He laughed, and I pulled him in. I never thought I was a kid person. Until Liam had a son and I became an uncle. From the second I first held him, I had a soft spot for the kid.
“Say hi to Uncle Alex,” Bellamy said, gazing at the baby, who had a mini-size BearPaw Resort beanie on his head. Shaw lifted his hand and waved at me. I waved back ‘cause I couldn’t leave my little bro hanging.
Charlie gave a deep woof by the door, and we all turned to go in.
Shaw pointed at the dog and made a woofing type of sound.
“Tell him who’s boss.” I encouraged and pushed the door in. Charlie burst into the kitchen and went immediately toward the tin sitting on the counter that had his dog treats in it.
They’d been there since Bellamy stayed with me for a while last year, and I never bothered to take them to Liam’s place. They already had a container, and since Charlie was here so much, it just made sense to keep them.
He glanced at me and then back at the jar. I shook my head, so he turned his gaze to Bellamy.
“I brought groceries,” she said, ignoring the dog and setting a large bag on the counter. An apple rolled out, and I caught it before it landed on the floor. Shaw reached for it, curious, and I held it out to him so he could clutch it in his hands.
“He’s going to drool all over that.” She warned.
I shrugged. “You know you don’t have to bring me groceries every time you come over,” I told her for like the twenty thousandth time.
She waved away my words and began pulling stuff out to set on the counter. “So?” she asked, gazing at me.
Charlie gave a huff because we weren’t paying attention to him.
I raised my eyes. “So?”
“Is she here?” she asked, her voice a little hushed, but not low enough.
“Who?” I played dumb.
She stopped unpacking groceries and put her hands on her hips. She was dressed in a pair of leggings, jeans, and a loose sweater. Her blond hair was in a knot on her head, and it bobbed around when she swung to give me a look.
“You tell your Uncle Alex to stop joking with Mommy!” she said to Shaw, reaching out to tickle him on his round belly.
The baby opened his mouth and gave a dramatic laugh. Then fell against my shoulder and left his head there for a snuggle.
See? Damn. Babies were like the most innocent things ever.
I rubbed his back, movement from the doorway making me glance up. Charlie noted quicker than me and barked, lunging to put himself between the stranger and Bellamy.
“I think you mean me,” Sabrina said.
Bellamy’s blue eyes widened, and she whirled with a small gasp. “Hi!” she said. Then almost instantly, she added, “I’m sorry! We were being loud, and I just assumed you were asleep in the bedroom.”
Charlie barked more, seeing Bellamy’s start. Bells reached out and put a hand on his head. “It’s okay. She’s a friend.”
Charlie stopped barking and wagged his tail.
Sabrina glanced up from the dog and tilted her head, gazing at Bellamy. “Why would I be in Alex’s bed?”
Bellamy seemed startled, then recovered instantly. “Because when I stayed here, Alex wouldn’t let me sleep on the couch.”
“You stayed here?” Sabrina asked curiously. Her long, dark hair was still tangled, and her cheeks were pink from sleep.
“For a little while.” Bellamy nodded and cleared her throat. “I tried to get away with sleeping out here, but he waited ‘til I fell asleep and carried me back to the bedroom.”
“Stubborn,” I muttered.
“Me or you?” she asked sweetly, turning to glance at me over her shoulder.
I could feel Sabrina watching us, measuring our relationship and trying to decide how close I was with Liam’s wife. I could have told Bellamy not to stop by until I thought Sabrina was ready to meet people, but I dismissed it instantly. Liam, Bells, and Shaw were my family. I wasn’t going to keep them away.
Shaw began wiggling all over the place, trying to get down so he could check out the new lady.
“Hold your horses,” I told him, putting him on his feet. Bellamy reached over and took the apple he was clutching so I could hold each of his hands.
He started out wobbling all over the place but putting one foot in front of the other.
“Don’t let go.” Bellamy reminded me.
I scoffed. “I got this.”
“This is your son?” Sabrina asked, her voice much friendlier and softer as she looked down at the baby.
That got me to look at her. Whatever it was I heard in her voice. She was smiling at him, coming forward with a gentleness to her features.
Bellamy nodded. “Mine and Liam’s son. I think you met Liam last night? His name is Shaw. He’ll be one next month.”
A year already. Damn.
“Yeah, I met Liam last night.”
Bellamy smiled. “I’m Bellamy, Liam’s wife.”
“Sabrina,” she replied, smiling. She never smiled at me like that. “I, ah…” She glanced at me, then away. “Alex and my brother used to work together.”
Bellamy nodded. I knew Liam probably filled her in. “You’ll be staying for a while?”
Sabrina nodded and turned back to Shaw. “I didn’t know you had a nephew,” she said as Shaw wobble-walked over to her. He stopped and looked up, his blue eyes studying the new person.
