Baked with Love

by Peggy Jaeger

  He squeezed my hands again.

  “More discouraged than hurt,” he said. “I thought giving you time and leaving you alone was the way to handle this. I was, obviously, wrong. Like I’ve said before, I suck at relationships. Ninety-nine percent of the reason Nora and I got divorced is because she claimed I never talked to her about anything, never let her know what I was feeling, thinking.” He shook his head.

  “Why did you say seeing me in the hospital gave you hope?”

  “Because I know you. You hate hospitals with a passion and have since you were a kid. But it got ten times worse when Eileen got sick. You avoid them when you can and only go when there’s no other alternative, like when Fiona drove into that parked car and broke her arm.”

  I shuddered again. “When I heard about the shooting and Cathy said you were scheduled to be in court this morning, I had to find out if you were okay. Cathy didn’t even think, she just aimed her car for the hospital. Lucas, I was so scared—” My voice broke, and he tugged on my hands and brought me closer.

  “I’m fine, sweetheart. Well, maybe a little shaken because I almost lost one of my men, but physically I’m okay. I wasn’t close to Harley. Pete, unfortunately, was.”

  “I feel so awful I’m relieved it wasn’t you. I don’t know what I would have done if…” I shook my head and stared down at our joined hands.

  “Right there’s the reason why seeing you gave me hope. The fact you’d come to the emergency room and screamed my name when you saw me told me maybe, just maybe, you were ready to believe I love you.”

  Tears built in my eyes. When I blinked, they cascaded down my cheeks.

  “And you were ready to admit you loved me, too,” he added. “Because I’ve got this feeling you do, Maureen. Like I said, I know you. You’d never have let us be together if you didn’t feel something for me. That thought’s the only thing that’s been keeping me sane this past week.”

  I swallowed the emotion clogging my throat and confessed what I should have given a voice to years ago. “I’ve loved you since I was eight years old,” I whispered after a few moments.

  He gripped my hands even tighter.

  “I’ve never not loved you. Even when I was involved with Parker and you were married to Nora, I loved you.”

  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

  I shrugged and slid one of my hands free to swipe at my tears. “So many reasons. The age difference between us was a big one for years. Then, you were married and had a baby by the time I was a teenager.”

  “But what about after Nora and I split up?”

  “By then, Eileen was sick, and I was terrified I was going to be too. Telling you I loved you, hoping we could be together wasn’t fair to either of us if I was going to wind up dead.”

  He shook his head.

  “And I know how stupid you think that sounds. My sisters and Nanny agree with you.”

  “They knew you never got tested?”

  “No, they were in the dark about it, too. I told them after, well…” I swiped at my face again. “I guess they noticed something was going on with me, so they asked. Pressed, really. It all came out in a rush.”

  “I can’t imagine they were happy about it, especially Fiona.”

  “Happy isn’t the word I’d use, no.”

  For the first time his mouth lifted in a full smile.

  “They made me promise to get tested. In fact, that’s where I was when Cathy got the call about the shooting. She and Nanny went with me to the lab this morning to ensure I went through with it.”

  “And?”

  “The results take a few days. One way or the other, I’ll have a definitive answer soon. I either have the gene mutation, or I don’t. There’s no in between.”

  His eyes flickered for a second, then calmed again.

  “I told them about…us, too.”

  His smile dimmed a bit. “How’d they take the news?”

  “None of them were what I’d call surprised. Colleen even gloated, claiming she knew all along. She can be so annoying.” I rolled my eyes and swiped at my now-drying cheeks. The moment I was done, he pulled my hand back into his.

  “I have to tell you I’m glad they know. Keeping my hands off you whenever they were around was getting harder and harder. The night Robert walked in on us in the kitchen I was at my breaking point.”

  “Speaking of,” I said, “how is he? Have you spoken with him since he went back home?”

  “Every day. He feels awful about reacting the way he did, about being so rude to you.”

  “In his mind, he had cause to.”

