Baby For The Biker Bad Boy (Bad Boy MC Romance) by Kira Ward

Chapter 1
     
    “This is going to be good.”
    Nola Grant dropped a box on the kitchen counter and turned to survey the rest of the room. It wasn’t a bad little house. There was lots of natural light shining through the picture window in the living room. The old couch there looked nice, set off perfectly by the white walls and tan carpet. The kitchen was clean, the counters a nice veined-marble look despite the obviously cheap material. They could make this work.
    “And we’re within walking distance of almost everything except the university. That’s good, right?”
    Her mother didn’t respond. She stood in the center of the room staring at the wall as though she could see something there that Nola couldn’t.
    Nola moved to her and slid her arm around her waist. “It’s going to be okay, Mom. It’s a new start. An adventure.”
    Her mother nodded. “I know. I just…I lived in Dallas all my life. I never imagined I would be making a new start this late in my life.”
    Nola pulled her closer and lay her head on her should for a moment. “I don’t think any of us did. But sometimes you can’t predict what might happen.”
    Her mother patted her cheek and then moved away. “Might as well attack these boxes.”
    Nola followed her lead, going into the kitchen to unpack the many plates, utensils, and pots they had chosen to bring with them. It had been quite a process, picking through forty years of accumulated stuff and choosing what they wanted to sell, what to give away, and what to bring with them. Even after that, it seemed they had too much…there wasn’t room in the sparse cupboards for most of the things that Nola unpacked. She ended up leaving her mother’s good china and some of her copper pots in their boxes until she could figure out where else to put them.
    It had been a difficult six months. Their lives had changed in an instant. Nola was two semesters short of getting her Bachelors of Art in Medicine at Boston University when a Texas State trooper called to inform her that her father had had a heart attack while driving home from work. He was in surgery and her mother was in shock. They needed someone to come take control of the situation.
    What began as a few weeks visit home turned into months of wading through the financial disaster that her father’s death had left behind. A financial wizard he was not. Her loving, funny, handsome father had taken a generous income as a pediatrician and a small inheritance from his in-laws and turned it into a pile of credit card debt, three mortgages, and numerous loans taken from several different institutions. From what Nola was finally able to ascertain from the random marks her father made in his computerized budget keeper was that he had made a series of bad investments.
    She assumed his life insurance policy would cover most of his debts and leave her and her mother comfortable for a time, but that turned out not to be the case. The life insurance barely covered the most immediate needs—the cost of his funeral and burial, the hospital bills for the emergency surgery that failed to save his life, and the most pressing of his debts. The rest…selling the house and her mother’s car had covered most of it and left the two of them with enough to get by for a short while.
    Boston University was a dream of the past. And her mother’s days as a housewife and go-to chairlady of all the local charities were also long gone.
    It only seemed logical to leave the city. Her mother had gone through enough without having to face the knowing looks of her former friends. And tuition at a state school was much lower than a private institution. If they wanted to get themselves back on track, Lubbock had seemed like the most logical step. Nola could attend Texas Tech University to finish her undergraduate degree, and her mother had already gotten a position with a small bakery just a few blocks from their rental house.
    It was a start.
    But, in the darkness of the