In His Keeping (Slow Burn #2)

“The other important thing—really the only important thing—is that I love you both so much. And you are my parents—my family. Blood doesn’t make a family. Love does.”


The words, the sentiment or epiphany—whatever she wanted to consider it—had come to her in the worst of circumstances and now, giving voice to them, made it all the more real.

Tears spilled down her mom’s cheeks and her father turned his face away so she wouldn’t see the emotion churning in his eyes. But she had glimpsed it. Just before he turned away.

Beau’s hand tightened around hers in silent support. She waited for her parents to collect themselves before she said anything further. When they seemed more controlled, she continued.

“At first I was hurt—devastated,” she admitted. “The idea that I was unwanted, unloved, left on someone’s doorstep to die if no one came.”

She broke off. Despite being at peace with her past, a knot had still formed when speaking of her birth parents.

“Oh baby,” her mother whispered. “You are so very loved.”

Beau cleared his throat, clearly wanting to say something, but he seemed to battle whether to do so or not. Then he sighed and ran his free hand over his head, a signal of his agitation.

“Ari, the night you were taken from the safe room, when we all left the house to engage the threat against us . . . I tripped over a body. It was a man who’d been badly beaten. In fact I didn’t think he was even alive. But then he spoke and he made me promise to give his last words to you.”

Her eyes rounded with shock and her parents gave him a look of equal bewilderment.

“Me?” she asked, flabbergasted over Beau’s statement.

Beau took a deep breath and squeezed her hand, lacing and unlacing their fingers, hesitating a fraction of a second longer.

“He was your birth father.”

“What?”

“Oh my word,” her mother whispered.

Her father remained silent, his expression and features stoic. He’d frozen the moment Beau had dropped the words “birth father.” At least he hadn’t said father. Because that would have been an insult to the man who was her father in every way except blood.

“I have to back up a little,” Beau admitted. “He called me a few days before. Not long after you came to me for help. And he warned me. He told me what they’d done to your birth mother in order to glean information about who your adopted parents were.”

Ari’s hand broke free of her parents’ grasp and she brought it over her mouth as a gasp escaped.

“I won’t go into the details,” Beau said in disgust. “There’s no need. These people are—were—animals. But then I neither heard from him again, nor did I ever see him in person until that night. When I found him outside. And he made me swear that I would give you his message.”

“What was it?” Ari asked, her voice catching.

“That he loved you. That your birth mother loved you. And that when they discovered the true intentions of the surrogacy foundation who funded your birth mother’s pregnancy, they ran. They had several close calls, so after you were born they went to . . .”

He broke off and closed his eyes as if what he would say next hurt him more than it would her.

“They went to my father,” he said hoarsely. “Because he was an active donor/participant in the foundation, and they begged him to take you in and raise you. So you’d be safe.”

Her father closed his own eyes when Beau spoke the last and Ari frowned, realizing this hadn’t come as a surprise to him.

“My father,” he said, with bitter emphasis on the word, “refused and instead sent your birth parents to . . . them.”

Beau pointed at her parents as his words trailed off.

“I’m very glad that he did,” Ari said softly.

She reached up to touch Beau’s jaw, sliding her thumb over the hard cheekbone.

“I would hate to think of us as having been raised as siblings. That would put quite a kink in our relationship, don’t you think?”

And then she groaned.

“Oh my God. Forget I said that. I did not mean it that way.”

“Jesus,” her father muttered, reaching to cover his ears. “There’s only so much a father can take, Ari.”

Her mother was battling a smile and Beau looked baffled, almost as if he’d fully expected her to think he was repugnant because of the kind of man his father was.

“It would indeed put a kink in it,” her mother said with a completely straight face.

“Enough!” her father groaned.

Beau went tense again, and he was studying her father intently.

“There is one thing I’d like to know,” Beau said in a quiet tone.

Since it was obviously directed at her father, he nodded in Beau’s direction.

“You went to see my father the day before he died. Ari would have been around two years old then. Both my father and my mother died the next day. They were murdered.”