The hotel room was shut tight.
Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows, blocking out most of the light. The whole place was dim, almost suffocating.
"Miss Serena, Mr. Hargrove’s episode is acting up, and someone tampered with his drink. Please, get here now!"
Serena Whitmore’s mind blanked for a second.
She was worried sick, but before she could even fully process what she’d just heard, the moment she stepped into Damien Hargrove’s room, a heavy body shoved her straight onto the bed.
At her ear was the sound of a man breathing.
And that familiar warmth. That familiar scent.
Even through the layers of fabric, she could still feel the hard, powerful lines of his body.
"Mr. Hargrove!"
Serena called out softly, carefully, to the man whose mind was already lost in chaos.
She tried to make out his face through the darkness.
Damien Hargrove was the man she had loved down to her bones, yet never once dared to confess it.
He carried almost her entire youth on his shoulders.
He was eight years older than her.
Five years ago, he had descended into her life like a god out of nowhere, pulling her out of the abyss and bringing her back to the Hargrove family.
Just as Serena’s thoughts started drifting, his deep voice suddenly sounded above her head.
"Who are you?"
"I..." She didn’t dare tell him that she was Serena Whitmore.
She was scared that the second he knew, he would hate her. Reject her. Be disgusted by her.
He suddenly lowered his head and buried it in the pale hollow of her neck, his voice hoarse to the extreme.
"You smell... really good."
"Mr. Hargrove!"
Serena Whitmore’s voice was tiny, barely there, and her whole body trembled with nerves.
Then his burning lips came down without warning.
Serena felt a jolt shoot straight through her heart, like a live wire brushing past it.
His fingers slid gently through her soft black hair. It was smooth as silk, so nice it made people not want to let go.
He lingered, moving from kiss to kiss until he reached the corner of her lips. His voice was low and rough, crazy seductive. "Still sweet."
That large hand climbed to her slender waist...
One month later.
Serena Whitmore found out she was pregnant.
But a string of sudden disasters had pushed things between her and Damien Hargrove all the way to freezing point.
To keep the baby from being taken from her, she left the country alone and secretly gave birth.
What Serena never saw coming was that she would deliver four babies in one go.
And all four were boys.
...
Three years later.
A modified black Wrangler tore down the Qinghai-Tibet highway through Kekexili, racing across the vast no-man’s-land more than four thousand meters above sea level.
The borderland sky was clear for thousands of miles, not a single cloud in sight. It felt so close to the sun that the blazing light was almost too harsh to look at.
On both sides of the asphalt road, the Gobi desert swept backward at high speed, blurring into streaks of shadow.
The car was moving so fast that the split patches of camel grass on the gravel flats couldn’t even be made out clearly anymore. They only looked like scattered flecks of green light pinned across the wilderness.
Inside the off-road vehicle,
a pair of porcelain-white, slender hands rested lazily on the steering wheel.
Wind rushed in through the window, teasing her ink-dark hair into a mess, yet it did absolutely nothing to dim that breathtaking face of hers.
Right then, the phone set beside her suddenly rang.
She tapped her Bluetooth earpiece and picked up.
"Boss, where are you? Someone at our base got hurt, and... I think you know him."
"Know him?" Serena Whitmore frowned, her brows drawing together.
This was the no-man’s-land of Kekexili. How on earth would she have an acquaintance out here?
"Boss, get back here fast. He’s badly hurt. Lost a ton of blood."
"Five minutes."
Serena Whitmore ended the call and yanked the steering wheel hard.
The tires scraped against the road with a sharp, grating screech.
Not far away, the wild yaks and Tibetan antelopes that had been feeding were startled enough to lift their heads and stare over.
Her foot slammed down on the gas.
The black SUV shot down the road, leaving behind nothing but a fading blur...
—
This book is currently complete: a super sweet, feel-good read with five adorable kids
four biological + one not
, so dive in without worry.