  Lucas shifted until his leg bumped up against mine. He brought one of my hands up to his mouth and raked his lips against my knuckles. Every nerve in my body fired. That damn battalion of butterflies came to full-flap mode again in my stomach.

  “After he calmed down, which took a few days, he started asking questions. A lot of them.” He kissed my knuckles again, then drew my hand across his cheek. “I was honest and answered every one of them including the one where he asked if I loved you.”

  I swallowed when his eyes dilated and glistened in the dimmed lighting of my living room.

  “When I told him I did, he asked me two things I didn’t have an answer for.”

  “What?”

  “First he wanted to know if you loved me back.”

  My heart was thumping so hard against my chest and those butterflies were beating nonstop, it was a wonder I didn’t levitate off the couch from all the turbulence going on inside my body.

  I swallowed again before I asked, “What did you tell him?”

  “The truth. I thought you loved me, but since you hadn’t said it yet, I wasn’t sure.” A smile pushed across his mouth.

  “Why are you grinning?”

  This time when he shifted it was to yank me up on his lap and keep me there by sliding his arms around my hips. My hands instinctively lifted to his shoulders.

  “Because his response was to tell me how pathetic and lame I was for a guy of my age and experience. To quote my son, ‘Geez, Dad, even I know when a girl likes me.’ ”

  For the first time all evening, I smiled.

  “There’s nothing as humbling as being called out by a teenager.” His sigh floated over me.

  “What was the second thing you couldn’t answer?”

  His hands pressed against my lower back and pushed me in closer. I slid my hands around his neck.

  “What I was gonna do about it if you did love me.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Again, the truth is always best. I told him what I told you the other night. I want to marry you.” He kissed my jaw. “Make a life with you.” He moved up to the corner of my mouth, then worked his way down my neck.

  It was difficult to take a full breath by the time his lips dragged across my collarbone.

  “What-what did he say? Was he…angry or upset?”

  “Just the opposite.” He pulled back and lifted his hands to cup my cheeks. “His exact words were ‘Go for it, Dad.’ ”

  Tears built again and when one of them skidded free, Lucas caught it with his thumb.

  “He loves you, Maureen. He considers you part of our family already.”

  Humbled, I shook my head.

  “Look at me.” He ticked my chin up so I could. “Again, his exact words were ‘She’s the coolest person I know, and the nicest.’ High praise from a fifteen-year-old.”

  “He’s a wonderful boy, Lucas.”

  He laid his forehead against mine and let out a breath. “Despite having Nora and me for parents, he is.” His hands slid up the sides of my hair and tugged the pencil holding my hair in place. It drifted down around us like a waterfall cascading down the side of a cliff.

  Lucas clutched handfuls of it.

  “Everything I told him was the truth, Maureen. I do love you. So much. When I was in the surgical waiting room, my mind kept drifting to you so I’d keep sane with the insanity all arou
nd me. How you look when you smile, the color of your eyes when you laugh, even how you look wearing nothing at all but all this hair splayed across a pillow.”

  Heat rushed up my cheeks.

  “I simply can’t imagine what my life would be like without you in it. If this past week has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t care if you and I have one more minute together or one hundred more years. As long as you’re with me, nothing else matters. When it’s real and right, you can’t walk away. The results of the blood test won’t change what I feel for you.”

  I placed my hand across his cheek.

  “I know you’re scared about what it’s gonna say.”

  “Terrified.”

  He nodded. “But it makes no difference what the end result is, the one thing that absolutely will not change is how much I love you and want to be with you. Please believe me.”

  Nodding, I said, “I do. I really do. And I love you, too. More than I can ever describe.”

  I pressed my torso fully against his and kissed him with every emotion churning within me. I’d missed this man so much, missed his taste, his smile, missed…him.

  “I missed you, too,” he said with a grin, making me realize I’d said the words aloud. He pushed my hair back from my face again and hauled me in close for another kiss that left no doubt of the truth of his words.

