The door opened, and Naomi looked out. “Doc? She’s ready.”
Caleb slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, Talbot. Let’s go and pull a tiny human being out of your wife’s vagina. Damn, I might still get a nap in today. Your son cost me a good night’s sleep, my friend.”
She was ready? Ready to have their baby? His heart seemed to slow down just when he thought it would go supersonic. He heard the people around him, his friends and family, wishing him well and cheering Jennifer on. Callie had tears in her eyes, and she hugged him briefly. She said something that was probably deeply meaningful, but it didn’t penetrate. The world seemed to have slowed to a sluggish crawl, and he couldn’t hear much past Caleb’s voice.
She was ready. He wasn’t ready. Not even close.
The door opened and Jennifer was already in stirrups, her legs spread in an odd facsimile of lovemaking—but this wasn’t sex. It was the product of sex. It was pain and work and creation and he had no real place here.
Jennifer screamed, her face red as she pushed.
Caleb looked between her legs and smiled. It was a surreal moment. He settled onto the stool at the foot of the bed. “There you go, Jen. You’re doing great. He’s crowning. Another couple like that and we’re all done here. Easy breezy.”
“Easy breezy, my ass, Caleb Burke. You try shoving a bowling ball through your hoo-haw.” Jennifer snarled his way.
Caleb just kept on smiling. “I have never in all my life been disappointed I was a guy. Stef, take her hand. She needs to break something. Let’s go.”
Another contraction seized his wife and he did as Caleb asked, feeling like a zombie the whole time. He wasn’t really here. It was a weird dream. Jennifer screamed as she pushed, squeezing his hand until he thought it would crack.
“Oh, there’s a boy. The head’s almost out, sweetheart. One more push should do it. Do you want to see, Stef? Miracle of life is right here,” Caleb offered.
The miracle of life was bloody and sweaty and he didn’t want to see a head coming out of his wife’s vagina. He clung to Jennifer’s hand. “I’m fine.”
He was so far from fine.
Jennifer turned her face up. “It’s okay, babe. Oh, god.”
She squeezed again, every muscle in her body tense as she pushed one last time. She relaxed suddenly, a bright smile on her face.
“Hello, Logan. Welcome to Bliss, son.” Caleb was holding something bloody and squirming in his hands. He handed the tiny thing to Naomi, who wrapped it in a blanket and started to coo. “Stef, come cut the cord.”
“No, I don’t want to do it. You do it.” He wasn’t a doctor. He might screw something up.
“Wimp.” Caleb placed a clamp in place and used the scissors and cut the cord that bound mother to child. “Show momma her baby boy and then we’ll get all the after parts done.”
“After parts?” That wasn’t the worst of it?
“It’s nothing,” Caleb said. “Just some afterbirth. As in everything having to do with this process, Jen is going to do all the hard work. You just hold that baby.”
“He’s not crying,” Jennifer said, sitting up a little.
Naomi was right there, placing the baby boy on the nursery station. “Because he doesn’t have anything to cry about. He’s perfect, Jen. Apgar of nine. He’s seven pounds nine ounces of pure Bliss baby boy.”
Jennifer held the bundle in her arms, her eyes wide with wonder as she stared down at the baby they had made together. “Hello, Logan. Oh, Stef, he’s perfect. He looks just like you. He has your hair.”
But Stef held back. He couldn’t feel anything—just a numb awareness that he was glad this part was over. Jennifer seemed fine. The baby seemed fine. And Stef just felt numb.
Jennifer looked up at him. “Hold him, Stef.”
She thrust the little bundle at him. It was too small for his hands. He would fumble. His wife would kill him if he dropped their son. She’d just worked so hard to bring him here.
He had a son and he still felt numb. Julian had told him he would feel something but he just felt nervous about Jennifer yelling at him if he dropped the baby.
There had been no grand revelation. No magical waterfall of feelings had rained down on him. He was just tired, and he wanted to make sure his wife was all right.
