House of Payne: Ice

by Stacy Gail

  A picnic.

  “Hope you’re hungry, because I played hell sneaking all this shit up in here.” Ice grinned smugly as she gaped. A red-checked cloth covered the padded tattooing table, while a couple votive candles burned on the stainless steel instrument tray. A basket of mini croissants and a tray of smoked meats and cheeses were on the table, along with pear slices and grapes. While she tried to pick her jaw up off the floor, he grabbed a couple coffee mugs and poured wine into each of them before holding one out to her. “I know you’ve got one crazy-ass schedule, getting things ready for Hannah’s baby shower tomorrow and then you have the expo throughout Labor Day weekend. I’ve barely seen you since you’ve been over at the convention center with Scout getting shit set up, so fuck it. I’m having lunch with my wife. If Payne’s got a damn problem with this, he can fucking fire my ass.”

  “If you go, I go.” His thoughtfulness made her eyes sting, and with a touched little laugh she crossed to him to take the mug he held out to her. But instead of taking a sip, she set it aside so she could hug him with all her might. “We’re a team, and this team stays together no matter what.”

  “Damn straight.” He slid his fingers through her hair, now almost to her shoulders and frosted platinum at the tips, before his mouth descended to hers. He kissed her long and slow and so thoroughly she found she had to gasp for air when he finally lifted his head. “Now that’s what I’m talking about. A kiss like that gives a man a hunger that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with food.”

  Aw. “I win, because I’m starving for both you and food, and if I don’t eat soon I’m going to faint.”

  “Can’t have that.” Smiling, he guided her into the seat he normally used while tattooing his clients, and reached into a picnic basket on the floor for a couple plates. “How’d your dentist appointment go? You didn’t kiss like you were numb anywhere.”

  “My dentist appointment.” She accepted the plate he handed her and stacked a chunk of cheese onto a slice of summer sausage. Mm. Delicious. “About that. It wasn’t a dentist I had an appointment with. It was an OB/GYN.”

  He went still. “You told me dentist.”

  “I told you dentist because I didn’t want to tell you that I thought I might be pregnant, because I didn’t want to jinx anything. So I lied and I’m sorry about that, because I know how you hate lies and secrets. But this was really important to me, and I didn’t want you to feel disappointed if I wasn’t pregnant, so I—”

  “Sunny.” Setting aside both his plate and hers, he stood before her to gently cup her face while his eyes burned with a light she’d never seen before. “You carrying my baby, baby?”

  “Yeah.” She still couldn’t believe it. “I am.”

  He was silent for so long she began to worry. Then he pulled her out her chair and crushed her against his chest in a fierce yet breathtakingly careful embrace. Already, she marveled, hugging him back. Already he was protecting his child.

  Her man was such a man.

  And she was his woman.

  And the mother of his unborn child.

  Sometimes life really could be perfect.

  “I have no goddamn clue what a good dad does, but maybe knowing what a shitty dad does is good enough of a roadmap on how not to be. I want our kid to be happy, Sunny day.” His voice was rough and almost unrecognizable with emotion as he whispered into her hair, and the sweetness of it brought tears to her eyes. “I want our kid to know he or she is loved. Happy and healthy and loved. I want our baby to know they’re not being brought into this world to close a deal, but because we want him or her to be here with us, loving life and being crazy. That’s all I want. You think that’ll be enough?”

  “It’s more than enough.” Laughing because the joy inside was too much to contain, Sunny latched her hands behind his nape and gazed up into his beautiful eyes. “It’s everything.”

  The problem with throwing a baby shower while pregnant was that it wasn’t cool to steal the mom-to-be’s thunder by letting everyone know the good news, Sunny thought as she hustled to refill the punch bowl. Around thirty of Hannah’s friends and family had gathered to celebrate the imminent arrival of her best friend’s baby boy, and the focus was justifiably on her. For her part, Hannah was positively radiant, her small frame only accentuated by the pumpkin-sized belly sitting in her lap while present after present came her way. Several men had shown up as well, but thankfully Ice and Matt were happy to keep the guys out of the way in the media room with a slow cooker full of queso con carne, as well as tortilla chips, chocolate cake, soda and beer. As long as the men were fed and had a movie-sized TV screen to keep them entertained, the testosterone level was one thing she had a handle on.

  “The baby Mad-Lib we put together last night was a hit with the ladies,” Sunny murmured to her mother as Claire joined her at the buffet table. “Did you check on Spike? Is she okay?”

  “She’s found a lovely sunny spot right in the middle of your bed and is currently belly up and snoring. She lived in a café, darling, so I doubt a gathering like this is going to rattle her.”

  “Good deal. With that worry off my list, I can concentrate of other things, like getting more queso and beer to the guys.”

  “In my day, men wouldn’t have been caught dead at a baby shower,” Claire muttered just as a muffled roar came from the direction of the media room’s closed door. Deftly she began filling in bare spots on the three-tiered silver server with more blue-topped cupcakes. “I don’t know what to think of it. It’s like they’ve discovered how wonderful all our female get-togethers are, and now they want it for themselves. Why don’t they start a new trend and throw daddy showers for each other instead?”

  “Can you imagine what kind of party that would be? A bag to Cheetos, a keg of beer and a rousing party game of seeing who can hold the longest burp.”

  Claire snorted. “Since your place looks gorgeous with balloons and streamers everywhere, I’ll just assume from that comment that Ice didn’t help you decorate for the party.”

  “Good guess.” Chuckling, Sunny transferred little sausages wrapped in delicate phyllo dough to resemble swaddled infants from a baking tray to a doily-lined platter. “Party prep isn’t Ice’s thing, but that’s not because he’s a guy. Damien trained him to think of parties as information-gathering opportunities, so he wasn’t all that hyped that I’d volunteered to host the shower here. But when I told him he could do his own thing while we ladies did our best to shower Hannah with all the presents she and her baby could take, he calmed down. Slowly but surely, I think he’s realizing there’s goodness in the world, and that it’s okay to trust in it.”

  “Damien did so much damage wherever he went, but the worst of that damage was inflicted on the good man he dared to call son.” Claire shook her head in disgust before her expression melted into one of concern. “How’s Ice holding up while the justice system deals with Damien?”

  “He’s a rock, like always, but I know deep down he can’t wait to see Damien finally get what’s coming to him. And that looks like it’s going to be happening sooner rather than later.”

  “Have they set a trial date?”

  Sunny shook her head. “Last we heard, Damien’s going for a plea deal that has a chance of him getting out of prison before he hits his eightieth birthday. Apparently he figures that’s better than gambling on a trial and losing—which is a slam-dunk certainty, thanks to all the evidence Ice gathered against him over the years. With nearly forty counts of blackmail, fraud and tax evasion, he’d never see the light of day again, so pleading out is his only shot.”

  “We should throw a party the day they lock Damien up. Not because I want to put a spotlight on that cancer of a man,” Claire added with a dismissive wave of her hand. “But as a celebration of Ice’s freedom. He’s incredible, if you think about it. He sacrificed everything to fight his way free from that monster so he could be with you. Leave it to me, darling. As parties go, it’ll be fabulous.”

  “You�
�re fabulous,” Sunny said, reaching out to hug her just as the peaceful murmur of voices behind them turned into a cacophony of alarm.

  “Oh my God,” someone called out. “Her water broke!”

  “Whoa,” Sunny gasped as Hannah cradled her stomach. “I thought she wasn’t due until early next week.”

  “Babies come when they come, so we obviously threw this shower just in time,” Claire remarked, clapping her hands excitedly even as Sunny ran to get Matt.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.” Matt’s leg was jiggling ninety to nothing as he sat in the hospital waiting room. “I was supposed to be in there with Hannah. I went to all the classes with her, even though I just got my R.N. license. I’m supposed to be in there with her, not out here. Who’s going to remind her to breathe?”

  “Pretty sure they’ve got that covered, man.” Ice sat down beside Matt and offered him a cardboard cup of steaming brown liquid that almost smelled like coffee. Instead of taking it, Matt popped up and once again began to pace, retracing a route that threatened to wear a rut into the dull green floor tiles. “Okay. Pacing’s good. Want to drink the shitty coffee I got for you while you’re pacing?”

