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real grandchildren.”
    Josh’s jaw clamped down hard enough to turn the flesh a chalky white. Add to it the vein that bulged at his forehead and the way his throat thickened and reddened… Gia had to admit she didn’t think she’d seen him so mad in all their time together.
    “She is your daughter,” he stated. “She’s our child. And Gia is ours too. If he can’t accept that, then he can’t accept it.”
    “He’s my father. Dammit, Josh. He’s a man I respect and love. A man who has always, until now, respected and loved me. He’s supported me through it all, for God’s sake. When it leaked that we were an item, and when it looked like they were going to turn me down for lieutenant colonel because of it, he was still there for me. I don’t get why that’s changed now.”
    “It doesn’t matter what he thinks.”
    “Of course it does. You said it yourself: she’s my daughter,” he barked. “Only, my father doesn’t agree, and the rest of the world doesn’t either.”
    “Does the rest of the world matter? Are you going to let this hurt you badly enough that you leave us behind?”
    Feeling her skin blanch at Josh’s words, regardless of the steady warmth of the sun blanketing her, she came to a halt behind the bench. “Are you, Luke? Do you want to leave us?”
    He sat up, twisted around to look at her, and the pain on his face killed her. It grabbed a hold of her nerve endings and tugged, making every part of her ache for him.
    “Well? Do you? Is Lexi not yours anymore because of something your daddy says? That little girl loves you with all her heart, and you’re just going to walk away from that because your sperm didn’t get there first?”
    His jaw worked, and he clenched his eyes tightly shut. “Of course not.”
    “Then what’s the problem?”
    “It hurts, dammit!” he shouted. “Can’t you see that? Can’t you see how it feels to be the odd one out here? You’re Mommy, Josh’s Daddy, and I’m…I’m the goddamn extra. I’m a spare part.”
    “If you feel that way, then why haven’t you left before? You’re not a spare part to me, and if anyone should feel like that, it is me.
    “For God’s sake, I manipulated you both into being here. I knew you wanted a baby, and I wanted you so badly that I suggested taking the natural way to be in your arms once . If anyone is here on sufferance, it’s me.”
    Josh sucked in a breath. “Is that how you feel?”
    Gia realized she’d sucker punched him without meaning to. Quickly shaking her head, she lifted a hand to her brow and rubbed her temple, where an ache had started to gather. “No, I don’t feel like that. But I could. If I didn’t know I was an equal partner here, then that’s how I’d feel. And Lucas, you’re as much that little girl’s daddy as Josh is. She doesn’t care that what we have is unusual. It only upsets her when people make fun of what to her is normal.”
    “She’s not ashamed of me?” he asked, sounding like a lost little boy, and she couldn’t help it…
    She raised a leg, then lifted it over the back of the bench, uncaring that she probably flashed Josh her pussy—it wasn’t like it was the first time he’d seen it—and she climbed over. She flung herself into Luke's arms, tightening her own around him, needing him to know just how much he meant to her.
    “Oh God, of course, she isn’t,” Gia whispered. “How could you think that? She hurts because she loves us. We’re all she knows. She doesn’t care—she doesn’t know what prejudice is, and I could kill that little bastard, Billy, for breaking her little fairy-tale life. I don’t care if we have to do something radical to protect her from the world, I’ll do it. I won’t have those brats at school undermining what we have. And I sure as hell won’t have your father doing the same thing to you.”
    “You can’t protect her from the world, Gia.”
    “No? Isn’t that what parents are for?”
    “Yeah, but we have to be