  Pretty soon just kissing him wasn’t cutting it for me. I needed to see him naked.

  In my bed.

  In me.

  “Come on.” I slid off his lap, grabbed his hands, and tugged. The moment he was upright, he shifted our positions and the next thing I saw was his back from my upside down position over his shoulder. He had one hand on my butt, the other across the back of my knees to secure me in place.

  “Hey.”

  “My way’s faster.” He proved himself correct. In no time, he tossed me down on my bed and climbed in over me, both of us laughing like kids.

  “I love this bed,” Lucas said between kisses while we wriggled out of our clothes. “There’s so much room to roll around in.” The borrowed scrub top hit the floor by the doorway, my T-shirt and jeans following it. The bottom of the scrubs went next.

  “Commando?” I asked as I raked a nail across his naked ass.

  “The hospital could only provide so much.” He pushed me down flat on the bed, then dragged me to the edge by my ankles. With my legs draped over his shoulders, he slid his hands under my hips, lifted, and put his mouth on me.

  “Lucas.”

  “Have I ever told you how much hearing you scream my name turns me on?”

  I was going to keep screaming it all night long if he kept doing what he was doing. His shoulders shook from laughter, once again proving I’d said the words out loud.

  It didn’t take long, though, before I lost the capacity to speak at all.

  Or think.

  All I could do was…feel, until a kaleidoscope of bright colors and shapes exploded behind my closed eyes as Lucas brought me to two back-to-back orgasms. Before the shockwaves ebbed, he sheathed himself and was inside me.

  “Open your eyes, sweetheart,” he whispered.

  When I did, I almost came undone again from the wealth of love flying across his features. His moss-at-midnight eyes were almost black, and I swear smoke billowed from them as he stared down at me. One corner of his mouth was ticked up on lips kiss-slicked and swollen.

  “I love you, Maureen.” He rocked back and forth within me, each movement tender and yet so powerful. “I love you.”

  “I love you more.”

  Chapter 17

  “There now, those sunflowers look grand, they do,” Nanny said when she spied the bouquet on my counter. “Eileen did love her flowers.”

  “She loved the seeds more,” both Cathy and Colleen said together.

  My kitchen erupted in laughter.

  “ ’Tis a good day for a picnic,” Nanny declared as she sipped her tea. “Have ya got everything ya need, lass?” she asked me.

  “Almost. Lucas and Robert are bringing dessert.”

  “Are they, now? Well, I’m sure ’twill be delightful.”

  Something in her tone and the cagey way her eyes sparkled riled up my suspicion-senses.

  My kitchen exploded with my family. Both sisters and their husbands, the babies, Nanny, and even Georgie were all packed around my table. The twins were asleep in their carriers, and Mac held his excited puppy to try and keep her from running around the room.

  After much thought, my sisters and I had planned a family picnic out at the cemetery to honor Eileen. Commemorating the day of her death seemed wrong, so we’d decided to honor her life, instead.

  Of course, I’d planned the food.

  Cathleen had been in charge of bringing the flowers.

  Colleen had a bouquet of balloons in her car we were going to let go into the air once we were all at Eileen’s plot.

  The Alexander men were the only ones needed, and then we would caravan off to the cemetery.

  “The mail’s here.” Sarah handed it all to me. “You all have a wonderful picnic,” she said, smiling. To me she added, “I’ll hold down the fort, no worries.”

  “Never had one,” I said as I flipped through each letter. Halfway through I stopped. You know the feeling you get when you’re about to faint? Noises around you become dim and you start to hear faint echoes? Your sight zeros in on everything right in front of you, cutting off your peripheral vision? Smells become potent, and you can feel your heart and breath quickening?

  Holding the envelope with my name typed across it and the return address of the lab made all those things happen to me.

  “Lass? What’s wrong? You’ve gone bone-white, ya have.”

  Leave it to Nanny to be the most astute one in any room.

  Cathy and Colleen echoed her question with each of them coming to grab one of my arms.