Sabrina dropped down to his level and smiled. “Hi there, handsome. How are you?”
He twisted his hand out of mine and reached toward her. Sabrina looked over at Bellamy. “Is it okay?”
Bellamy smiled. “Of course.”
Sabrina reached out and picked him up, straightening to her full height. I swallowed thickly, completely ensnared by the sight of Sabrina with my nephew in her arms. She turned partially away, bouncing him in the most natural way. I’d seen Bellamy do it with him a thousand times, but seeing her was something else entirely.
A stirring somewhere in the deepest part of me tugged to the point I almost recoiled.
Sabrina patted his back and smiled down. “Aren’t you a handsome little guy?”
“He looks like his daddy,” Bellamy said proudly.
“Poor kid,” I muttered. Bells elbowed me.
Shaw pointed toward the living room. “You want to go out there?” Sabrina asked, turning and walking with him. Her hair swayed a little, and his little fist reached around and grabbed a strand. I couldn’t look away. A primal instinct roared to life watching her with him… a bone-deep urge rising up within.
I want that. With her.
“What’s out here?” she asked as Charlie bounced over, watching her with the baby. I knew the dog would stick close as long as “his” baby was in the arms of a stranger.
“Oh, he has a basket of toys over by the fireplace. He probably wants to show you,” Bellamy called, watching them.
“Over here?” Sabrina asked Shaw, bouncing him a little more as she walked. He pointed again, showing her exactly where his toys were.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, kneeling while still supporting him. “These are all your toys?” She looked between him and the basket in front of them. “What a lucky little boy!”
Shaw wiggled out of her hold, and she kept hold of him as she pulled the basket into the room and then carefully sat him on the floor in front of it.
He pointed to one sticking out of the top. His favorite. It was the loudest damn thing in the house. I was pretty sure that was why Liam sent it over here, ‘cause his ass was tired of hearing it.
Sabrina pulled it out and hit a couple buttons. Shaw clapped and pointed to another one, and she pushed it, too.
I felt Bellamy staring, but couldn’t look away from them. They made a sight sitting in front of the fireplace, her wearing my shirt and baby toys strewn about…
A hand hit me in the middle. I jolted and looked down.
“What?”
Bells gave me a knowing look, and I knew I’d been caught. I shook my head sl
ightly, telling her she better not make a big deal out of it. I saw the sparkle in her eye and the smile on her lips. I wanted to groan. All the times I gave her and Liam a hard time were about to come back and haunt me, weren’t they?
“You really like kids,” Bellamy called out to Sabrina and went closer to them. “Do you have any of your own?”
My back went straight, and a low growl built in my throat. “Hell no, she don’t have kids!”
“I could,” Sabrina replied, still smiling at Shaw. “You haven’t seen me in three years. That’s plenty of time to have a baby.”
“Oh, hell no!” I intoned. The thought of some guy between her legs made me want to rage.
Sabrina turned from the baby, her golden gaze pinning me. “You don’t think I’d make a good mother?”
“No. I mean, yes, of course. I… Hell.” I turned away. “I need coffee.”
“I work at a daycare center,” Sabrina told Bellamy. “I love kids.”
“Well, they clearly love you, too,” Bellamy replied. After a second of more loud kid music, Bellamy spoke over it. “I hope I didn’t upset you before, when I said I thought you’d be in Alex’s bed. I really didn’t mean to imply anything other than he’s a gentleman and usually gives up his bed to guests.”
Some of my hackles lowered when I realized Bellamy wasn’t going to say anything crazy.
“Alex?” Sabrina scoffed. “A gentleman?”
“I heard that!” I grouched, adding cream to my coffee.
“He carried you to his bed?” Sabrina asked, her voice kind of low, but not so low that my eagle ears didn’t hear.
Was that jealousy? My lips curved up, and I moved closer to hear what Bells would say.
“It was nothing. Liam and Alex think they can haul me around because I’m smaller than them,” she said lightly.
“So’s Brina, but I was scared if I picked her up, she’d kick me in my nuts!” I cackled, coming into the room.
Bellamy gasped and looked at Shaw. “That better not be one of his first words!”
I grimaced. “Sorry.”
Shaw was making a hobby out of pulling everything out of the basket to pile on the floor. He even took Charlie one of the dog toys in the basket and laid it at his feet.
“That was very nice of you,” Bellamy told Shaw. “Charlie likes that toy.”
Shaw smiled and went back to his task.
She was a good mom. One of the best I’d seen. She lit up every time she was around Shaw, and I knew Liam was ready to try for another.
“I can’t believe you have baby toys,” Sabrina said, glancing at me.
