not that.”

“Are you sure? Because there’s still plenty of time before we even need to think about having that conversation.”

“I want kids, Layla. Or at least I did. It was just...I couldn’t imagine having them with her. I guess it was a self-preservation tactic, that tiny voice inside my head telling me I was making a mistake, but the problem was never about having kids. It was about having them withher.”

A goofy smile cracked my face in half. “Okay then. We’re all good, so there’s no reason you can’t come inside.”

His expression morphed into one of sadness as he gave his head a shake. “Layla, please,” he said softly, those two words making my heart splinter.

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