A Secret Vow: A Bad Boy Secret Baby Romance Read Online Free PDF

worry about it, really.” I’m glad he can’t see my face, because I’m blushing hotter than a thousand-watt lightbulb.
     
    He ignores my protests and helps to clean up the broken pottery. When the worst of it is cleared away, we stand. I can’t face him. I look at the floor.
     
    Mortar presses gentle fingertips on the underside of my chin and forces me to look in his eyes.
     
    “Come with me,” he says. I start to tell him that I can’t, that Grady would be livid, but he cuts me off with a shush. “I know you won’t say yes right now. But I want you to know that the offer is there. Whenever, wherever, just let me know and I’ll be there to pick you up. That’s a promise.”
     
    He leans down and draws a soft kiss from me before I can tell myself not to let him. My hands clutch empty air, longing to touch his strong chest again, but I push them down to my sides. He pulls away slowly, still looking into my eyes.
     
    “I don’t break promises,” he says. Then he turns and walks out, hands in his pockets, as calm as the moment he entered.
     
    I, on the other hand, am still reeling. I should feel like I did something wrong, but my whole body is ringing with a mute physical thrill like I’ve never experienced before. I shudder. The sensation scares me a little.
     
    Still painfully aware of the frantic thudding of my pulse, I draw up a chair at the wobbly desk in the corner and force myself to look through the financial documents for the studio space. Overdue and Delinquent stamps are sprinkled liberally across every page. I crunch numbers and try to breathe.
     
    Slowly, as I dive through statements that don’t contain an ounce of good news, I get my breath and pulse back under control. The sun drops outside while I work.
     
    “Knock, knock,” Grady says.
     
    I turn to look at him through tired eyes. He’s standing, framed in the doorway, just like Mortar had been when he entered. Except everything else is different. Instead of the dark curls, it’s a close-cropped crew cut seated on a meaty head. Their shoulders are the same breadth, but Grady’s body drops into a boulder gut and thighs like tree trunks, instead of the slender abs that I felt beneath Mortar’s jacket.
     
    “Let’s go.”
     
    “One sec,” I tell him. I lean over to file away a few of the papers in my hand.
     
    I hear him suck in a breath. “What’s this?”
    I look behind me to see him holding a big chunk of the vase that Mortar and I had broken. It takes everything in me to keep a straight face while I lie and say, “Knocked a vase over while I was cleaning. I must’ve missed a piece cleaning up.”
     
    “Huh.” He tosses it out the window. “Didn’t like that one anyway.”
     
    I gather my stuff.
     
    “Hurry up,” he calls back over his shoulder as he walks outside.
     
    I lock the door behind me, then climb into his patrol car, parked out front. He’s blocking a fire hydrant, I notice, and two wheels are on the sidewalk. Nothing out of the norm. The passenger door clicks shut. We peel off down the road. Grady immediately flicks on the lights and siren before tearing down the median, blasting through red lights, and cutting off drivers everywhere we go. He chuckles when he sees a car screech to a halt just before it would have struck us.
     
    “Sell anything today?” he asks sarcastically. He knows full well that I have nothing salable right now.
     
    “No.”
     
    He sucks his teeth and sighs. “Can’t wait ’til we get rid of that place.”
     
    My heart drops. Get rid of the studio? He’s gotta be joking. That’s the one place I have left, the one thing keeping me tethered to sanity instead of losing my mind in this hellhole that has become my life. I can’t let that happen. I have to tread carefully, though. His temper is a ticking time bomb.
     
    “Sell…the studio?”
     
    “Of course.” He seems surprised, like it’s ridiculous that the thought hadn’t occurred to me before. “I’m not