“You paid an agency to rent children for my baby shower?! Everyone in Charlotte knows your reproductive tract is scar tissue! Dr. Ellison’s fertility clinic confirmed four years ago that your eggs were non-viable! You are clinically sterile!”
From the open French doors of the terrace, the sound of hand-welted naval leather bridge boots stepping onto the flagstones was slow, unhurried, rhythmic, and concussive:
TACK.
TACK.
TACK.
Every step fell with the mechanical, heavy cadence of a naval battery firing across an enclosed harbor.
Walking onto the lawn behind my sons…
Wearing his full Service Dress White uniform, broad shoulders square, the gold aiguillettes of the Joint Chiefs of Staff gleaming across his chest…
Was Captain Garrett Stone, Chief Surveyor Detachment, United States Navy.
My husband.
The biological father of my sons.
Garrett walked to my side, his large, calloused hand resting warm and protective over my shoulder, his dark hazel eyes boring into Preston Holloway with thirty tons of sub-zero naval diamond:
