A Game of Chance Read online

  Everyone cheered, and Nick glowed.

  Sunny laughed.

  Chance’s heart jumped at the sound. His throat got tight, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a second. When he opened them, Mary had taken control.

  “You must be exhausted,” she was saying to Sunny in her sweet, Southern-accented voice. “You don’t have to worry about a thing, dear. I have a bed all ready for you at the house, and you can sleep as long as you want. Chance, carry her along to the car, and be careful with her.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

  “Wait!” Nick wailed suddenly. “I fordot de sign!”

  “What sign?” Chance asked, gently shifting Sunny so he could look down at his niece.

  She fished in the pocket of her little red shorts and pulled out a very crumpled piece of paper. She stretched up on her tiptoes to hand it to Sunny. “I did it all by myself,” she said proudly. “Gamma helped.”

  Sunny unfolded the piece of paper.

  “I used a wed cwayon,” Nick informed her. “Because it’s de pwettiest.”

  “It certainly is,” Sunny agreed. She swallowed audibly. Chance looked down to see the paper shaking in her hand.

  The letters were misshapen and wobbly and all different sizes. The little girl must have labored over them for a long time, with Mary’s expert and patient aid, because the words were legible. “‘Welcome home Sunny,”’ Sunny read aloud. Her face began to crumple. “That’s the most beautiful sign I’ve ever seen,” she said, then buried her face against Chance’s neck and burst into tears.

  “Yep,” Michael said. “She’s pregnant, all right.”

  It was difficult to say who fell more in love with whom, Sunny with the Mackenzies, or the Mackenzies with her. Once Chance placed her in the middle of the king-sized bed Mary had made up for her—he didn’t tell her it was his old bedroom—Sunny settled in like a queen holding court. Instead of lying down to sleep, she propped herself up on pillows, and soon all of the women and most of the younger kids were in there, sitting on the bed and on the floor, some even in chairs. The twins were working their way from one side of the bed to the other and back again, clutching the covers for support and babbling away to each other in what Barrie called their “twin talk.” Shea had Benjy down on the floor, tickling him, and every time she stopped he would shriek, “More! More!” Nick sat cross-legged on the bed, her “wed cwayon” in hand as she studiously worked on another sign. Since the first one had been such a resounding success, this one was for Barrie, and she was embellishing it with lopsided stars. Loren, being a doctor, wanted the details of Sunny’s wound and present condition. Caroline was doing an impromptu fashion consultation, brushing Sunny’s hair and swirling it on top of her head, with some very sexy tendrils curling loose on her slender neck. Maris, her dark eyes glowing, was telling Sunny all about her own pregnancy, and Mary was overseeing it all.

  Leaving his family to do what they did best, weave a magic spell of warmth and belonging, Chance walked down to the barn. He felt edgy and worried and a little panicked, and he needed some peace and quiet. When everything quieted down tonight, he had to talk to Sunny. He couldn’t put it off any longer. He prayed desperately that she could forgive him, that what he had to tell her didn’t completely turn her against him, because he loved her so much he wasn’t certain he could live without her. When she had buried her face against him and cried, his heart had almost stopped because she had turned to him instead of away from him.

  She had laughed again. That sound was the sweetest sound he’d ever heard, and it had almost unmanned him. He couldn’t imagine living without being able to hear her laugh.

  He folded his arms across the top of a stall door and rested his head on them. She had to forgive him. She had to.

  “It’s tough, isn’t it?” Wolf said in his deep voice, coming up to stand beside Chance and rest his arms on top of the stall door, too. “Loving a woman. And it’s the best thing in the world.”

  “I never thought it would happen,” Chance said, the words strained. “I was so careful. No marriage, no kids. It was going to end with me. But she blindsided me. I fell for her so fast I didn’t have time to run.”

  Wolf straightened, his black eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘end with you’? Why don’t you want kids? You love them.”

  “Yeah,” Chance said softly. “But they’re Mackenzies.”

  “You’re a Mackenzie.” There was steel in the deep voice.

  Tiredly, Chance rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s the problem. I’m not a real Mackenzie.”

  “Do you want to walk in the house and tell that little woman in there that you’re not her son?” Wolf demanded sharply.

  “Hell, no!” No way would he hurt her like that.

  “You’re my son. In all the ways that matter, you’re mine.”

  The truth of that humbled Chance. He rested his head on his arms again. “I never could understand how you could take me in as easily as you did. You know what kind of life I led. You may not know the details, but you have a good general idea. I wasn’t much more than a wild animal. Mom had no idea, but you did. And you still brought me into your home, trusted me to be around both Mom and Maris—”

  “And that trust was justified, wasn’t it?” Wolf asked.

  “But it might not have been. You had no way of knowing.” Chance paused, looking inward at the darkness inside him. “I killed a man when I was about ten, maybe eleven,” he said flatly. “That’s the wild kid you brought home with you. I stole, I lied, I attacked other kids and beat them up, then took whatever it was they had that I wanted. That’s the kind of person I am. That kid will always live inside me.”

  Wolf gave him a sharp look. “If you had to kill a man when you were ten, I suspect the bastard deserved killing.”

  “Yeah, he deserved it. Kids who live in the street are fair game to perverts like that.” He clenched his hands. “I have to tell Sunny. I can’t ask her to marry me without her knowing what she’ll be getting, what kind of genes I’ll be passing on to her children.” He gave a harsh laugh. “Except I don’t know what kind of genes they are. I don’t know what’s in my background. For all I know my mother was a drugged-out whore and—”

  “Stop right there,” Wolf said, steel in his voice.

  Chance looked up at him, the only father he had ever known, and the man he respected most in the world.

  “I don’t know who gave birth to you,” Wolf said. “But I do know bloodlines, son, and you’re a thorough-bred. Do you know what I regret most in my life? Not finding you until you were fourteen. Not feeling your hand holding my finger when you took your first step. Not getting up with you in the night when you were teething, or when you were sick. Not being able to hold you the way you needed holding, the way all kids need holding. By the time we got you I couldn’t do any of that, because you were as skittish as a wild colt. You didn’t like for us to touch you, and I tried to respect that.

  “But one thing you need to know. I’m more proud of you than I’ve ever been of anything in my life, because you’re one of the finest men I’ve ever known, and you had to work a lot harder than most to get to where you are. If I could have had my pick of all the kids in the world to adopt, I still would have chosen you.”

  Chance stared at his father, his eyes wet. Wolf Mackenzie put his arms around his grown son and hugged him close, the way he had wanted to do all these years. “I would have chosen you,” he said again.

  Chance entered the bedroom and quietly closed the door behind him. The crowd had long since dispersed, most to their respective homes, some spending the night here or at Zane’s or Michael’s. Sunny looked tired, but there was a little color in her cheeks.

  “How do you feel?” he asked softly.

  “Exhausted,” she said. She looked away from him. “Better.”

  He sat down beside her on the bed, taking care not to jostle her. “I have some things I need to tell you,” he said.

  “If it’s an explanation