  “What I want is to know what the hell is going on. Don’t you get it, Ice?” he went on before Ice could answer. “They always send the father out of the delivery room when there’s a life-threatening complication. Not just any complication, a life-threatening one. I know that’s the procedure, because I was once the guy who muscled a father-to-be out of a delivery room while his woman fucking coded. Childbirth is the most dangerous thing a woman can do, and Hannah’s doing it without me now because she’s probably coding. If the worst happens, if she dies, how do I go on without her?”

  “Shut up.” Alarm and dread bit into Ice, and it was all he could do to not surge to his feet to shake the shit out of him. “You’re an E.R. nurse who sees only those rare, worst-case scenarios. You don’t get to see the thousands of normal births that happen every day, which is exactly what Hannah’s doing right now. So do yourself a favor and sit your ass back down before I put you down.”

  Matt wheeled around, hands fisted. But before he could unleash all the crazy Ice could see in his eyes, the heavy automatic doors leading to the delivery area swung open. “Matthew Jacoby?”

  At that, Matt swung around, chest heaving and wild-eyed. “What happened? Hannah?”

  The scrub-wearing woman beamed. “She and your brand-new son are anxious to see you. Why don’t you come on back and say hello to your beautiful family?”

  Matt stalked through the open doors without another word, leaving Ice behind, jaw locked.

  I was once the guy who muscled a father-to-be out of a delivery room while his woman fucking coded.

  Hannah was all right, though. It had been a little scary at first, but it was the 21st-century, for God’s sake. They had modern medicine. Women didn’t die in childbirth every time you turned around like in the old days. That was a rarity now. Almost unheard of.

  But…

  It did still happen.

  Childbirth is the most dangerous thing a woman can do.

  There were dangers in every life, he reminded himself while the churning storm inside him grew. Crossing the street. Eating too fast. Slipping in the bathtub. Shit, staircases were veritable deathtraps. Anything could happen at any given time, so there was no point in being scared. Living in fear of what might happen wasn’t even living; it was just anticipating an inevitable death. Life had to be lived to the fullest. Anything else was just tragic.

  If she dies, how do I go on without her?

  Jesus.

  If that wasn’t the worst goddamn question ever uttered.

  How do I go on without her?

  “Ice?” Sunny and Claire approached, sodas from the cafeteria in hand. Sunny took one look at his face and instantly teared up. “Oh my God, what’s happened? Where’s Matt? Did Hannah… Is she…?”

  “She’s fine. Everything’s fine, baby.” Only it wasn’t, because she was his everything and he had no clue how to protect her from the creation of their baby. “Here, sit down.”

  “Good idea,” she said, slumping down into the seat he’d vacated. “Especially since I’m almost fainting.”

  “What? Why? Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?” He had no problem with hunting one down and dragging them to her. Should be easy enough, considering where they were.

  “What? No, I was kidding.” She half-laughed while staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. “It was just the look on your face. You looked like… I don’t know. Like something horrible had happened.”

  “Has something happened?” Claire wanted to know, stepping forward anxiously. “Where is Matt, anyway?”

  “Someone came out and dragged him back there. Apparently Hannah had her kid, but that’s not what’s important now.” Oblivious to anything but his wife, Ice bent down until he was at her eye level, while his hand came to hook around the back of her neck. “You’d tell me if you weren’t feeling well, yeah? Or that you need me to get you something? Anything? Do you need to lie down? I can make that happen.”

  “Ice.” At first offering a baffled laugh, a look of understanding slowly dawned in her eyes, before she sighed. “Mom, Ice and I are going to hit the courtyard for a bit, all right? See if you can find out anything from the duty nurse.”

  “I think I’ll let her know we’ve gone ahead and ordered subs and sodas for the entire floor, and then I’ll see what I can find out.” He mother sent her a saucy wink. “By the time you two come back, I’ll know the birthdays of every relative she has.”

