Invincible: A Family Justice Novel

Copyright © 2023 by Suzanne Halliday EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-945399-39-8 PAPERBACK ISBN: 9798389168411 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Contents Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Epilogue Want a FREE book? Also by Suzanne Halliday About the Author Dedication For my fluffy assistant, Mona, who kept my feet warm and my heart full as I finished this story. Chapter One Alex loved his life. All of it. The home that had been in his family for generations. The woman he shared it with who swept into his heart and transformed his world. The children who amazed him more with each passing day. Even when the business side of things pissed him off, he loved the agency he built from a dream. And his family, of course. The biological one he came from and the tumbleweed characters he’d lured to Bendover, his corner of the Arizona desert. He tried not to be smug about it, but it sort of went without saying that his life was pretty bitchin’. Wait. Was bitchin’ one of those expressions that showed his age? Like groovy or far out were for his parents? Oh my god—was he getting old? Panic set in until he remembered that no matter how many birthdays he had, Parker would always be older than him. It was wrong that he snickered, but he did. “Care to share?” At the sound of his wife’s question, he looked up to find her smiling down at him where he lay on the sofa with his head in her lap. She was casually running her fingers through his hair and would, from time to time, caress his face. “I was just thinking that no matter what, Parker will always be older than me.” She made a questioning face. “This matters why exactly?” He answered with a question. “Do you think I’m old?” “I think you’re perfect, but I’m biased. And besides, what is age? Just a number that has nothing to do with what’s in here.” She touched his chest above his heart. “And here.” This time, she tapped lightly on his forehead. “You’ve grown up since I met you, but I wouldn’t say you’ve aged.” A teeny, tiny rabble-rousing voice in a far corner of his mind snickered. Change out the topic of age with weight, and then let’s talk. But he didn’t say a word. The upheaval in that department seemed to have stabilized recently. Meghan wasn’t displaying the self-loathing that sometimes threatened her emotional health. The negative talk in her head had quieted. They were enjoying a lengthy period of couple’s calm, and that was what mattered to him, so instead of bringing up something sure to trigger an episode, he let it go. Capturing her with his eyes, he noted how her cheeks pinkened. He reached up to grab a handful of auburn hair and growled, “Mine.” He was a jerk for admitting this, but it meant everything that his caveman instincts made her quiver. She bent over to give him sweetly teasing, delicate kisses. “Yours,” she breathed into his mouth. Contentment swept him away. At this perfect moment, everything was as it should be. “You know,” he drawled, a smirk on his face. “We haven’t done it since returning to Bendover time. Yesterday beat our asses. The travel, the kids, coming home. I think you passed out last night in midsentence.” Her wonderful laughter filled the air. “Is this your romantic way of telling me what to expect when we go upstairs?” “I’m not sure we’ll make it upstairs.” “Alexander, behave,” she scolded in a loving tone. “Half the family hasn’t returned from New York, we’re barely back in our time zone, nobody wants anything from us, and the kids are asleep in their room. You said you wanted to chillax, so that’s what we’re doing.” “I’d chillax for real if you took off your panties and rode me hard.” She looked at him. Then at the TV. Her eyes swept the family room. She bit her lip. All signs that she was considering the scenario he laid out. A tsunami of satisfaction filled him. All of a sudden, an explosion of sound—the Villa’s front door opening and slamming against the wall—made him jolt upright. Meghan gasped. “What the hell?” The tap-tap-tapping sound of approaching footsteps was decidedly female. Uh-oh. He knew those footsteps and who they belonged to. He swung his bare feet off the sofa, ran a hand through his hair, and gulped. “Ash, honey, come on,” his father pleaded. Meghan muted the TV’s audio. She put her hand on his thigh, and they looked at each other with shock and curiosity. Hurricane Ashleigh Marquez blew into the room. She looked torqued to the max with eyes ablaze and a grim set to her mouth. She was also wearing a negligee with a sweater thrown on over it. Whatever set his mother off had happened quickly—so quickly she showed up dressed for bed with her guns blazing. Holy fuckballs. “Alexander,” she snapped in a tone far less loving than the one his wife used just moments ago when she called him by his full name.