“Will.” Lee sets down his burger. “Tell them what’s going on. See what they say.” He waits until I make eye contact. “But you should do it soon, because the big guys are going to want to bring it up during the conference call.”
I release a breath. Less than two weeks. Great. Plenty of time to get my kids to forgive me for lying to them about their mother for their entire lives and putting their brother’s life in danger. Sure.
“I will,” I tell Lee.
He seems more relieved than I would have thought and I wonder just how angry the label actually is. We both turn our attention to our burgers, not talking while we eat. I have no clue how I’m going to get my boys in the same room as me. Lennon will be the easiest, I figure. Maybe Daltrey, too. But I have a feeling Reed will flat out refuse.
Maybe I can get Levi to talk to them, I think bitterly.
“Hey,” Lee says suddenly, dropping his burger. “I totally forgot to ask—how’s the baby, gramps?”
“Gramps, eh?”
I look up to see the waitress returning with fresh drinks, one eyebrow raised, a smirk on her face. I’m not sure if I should be annoyed at Lee for letting that detail fly in front of the very attractive woman—or if I should be grateful that she’s chosen this moment to approach. Because now maybe I won’t have to admit to my old friend that I haven’t seen my granddaughter since she went home from the hospital.
“This old man?” Lee asks, grinning at her. “Of course he’s a grandfather. He whittles wood on the front porch and yells at the kids to keep it down and everything.”
The waitress hands me my drink, meeting my gaze as she smiles. “Funny. I wouldn’t say you look anywhere near old enough to be a grandfather.”
There’s something in her tone, something almost flirtatious, that I find I like very much. Even more than I like the sullen expression on Lee’s face—he still isn’t on her good side.
“The baby is only a few months old,” I tell her.
She puts her hands on her hips. “Well? Do I get to see this baby or not?”
I grab my phone from my pocket, pulling up a close-up photo of Rose in the hospital, trying not to think about how long ago that was. The waitress leans over my shoulder to look and I catch a whiff of her perfume, something flowery, almost delicate, the last thing I would have expected from this take-no-prisoners chick. Somehow that makes me like it even more.
“Aww,” she says, looking down at the picture. “What a sweetie. Name?”
“Rose.”
She looks over at me, her face very close in this position, and narrows her eyes a little. “I can see the resemblance, gramps.”
I’m finding it kind of hard to breathe with her this close, and I wonder what in the hell is wrong with me. I’m way too old to be getting breathless over a woman.
“Look at that hair.” She’s looking at the photo again. “Babies don’t usually have so much, you know.”
My eyes go back to the photo, that familiar stab of pain shooting through my chest. “She looks like her dad,” I murmur. “He had the exact same hair when he was a baby.” I can still see Daltrey the day he was born, that shock of white hair, so much like Reed’s. I’d brought all the boys up to the hospital to see their little brother, lining them up in a love seat, placing the baby in Reed’s arms. Daltrey had cried, tiny Lennon covering his ears, while Reed sat stock-still, like he was afraid to move. Cash just looked bored.
“Looks like you’ve got a lot to be proud of,” Ruby says. And then she’s placing her hand on my shoulder, the pressure soft and gentle, and I have the strangest thought that she could somehow hear the pain in my words.
“Yeah,” I mumble, putting the phone back in my pocket while she straightens.
“Better get back to it,” she says. “Enjoy the rest of your food.”
As she leaves, I sense Lee’s eyes on me. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I say, reaching for my burger.
“Will—”
“It’s fine. Look, I’ll talk to the boys, okay? I’m not promising they’ll go for it, but I’ll talk to them.”
Lee grins as he grabs the last fry off my plate. “You’ve always been able to convince those boys of anything.”
And that, I think morosely, no longer at all hungry, is exactly the problem.
Daisy
As I look at the man I love holding our baby, I’m pretty sure my heart is going to explode. Either that or I’m going to burst into tears—I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. But who in the hell can blame me? I would challenge anyone to watch Daltrey Ransome with his newborn daughter and not feel weepy.
“And then,” he’s saying in a soft singsong voice as he looks down at her. “Your Uncle Reed came in on the drums. And that’s when the fun really starts, because drums make the whole thing come together, you know?”
“I don’t think she does know,” I interrupt from the doorway where I’ve been watching them. “Seeing as how she’s only nine weeks old. Doesn’t really have a handle on song structure yet.”
“Nah,” Daltrey says, looking up at me, his grin so beautiful I feel weepy all over again. “This girl is going to be a natural.”
I shake my head as he turns his attention back to the baby in his lap. Daltrey is sitting up in bed with Rose resting against his upraised knees. The baby is awake, eyes wide and staring up at him. I know she can’t understand a word he’s saying yet, but damn if she doesn’t look enthralled by his voice. “The crowd was really into us,” he continues, “but they always are.”
I slide into bed next to him. “She’s a little young to be exposed to your ego, bud.”
“Daddy plans to exploit every cool point he can get,” Daltrey coos in a baby voice. “I plan to make her love me best in the world.”
“Pretty sure all her uncles are competing for the same top spot.”
“Psh,” he mutters. “Our daughter is brilliant. She won’t fall for their nonsense.”
I peer down at Rose and sigh. She looks just like her father—and that’s fine by me. My daughter’s father just so happens to be the most beautiful person I’ve ever met.
“We missed you,” I say, leaning against Daltrey’s shoulder. He readjusts the baby on his knees so he can put his arm around me.
“I missed you too. It was awful.”
I scoff. “You got to be in New York. One of my favorite cities in the world.”
“Yeah, with my grouchy ass brothers.”
I’m pretty sure that none of them had been as grouchy as Daltrey himself. He hadn’t exactly been excited about having to fly out for the performance, even though he’d been gone for less than twenty-four hours.
“How are they?” I ask.
“Same. Reed is a mess.” He pauses. “Lennon actually seems pretty good.”
“Was Hayley there?” Daltrey nods. “Well, that explains that then.”
“That boy is whipped.”
I don’t point out that Daltrey insisted on chartering a plane just so he could get home to his own woman last night, rather than wait eight hours to fly commercial in the morning. “Let’s avoid that kind of talk in front impressionable geniuses.”
“She is a genius,” Daltrey says, beaming down at the baby. He can’t seem to be able to keep a straight face when he looks at her. It’s painfully cute.
“What about your dad?” My voice is careful but I still feel Daltrey stiffen at my side.
“Stayed in LA.”
“This can’t continue, Daltrey.”
“I told you, Dais—I’m not worrying about that right now. It’s the last thing on my mind.”
I know him well enough to know that he’s full of it, but I don’t press. I’m every bit as eager as he is to continue on in our little Rose-centered bubble. For now, at least.
My phone dings on the nightstand and I turn to glance down at it. Paige. I pick up the phone. I’m doing everything in my power to keep Reed from bugging you, the message reads. But you better send him his baby fix soon or I�
��ll be no match for him.
I giggle. I wasn’t lying when I said the uncles were vying for top spot in the list of Rose’s favorite people. The three of them demand baby pictures several times a day, and I’d heard embarrassing stories from all the girls about Reed, Cash, and Lennon making fools of themselves at industry parties, showing off their first niece.
“What?” Daltrey asks, attention fully on Rose.
“Just your brothers being crazy about your kid.”
“You’ve just got them wrapped around your little finger, don’t you,” Daltrey murmurs, leaning down to rub his nose against Rose’s tiny pink one. The sight of it makes my heart clench and I quickly hold up my phone to snap a picture. Looking down at the photo, I wonder how it’s possible to have so much love for two different people at once. I’d actually been a little scared, while pregnant, that I might never be able to love anyone else, even my own kid, as much as I love Daltrey. For so long he was the most important person in my life—since we were babies ourselves. When my mom died and my dad turned to work to deal with the pain, I’d been so alone—until the Ransome boys moved in next door.
Of course, the minute the baby was born I realized how wrong I was. My heart, apparently, is big enough for both of them. Or maybe Rose had just made it grow.
“What?” Daltrey asks, looking up at me.
I shake my head. “Just loving you.”
He grins, holding out his arm so I can slide back against the warmth of him. I quickly send the picture off to Paige, silencing my phone before my predictable friend can send the inevitable series of “awws” and heart emojis.
“I’m glad I’m home,” Daltrey murmurs against my hair.
“Me too.”
It’s an understatement. Glad doesn’t begin to cover how I feel about this little family. We’ve had to deal with so much to get to this point, so much heartbreak and uncertainty. I don’t like to think about how close I’d come to never seeing this day—to never seeing Daltrey again. To never seeing my nineteenth birthday. But during moments like this, moments that are almost painful with their perfection, it’s hard not to think about all that. To think about how far I’ve come. How lucky I am.
Rose chooses that moment to let out a massive burp, cracking both her parents up. “Your uncles would have been proud of that,” Daltrey tells the baby, looking over at me with a goofy-ass grin that never fails to make me fall for him all over again.
I lean into his side, looking down at the baby, marveling that this is my life. Everything is perfect—well, almost perfect. There’s just one thing that has felt missing lately. And I have a pretty good plan for how to get my hands on it.
* * *
“Well look at that, Rose. Your mother is actually a superhero.” I look up from the stovetop, rubbing at the flour I know is on my cheek, and Daltrey grins over the baby’s head. “Making breakfast and looking insanely cute doing it.”
I push some curls from my face, unable to suppress a frown at the sight of him and the baby standing in the doorway to the kitchen. “I wanted you to sleep in.”
He shifts Rose to his other arm. “Someone had other plans.”
“I didn’t hear her cry!”
“She wasn’t crying,” he says. “She was cooing to herself. Heard it on the baby monitor.” Daltrey looks around the kitchen. “Why are you up so early? I thought we had a rule about sleeping when the baby is sleeping.”
“I wanted to make—oh, shoot!” I cry, pulling open the oven to reveal a billowing cloud of black smoke. “Damn.” I wave my oven mitt around the door, trying to dissipate the smoke. “Take her out of here, Daltrey.”
“You take her,” he says. “Let me deal with—”
“Dalt, just go!”
Since the kitchen is getting pretty smoky, he stops arguing and takes the baby out to the living room, where the air’s still clear. I can hear him talking to her as he straps her into the swing. “Hold down the fort, Rose. I’m going to go help your mom.” I tilt my head back to watch them through the doorway. The baby is staring up at him with her clear blue eyes and he holds up her little fist to bump against his. “You got this, gorgeous.”
I giggle to myself before tearing my attention away. I need to get a window open to get rid of this smoke but they always stick. I’m still struggling when he comes back. “Let me get that.” He reaches around me. Out of habit, I lean back into his chest, solid and warm behind me. He’s dressed in boxers and an old t-shirt—his usual preference for bed—and I’m pretty sure he’s never looked better, his hair mussed up from sleep. He leans down to press a kiss to the side of my neck, grinning when I shiver at the contact.
“It’s really not fair,” he murmurs in my ear. “You being this beautiful first thing in the morning.”
“Oh, stop flirting,” I say, laughing as I push him away. With the window open the smoke is clearing and I turn back to the stove. “I have breakfast to cook.”
“You gonna tell me what inspired this Martha Stewart impersonation at seven a.m.?”
I toss the burned remnants of the cinnamon rolls into the trash. “No problem,” I tell myself, trying to keep from panicking. “Who needs cinnamon rolls? You’ll just have to come up with something else.”
“Daisy?”
I flip the bacon on the stove. “I just wanted to make breakfast.”
“Well let me help you, then. The cinnamon rolls burned? I could make us pancakes instead.”