He held the baby close to his body because it seemed like the best way to not drop it. Him. He had to start referring to the baby as him. Although Caleb was really bad at reading sonograms. It wouldn’t be the first time. “Is it really a boy?”
Jennifer frowned. “Yes, Logan’s a boy. You weren’t watching?”
“Of course.” He hadn’t really wanted to watch. He’d just watched her. He’d just held her hand and prayed to get through it.
Naomi was suddenly at his side. “Here, let me have him. We’ll get him cleaned up and ready to meet his family.”
He gave the baby up in a heartbeat.
“Follow her,” Jennifer urged. “I don’t want him to be without one of us.”
He didn’t want to leave her, but he knew damn well there were some orders even a Dom followed.
Naomi set the baby in a small bassinet and the blanket fell away. Logan cried out at the loss of his warmth, a loud roar of a cry. Naomi had cleaned him up initially, but now she set about washing him.
Stef looked down at the small thing whose eyes were still closed. His legs were kicking and his arms jerked.
It was kind of cute in a tiny human way. And definitely a boy.
“Here, wipe down his belly, Mr. Talbot. It’s his first bath. Be careful of the cord.” Naomi pressed a warm cloth into his hand.
Stef shook his head. “No, I don’t know how.”
“Sure you do.” Naomi stepped away.
The baby squirmed, but he’d stopped wailing. He had a tuft of dark hair, and it was easy to see that he had the Talbot nose and the same stubborn chin he saw in the mirror every day. DNA had worked to make the baby a mini version of himself. He gently rubbed the cloth across the baby’s little belly.
And Logan Talbot’s eyes opened for the first time. He looked up at his father and those green eyes hit Stef Talbot with the force of a lightning strike.
He had Jennifer’s eyes, those same eyes that stared at him with amusement and made him look at the world in a different way. Those eyes were right there, and he suddenly understood.
Jennifer’s eyes, her heart, and her soul would live on in this child. She would teach him to view the world with her amusement, her open heart. She would house her love in this boy so that when she was gone, her love would live on in Logan and his children and his children’s children, a long line of hope and faith that sprung from his wife’s pure heart—and from the love he felt for her.
His son. His son was kicking his legs and staring up at him, an amused expression on his tiny, perfect face.
This son would run through Bliss, likely trying to catch up with Charlie and Zander and looking for the maximum amount of trouble he could cause. He would sleep in the woods and get scared by Maurice. Mel would train him to look for aliens and Stella would finally have the grandchild she’d longed for. Logan Talbot would sit at Stella’s Café, his feet not quite touching the ground, downing pancakes and feeling like a big man.
He would grow up here. He would love this place.
And Stef would show him the world.
Suddenly he knew there was only one thing that mattered about being a father. He would screw up. He would do it multiple times. He would want to pull his hair out over and over again. But now he wasn’t afraid because there was only one real promise he had to keep.
He looked at his son, reaching out to touch that sweet little face. Logan’s hand touched his.
“I will never leave you.”
And in that moment, Stefan Talbot became a dad.
Chapter Twenty:
Aidan, Lexi, and Lucas
Lucas sighed as Aidan pulled the truck into the drive. “What happened to her phone again?”
br /> Aidan put the car in park. “Abby said it died. It won’t hold a charge anymore, and Lexi threw a near hysterical fit until she promised we would get her a new one. She was ready to drive her into Alamosa herself but I convinced her to meet us at the G.”
“So we’re taking her into town? Isn’t it kind of late for that?” As far as Lucas was concerned, the phone could rot. He would never buy her another one again. He felt guilty, but there was a little part of him that wished they were still back at Trio. He’d been able to forget some of his troubles with all the craziness going on there.
“No. I told Abby to bring her back to the G so we could lay out a few new rules. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, Lucas. I’ve been neglectful. I haven’t been doing my job because I got distracted.”
“By the shit with the city council?” He’d been angry that Aidan had let it go on so long without bringing him in. “That could have gone very poorly.”
