Read Blake, Abby - Wild Fascination [A Bride for Eight Brothers 3] (Siren Publishing LoveXtreme Forever) for Free Online Page A

to lose your temper. You need to stay very tightly in control.”
    The man took his glasses off, rubbed a finger over his left eye, and directed his attention to Mikayla. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Davidson, but this is liable to get very ugly, and you will likely cop the brunt of it. I want you and your husbands to be prepared for what you may encounter in court.”
    Mikayla nodded, obviously determined to stand up to the woman bold enough to sue her husbands, but every instinct Ryan owned screamed at him to remove his wife from the legal line of fire.
    “Can we still make an offer?” Ty and Peter were obviously having the same thought process because they nodded in agreement to his question.
    “That would be a very bad idea. Making an offer now would show weakness, and once the sharks smell blood in the water…”
    “No,” Mikayla said decisively, “I will not run and hide over a few nasty names. I know who I am, and I know why I married all of you.”
    She glanced around the room, daring any of them to dispute her right to make that decision. Their lawyer looked quite pleased.
    “Excellent,” he said. “I think it would be helpful if you were able to take the stand, perhaps explain the circumstances of your marriages. How you met them, why you decided to marry all of them not just one or t—”
    “Hell, no,” Ryan said as he turned to Mikayla. “Sweetheart, you don’t have to do this. We’ll just pay the money. I don’t want you going through this.”
    Mikayla smiled so beautifully Ryan’s heart hurt just thinking of her being savaged by Jessie Evans and her posse.
    “It’s not about the money,” she said, touching his face with her fingertips. “It’s about right and wrong. Peter did nothing wrong. We can’t let her win like that.”
    “But I don’t want you hurt,” Ryan said as he pressed her hand harder against his face and closed his eyes.
    “I won’t be,” she said, sounding very confident, “because I have my husbands beside me, and I know that they’ll love me no matter what some nasty woman or her lawyers say.”
    Ryan nodded, wanting to say more, but also stunned by his sweet wife’s conviction. She may have looked fragile, but she possessed a streak of courage a mile wide.

    * * * *

    Mikayla tried to sound very confident. She needed to fix this. Despite the fact that Jessie probably would’ve learned of Mikayla’s marriage to the brothers eventually, she couldn’t help but feel responsible for setting all of this in motion. If only she’d abided her husband’s orders… She shook her head slightly. Nope, she couldn’t even finish that thought. Following the orders of eight bossy husbands was a sure way to lose the person she believed herself to be.
    It wasn’t easy to hide the shaking in her fingers, but somehow she managed. She glanced at Ty and Peter’s worried faces and forced herself to smile calmly. Going to court and standing up to this woman was the right thing to do, but a small worry niggled at the base of her skull. Despite everything she’d just told them about knowing they would love her no matter what, a small voice inside her whispered insidiously that maybe she was wrong.
    Her husbands knew very little of her life before meeting them, and they knew absolutely nothing of her life before being abducted by people traffickers. They knew she had no family, but she’d always managed to avoid questions about her childhood. None of them even knew she’d been in the foster care system until the day she’d turned sixteen.
    And not one of them knew what happened after that.
    Their lawyer was still talking, and Mikayla tried to return her focus to the conversation.
    “…we may well be able to convince the judge that Jessie Evans is actually the gold digger, but she plays the role of scorned lover quite well.” Mikayla smiled, very pleased to hear that she wasn’t the only one who could see past the woman’s act. “But we need to be careful, or Peter will just be