I shake my head, distracted, as I open cupboards, searching for a replacement to the rolls. “No. This is fine. I’ve got this.”
“Daisy—”
“No, Daltrey.” I turn to face him, giving him my best drop it now glare. It usually works but today he crosses his arms, narrowing his eyes.
“You’re up to something.”
I shrug. “Don’t worry about it. I have this all planned.”
“What, exactly, do you have planned?”
Since he’s apparently not picking up on my drop it signals, I switch tactics, reaching for him instead. He crosses to me quickly, wrapping his arms around my waist. “I planned a special day for you,” I murmur, resting my head against his chest.
“A special day for me? Why do I need a special day?”
“Oh, I’m sure you don’t need one.” I look up to brush some hair from his forehead. “But I wanted to give you one anyway. So get out of here with your distracting hotness before I burn the bacon, too.”
Dalt shakes his head. “Daisy, you don’t have to do anything. Hanging out with my girls is special enough.”
I push on his chest a little so he’ll release me. “One of your girls is getting stir crazy in this house. Now go check on the other one so I can get back to this. I’m going to feel really bad if I burn anything else.”
He releases me reluctantly. “Fine. I’ll go up and grab the first shower.”
“Sounds good.” I smack his ass as he passes, and he shoots me a flirty grin. Once he’s gone, I can concentrate a little better on our breakfast. I really need this day to go perfectly. I know Daltrey will be happy with however things turn out, but I’ve been planning this for too long to mess it up—especially so early in the day.
I find some waffles in the freezer and pop them into the toaster. The bacon is ready to come off the stove so all I need to do is scramble some eggs. I add plenty of cheese, the way I know Dalt likes them. While they cook, I pull the fruit I’d already cut up from the fridge and bring it over to the table. I’d gotten out my mom’s old china and I grin, looking at the table. So far so good.
Once the eggs are off the stove, I put them into the warming drawer, along with the bacon, and head upstairs to gather my family. In our room, I make my way between the baby swing, the bouncy chair, the crib, and the bassinet on my way to the bathroom. We have stuff like this in every single room in the house, way more stuff than any baby could possibly need. Daltrey worried his brothers would make fun of him for it, but Cash texted me just last week to ask if he should buy a Pack ’n
Play for his house. In Seattle.
The master bathroom is probably my favorite room. When we moved in it was completely outdated, like much of the rest of the farmhouse, containing little more than a pedestal sink, an ancient toilet, and a leaky, if cool-looking, claw-foot tub. Daltrey insisted it was part of the charm of the place, but I put my foot down. “I’m all about this playing farmer thing you have going on, Dalt,” I told him. “But I’m going to need a real shower.” He’d done a great job overseeing the renovation, somehow modernizing the room while still making it feel authentic to the rest of the house.
I’m not surprised to hear the shower turning off before I reach the bathroom. Over the last few weeks we’ve both gotten really good at showering fast. It seems like we do just about everything fast these days, trying to fit in as much of a normal routine as possible in the quick gaps when the baby doesn’t need us. I used to think touring was exhausting—I’d been clueless. There’s nothing like having a newborn baby in the house.
And I wouldn’t change anything about it.
I find Daltrey in the bathroom, a towel around his waist, Rose against his chest, while he runs a comb through his wet hair. Her little head hits him just above the daisy tattoo he’d gotten for me years ago, and I feel that familiar clench of my heart.
“That’s a pretty nice view.”
He turns to see me watching them. “You think?”
“Well, you’re half naked, and I always like that,” I say, grinning. “And you’re cradling our daughter against your bare chest, which is basically the most attractive thing I can imagine.”
“Cradling her against my manly chest,” he corrects, and I laugh, crossing the room to take the baby from him.
“Put some pants on,” I say. “Breakfast is ready.”
He meets me downstairs a few minutes later and whistles at the sight of the table. “Fancy.”
The Ransome Brothers_A Ransom Novel Page 3