  “It’s a good thing my mother never wanted to run for any powerful office,” Sunny remarked as she led the way to a sunny, plant-filled courtyard cut out in the middle of the hospital itself. “She’d be grand empress of the universe by now, complete with mandatory weekly facials and manis for her adoring subjects.”

  “Yeah, that’s great,” he muttered distractedly, then cut off someone heading for a table in the shade. “Why don’t you sit down? I really need you to get off your feet and relax.”

  “That’s why I brought you out here. To relax.” With a sigh, Sunny settled into a white wrought iron chair and folded her hands on the matching table while he sat down opposite her. “Are you all right?”

  “Me?” Ice stared at her. What the hell, he wasn’t the one whose life was in danger. “Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Because you’re acting funny.”

  “Trust me, I’m not.”

  “Then could you explain why you suddenly seem to be obsessed with me sitting or lying down?”

  She had to be fucking kidding. “You’re pregnant, Sunny.”

  “Yes, I know. How is that an answer?”

  “Because it’s the truth. You’re pregnant, and that’s fucking dangerous if you don’t take proper care of yourself. Look what happened to Hannah today.”

  She frowned. “What exactly did happen today, from your point of view? Because from my point of view, Hannah went into labor three days ahead of her due date. As far as I know, that’s all that happened.”

  “Yeah, but then something happened that made the docs kick Matt out into the waiting room. Maybe she got too excited for the baby shower, or she didn’t sit down enough or whatever. Now that I think about it, I saw her helping you out in the kitchen before the party, and you know what? She was on her feet. A lot.”

  “Wow.” She took a deep breath before she reached for his hands. “Atticus. You need to listen to me, all right?”

  Whenever she called him by his real name, he knew shit was about to get real. “I’m listening.”

  “I don’t know what exactly is going on in your head, but I need you to understand something very important. I’m not going to sit on my ass until March, doing absolutely nothing until I have this baby. I appreciate you’re having some kind of issue right now, but you need to know that’s how things are.”

  “Issue? Yo
u think me wanting to make sure having our baby doesn’t fucking kill you is an issue? Until today I’ve never even thought about losing you in a way where I could never get you back,” he went on when she opened her mouth to no doubt feed him some kind of platitude that wouldn’t fix a damn thing. “I’ve been at the brink of that hell, and I swore I’d never allow us to get back to that precipice, yet here we are.”

  “Ice, stop. What do you mean, you’ve almost lost me? I’ve never—”

  “For a year you were lost to me. While I was trying like hell to keep Damien and his poison out of our lives, I had to act like you meant nothing to me. I pulled that slick move of firing you—”

  “Baby, we’ve talked about this,” she sighed with what sounded like infinite patience. “You’re not good at slick moves, or excuses, or whatever else you want to call them. You’re ham-handed. You’re a bull in a china shop. When in doubt, you blow everything up and hope for the best. The only person who thinks you’re slick is you.”

  “That’s not the point. The point is I had nightmares that you’d go off with some other man. For the record, it would not have mattered if you had,” he added, wanting to be clear. “Nothing would have stopped me from getting you back by my side where you belong. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine, and you can bet I’ve always been yours. But that year when we were apart… It scared the fucking shit out of me. I had no guarantee you’d be willing to give me another chance, so without a doubt that was the worst time in my life when it came to almost losing you. I don’t want to go through that again. We’re going to have to figure out a way to keep you healthy and not fucking dead, because there’s no way I’m surviving this life without you.”

  “Baby, I’m pregnant, not terminal. You’ve got to calm down.”

  “I love you. I can’t be calm.”

  A little cooing noise escaped her a moment before she cupped his cheek in her hand. “Okay, how about this? Focus on what happens after I’m done being pregnant. Imagine that first moment of holding that precious, helpless life we made together as he or she takes their first breath. Imagine their eyes focusing on you for the first time with absolute trust and adoration, because you represent their whole world. Imagine hearing that little one’s voice calling your name, and that name is Daddy. I know life is changing fast, baby, and I’m freaking out about it, too. But it’s changing for the better, and I for one can’t wait to experience all those moments with you.”