  “What happened?” Colleen asked. “Nanny’s right. You’ve lost all your color. Mo?”

  “Your entire body’s shaking.” Cathy ran a soothing hand down my back.

  Lucas and his son walked into this scene.

  “Hey,” Lucas greeted from the doorway. The sound of his voice, deep and calm, washed over me and allowed me to take a full breath.

  “What’s going on?” Lucas marched straight to me and when my sisters stood back, he handed a box off to Cathy, then wound his now-free hands around my arms. “Maureen?”

  Eyebrows almost kissing over eyes drenched with concern, he pulled me against him. The mail slid from my hands, all except the letter from the lab.

  “What happened?” He repeated his question to the room.

  “We don’t know,” from Slade. His words were echoed by everyone else in my family, all except Nanny, who—as proven true so many times—was the most aware and perceptive person in any room.

  “I think the letter she’s clutchin’ in her hands like a starving man holdin’ on to the last scrap of bone is the reason.”

  Lucas pushed me away from him, his gaze dropping to the now-crumpled piece of mail I held, then back up to my face. “Are those your test results?”

  I was able to give him one spastic nod.

  Lucas did the same. He glanced over his shoulder at his son. I’d forgotten he was even in the room. It was the first time I’d seen him since he’d stormed out of my kitchen two weeks ago. He was holding a large white box, and when Lucas ticked his head at him, Robert returned the gesture.

  Turning back to me, Lucas laid one of his hands over the letter I had clasped against my chest.

  “Do me a favor and wait a few minutes to open it, okay? I’ve got something I need to do first.”

  I didn’t bother telling him I had no intention of opening the letter. Fear wouldn’t allow me to.

  “I was going to do this out at the cemetery. It seemed fitting since your entire family was present, but I think I need to do it now before you read those results.”

  Confusion doused me. “Do what?”

/>   Lucas took a breath and swallowed.

  “Lucas?”

  “Just give me a sec.” He shook his head and swiped at the subtle sweat that had sprouted over his eyes.

  “Dad. Don’t be lame.”

  Robert’s teenaged rebuke had one corner of Lucas’s mouth tripping up.

  He huffed in another breath. “Like I said, I wanted to wait until we were all out visiting Eileen so she could hear this, too, but…”

  From the corner of my eye, I spotted Robert handing something from the box to everyone in the room.

  “Maureen,” Lucas said, “it’s no secret how I feel about you. I love you with everything in me. Not a day has gone by in too long to remember where I didn’t wake up with you as my first thought or go to sleep with your face as my last. You center me, calm me, make me feel as if I can do anything and face any challenge. There simply is no me without you.”

  Colleen’s sigh drifted around the kitchen as tears pushed their way down my cheeks.

  “I told you I wanted to marry you and then just assumed you would. My intelligent son”—he slid the boy a side glance—“is the one who pointed out I needed to ask you, not tell you.”

  “Lucas.” I was barely able to whisper his name.

  “Now, I could get down on one knee and do this the old-fashioned way if you want,” he said, pained laughter pulling on his face, “but I know you’d probably scream at me to get up off the floor.”

  “No lie, there,” Cathy mumbled with a sniff.

  “So…” He reached out, and she handed him back the box he’d given to her. He opened it with the interior first facing him. Then he turned the box around so I could see inside it.

  My gasp was the only sound in the room.

  Nestled together were five white frosted cupcakes. Each had one word written in script across the top of it in green icing.

  Marry. Me. Yes. Yes. No.

  “You can thank Robert for the decorating. He paid attention to everything you taught him and helped me put this together.”

  The boy stood next to Nanny, a cupcake in his hand. In fact, everyone in the room held one.

  “Maureen Angela O’Dowd, you have my heart, my soul, and every part of me that you want. Will you have my name, too? Will you—and just so we’re all clear on this”—he glanced around the room—“I’m asking, not telling—marry me? Make a life and a home with me? Be mine just like I’m yours? Forever?”