Unchained by Suzanne Halliday, Jenny Sims Read Free Book Online

concept. After all this time, all the years and the going back and forth, he had a home. And this one wasn’t tied to a zip code. This home was wherever his girls were.
    Making his way through the mind-numbing beltway traffic, he maneuvered the Chevy Suburban with ease and checked the mental list he kept front and center in his thoughts.
    They were just two weeks from leaving for Arizona, and he had a hard time keeping all the shit he had to do organized. Neither he nor Heather had a moment of hesitation after he showed up on her doorstep with his daughter and a hopeful heart. Some stuff was just meant to be— no matter how fucked up the scenario.
    They’d been living together as a family ever since, and he’d never been happier. Or more nervous. He and Heather had been through so much. And so had his Mia. The three of them were this odd little unit of trauma survivors, and the situational irony was not lost on him.
    So much had gone down since he and Cam rescued the sad, frightened little girl he hadn’t seen since she was an infant. Not only were he and Heather perfectly in sync with the whole parenting thing, but their emotional closeness and intimate bond had also never been stronger.
    Taking Heather to Boston for the Major’s wedding turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Where his other life was concerned, she’d been thrown into the deep end of the pool. Not only did she not sink like a rock, but his sexy psychologist-slash-lover also quickly carved out a niche on the home team bench of the Justice ladies.
    They’d been well on their way to nailing down a future together when Cam struck pay dirt in the search for his missing daughter. Knowing Heather’s background, he wasn’t sure that presenting her with a kid wasn’t kind of like tossing a grenade in her lap. But if it had been, she didn’t show it because, in every sense of the word, Heather rescued him and Bella. And now, here they were, about to embark on an epic adventure—as a family.
    His apartment was the first thing to go. As he emptied a storage space he’d been hanging on to for years, he shipped what he didn’t get rid of to Arizona. Same for Heather. Without blinking an eye, she resigned from the college the second she could and slowly and methodically sorted through her stuff. By the time they arrived out West, their belongings would already be on-site. A life waiting for their arrival.
    And speaking of on-site—he really needed to send something nice to Betty for straightening out the housing kerfuffle on that end. Drae and Cam were adamant that as a Justice partner, he should live in the compound. Because they did. And from what he was hearing, Calder was building a home on the Valleja-Marquez property too.
    Only Parker Sullivan kept his home at a distance, a fact Brody leaned on heavily when he had to put his foot down over the housing arrangements. It wasn’t that he was being a dick about living on the property. He felt honored to be part of the inner circle, but he and Heather had talked it over. Even her parents and Pops had weighed in with their thoughts. Bella would be school-age in the fall, and long-term decisions were a top priority. The sooner they could create a new normal, the better.
    They’d quickly vetoed the notion of homeschooling, which led to a brutal assessment of what life on the compound would be like for the little girl.
    She needed to be with her peers, not hanging out with a bunch of filthy-mouthed guys and a pack of dogs. They wanted her to have as much normal as possible. House in the ‘burbs. A yard for George. Local school. Kids on the street to hang around with. Play dates. PTA meetings. Girl Scouts. Dance lessons.
    Discussing this shit with Cam and Drae was an exercise in futility—mostly because they were so damn sure Alex would want Brody’s family under his protection. That part made sense, of course, but he had new priorities and looked at things in a completely different light.
    Betty—bless