Aidan’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, and he stared out the window. “I don’t like bringing you into ranch business.”
Another thing he had a problem with, but then he’d spent the afternoon watching Jack and Sam. Sam could act like a goofball, but there was no question he was Jack’s partner. “Sam is a true sub, yet Jack treats him like a partner when it comes to that ranch. Hell, Finn is as submissive as they come, but Julian never hesitates to use his skills.”
If this had happened to Julian, Finn would have been in on the plans from the beginning. Julian would have dumped it into Finn’s lap and fully expected him to deal with the situation.
But Aidan apparently didn’t trust him.
Aidan’s eyes closed briefly. “You don’t understand. Sam was in on the ground floor of Barnes-Fleetwood.”
Well, of course. He was tired of it, tired of being shoved to the side. He undid his buckle and opened the door. “Yeah, well, tell me how it goes with Lexi.”
“Lucas, get back here this second.”
But he was exhausted. “No. I’ll head out to the motel. I’d like a night to myself.”
The car door slammed behind him and suddenly Lexi was standing on the porch, her eyes hollow as she stared at them. “Lucas?”
“I’m not taking you into town.” He brushed by her. She wouldn’t care that he was leaving. She would only care that he wouldn’t give her a new phone. She shut him out the same way Aidan did. She didn’t even ask him to read her contracts anymore.
He wasn’t even sure why he was around.
He stopped. He couldn’t walk away, because Aidan and Lexi might not need him anymore, but Jack and Chelsea sure as hell did.
“Lucas.” Aidan stormed up the steps. “You are not going anywhere.”
Once again, he’d done exactly the wrong thing and made an ass of himself. “Of course not. I apologize. I’m going to go and spend some time with Jack and Chelsea.”
He would hold his kids and maybe they would remind him that he had something to offer.
“They’re not here,” Lexi said. “What’s going on? Why are you two fighting?”
“What do you care?” Lucas was feeling a little mean. She only paid attention to him when he was fucking up. Come to think of it, Aidan really only paid attention when either Lucas was screwing up or Aidan was horny. “And where are my kids?”
“Momma took them,” Lexi explained.
So now she was sending his kids away without talking to him about it. “Tell her to bring them back.”
Aidan got in between them. “Lucas, you need to take a time-out.”
So he got treated like a child? “You know what? You don’t get to order me around, Aidan.”
Aidan seemed to grow two inches. “I don’t? Because maybe I don’t understand the nature of our agreed-upon relationship.”
“You should both stop fighting,” Lexi said, her voice soft.
But he wasn’t about to listen to her either. “Maybe you don’t. Maybe we have different versions of what a Master should do. You don’t get to let her run wild while controlling everything I do.”
“I do not control everything you do, Lucas.”
“No, you’re far too busy running your ranch and Lexi is too busy becoming a best-selling author to be actual functioning members of a marriage.”
“Lucas, you misunderstood me. Calm the fuck down.” Aidan stepped up, using his height and bulky body to crowd Lucas.
“Please don’t fight,” Lexi said, putting a hand on both of them.
“You can’t step in after months of ignoring us and expect that we’ll fall in line, Alexis. Go inside. This is between me and Lucas,” Aidan said.
“Lots of things are just between you and Lucas.” Lexi sounded vulnerable.
“Don’t you blame me for that,” Lucas shot back, well aware that they were out in the open where anyone could be listening in, but it didn’t really matter. If Aidan didn’t value him and Lexi didn’t need him, nothing much mattered.
“I don’t, babe.” She hadn’t called him babe like that in months, not in the soft sweet way she used to.
“Are you challenging me, Lucas?” Aidan seemed to not notice that something was different about Lexi.
“I haven’t challenged you enough.” He said the words, but now he was looking at Lexi, seeing the tired look in her eyes, the way her mouth turned down. He’d spent so much time being angry with her that he hadn’t really looked at her in months. He hadn’t taken the time to study her. Lexi wore her worries on her face. She’d always been unable to hide from him. She could shut down, but then he would know something was wrong.
Lexi hadn’t been the only one who had shut down. Lucas had stopped trying somewhere along the way. He’d allowed his own private hurts to become his world.
Marriage didn’t end at the “I dos.” It didn’t stop being hard just because they had decided to be together. He’d thought they would magically just get along once it was all settled, but that wasn’t true.
Marriages could end. Marriages could crumble. People could grow apart. They could become invested in their own worlds, believing that the people they loved would always be there because they had said some words and signed some documents.
Words didn’t keep lovers together. Documents didn’t make a marriage.
People grew. They changed, and he suddenly realized that they could change together or grow apart and it was all their decision.
“Stop.”
“We’re not stopping anything, Lucas.”
His Master was on edge, and Lucas had done nothing to help the matter. He’d broken their contract by not communicating with him. “I’m very angry with you right now, Master.”
Now that he was saying the words, there was no real heat behind them. Emotion, for sure, but just speaking them out loud, the simple act of being heard, lessened his anger.
And his Master’s, it seemed. Aidan’s angry look softened. “I know you are.”
“And I’m mad at you, Lexi.”
She nodded. “You should be.”
“We have to be more important than your career.”
Her skin had paled to a waxy color and he reached out for her, but she stepped away, shaking her head. “No. Don’t. Not until you’ve heard what I have to say.”
“And me.” Aidan didn’t pull away. He took Lucas’s hand. “You misunderstood me, Lucas. I might have made some mistakes, but you have to hear me out.”
Because that was what people who wanted to stay in love did. They listened. They talked. They forgave. “All right. Aidan, it hurt when you told me that I shouldn’t feel like I had a claim to the ranch because it belongs to you.”
“I didn’t say that. I have never said that and never once felt that way.”
Lexi’s eyes were on the ground. “But the land has been in your family for years. You love that land.”
“Yes, I do. It’s O’Malley land, and you two are missing out on the fact that you’re both O’Malleys and so are our children. That’s not why I’ve kept you out of the busines
s. I’ve kept you out because it hasn’t been much of a business up to this point. It’s been a money pit and you know it. Both you and Lucas brought money into this marriage and all I brought was a place to throw it the last couple of years.”
Lucas shook his head. “That’s not true.”
“Who paid for the house?” Aidan asked.
Lucas sighed. “I wanted to buy the house for us. The ranch house was getting too small.”
“I’m the Master. I should be the one to provide. At the very least, I should be able to pull my own damn weight. This year we should finally see a profit. Don’t think I don’t know that I wouldn’t have made it to this year without Lexi’s dad. I wouldn’t have made it without you, Lucas and Lexi. So I try to keep you out of it because you’ve already done your part.”
This was what made him crazy. “There is no part to this. Aidan, I can call you Master all you like, but at the end of the day this is our life and our home and I don’t have some part that you can stick me in and say this is what I’ll give or let you give back to me. I want to help with the ranch because it’s yours and mine and our babies’. Can’t you see it doesn’t mean as much if I don’t help? You said Sam was in on the ground floor. Yes, he was. They didn’t have a damn thing before. Well, I don’t care that the ranch has been in your family. It’s our family now, and if you won’t rely on me, then I’m not worth much.”
“I know. And I’m sorry. You have to understand. I wasn’t trying to cut you out. I was trying to offer you something. I wanted to turn the ranch into something that was worthy of you.”
“Everything you do, everything you have is worthy. Let me help you build it. I should be the first person you call when we have trouble, not the last.”
“Oh, god.” Tears were pouring down Lexi’s face. “Oh, god. I cost us the ranch. We’re going to lose the ranch because of me.”
Lucas had to catch her before she fell.
* * * *
Lexi shook her head as she started to wake up. Had she actually fainted? She seemed to be on a bed. Someone had taken off her shoes, and she could feel a hard body pressed behind her.