“That’s my nephew! Of course I got toys,” I said, offended. “Like I’d be having my namesake over here and not have no toys.”
“Your namesake?”
Bellamy nodded. “Renshaw William Alexander Mattison.” She paused to grin. “It’s a mouthful. I know. But I had to name him after all three of the men in his life.”
“Who is Renshaw?” Sabrina asked, curious.
Bellamy’s face fell just slightly, then brightened again. I wondered if there would ever come a time when her light didn’t dim just a little from the past.
“He’s Liam’s dad. Shaw’s grandpa,” I answered for her. Clearing my throat, I said, “He passed.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Bellamy smiled and then got up from the floor. “I need to put away the groceries.”
“I can do that,” I insisted.
She waved me off. “Drink your coffee. Play with your nephew. It will give me a few seconds of peace.”
Charlie darted after her, and her laughter filled the house. “Good boy,” she crooned, and I rolled my eyes.
He came back into the room with a treat and lay down by Shaw to eat it.
“I’m making breakfast!” Bellamy called out.
“She spends a lot of time here?” Sabrina asked, keeping her voice conversational.
“Liam, too,” I replied.
Her face shuttered, and she turned back to the baby to play with him. I couldn’t understand why, but it felt like that answer somehow made her angry.
I watched them for a few, being distracted by the mile-long, olive-toned leg stretching from beneath my shirt and across the floor.
Shaw rolled a yellow ball toward her, and she caught it, making him clap. She laughed and rolled it back, then clapped when he stopped it.
My heart turned over.
What the fuck had I gotten myself into?
Sabrina
I was jealous. I didn’t want to be. I tried not to be. That’s the thing with feelings, though. You can’t stop them, and though I tried so freaking hard, I couldn’t change mine either.
Alex had a family here, a big one. I knew his parents were around and his sister. He also had a family he chose in Liam, Bellamy, and his nephew. I wanted to dislike them, especially Bellamy because she was so comfortable in his house. It was clear she had taken on the role of taking care of him.
Alex would never admit it, but it was true. Men needed someone to take care of them. In that way, they were like the little kids I took care of at the daycare. Yes, grown men were capable of being on their own, handling the basics of caring for themselves, but I always thought they needed someone.
Hell, without me, Daniel would have a cardboard box as a coffee table and would probably wear dirty clothes out of the hamper and sleep on his mattress with a sleeping bag instead of sheets.
While Alex did seem a little more civilized in that sense (but, hey, he’d had parents to teach him better), I could tell he relied on Bellamy. She was the reason his fridge was stocked, the reason he had dog treats on his kitchen counter and a basket of baby toys in the living room. It was obvious to me he loved her. Not in a romantic way, but in a way that still made me jealous.
Any kind of love that Alex bestowed on someone would be worth having.
I wondered what she had that I didn’t.
What was it about her that he allowed in? Why he didn’t push her out of his life like he did me?
Was I unlovable to him? Had I just been a challenge, his teammate’s kid sister who was off-limits, making her desirable?
If I’d been more, he wouldn’t have left like he did. He wouldn’t have let my bonehead brother chase him away.
“I left some things in the car. Will you keep an eye on the baby while I get them?” Bellamy asked Alex after we’d all had breakfast, consisting of French toast, bacon, scrambled eggs, and fruit.
I was used to grabbing a coffee and a granola bar to eat on my way to work in the mornings. This kind of spread was practically more than I ate in an entire workday. When you were chasing after toddlers, finding time to eat was pretty much impossible. By the time I got home in the evenings, I was too tired to even bother making anything.
I was kind of jealous of that, too. Of her ability to make something Alex plowed through like a bulldozer.
“You got it, girl who got away,” Alex replied, glancing at Shaw who was sitting in a booster seat that strapped onto a dining chair and had a yellow tray. Alex kept that at his house, too.
When she was gone, the giant dog rushing after her, I glanced up from my plate. “Why do you call her that?”
“‘Cause it annoys her.” Alex cackled.
“Everything about you is annoying.” I countered.
“Maaaamaaaaamaaaaa,” Shaw called out, making a mess of the scrambled eggs on the tray in front of him.
“Mommy is coming right back,” Alex told him.
“Maaa,” Shaw yelled again. I could tell he wasn’t at all bothered to be left here with his uncle, but he just wanted to yell.
“Slow your roll, little man,” Alex said, sitting forward to point to some egg. “You gonna eat that?”
Shaw threw it on the floor, then laughed.
“You’re just like your daddy,” Alex muttered.
Seeing him with his nephew made my chest ache. Sitting here at the kitchen table with the scent o
f coffee, maple syrup, and bacon mixing in the air, dirty dishes on the table, and the morning sun filtering through the windows was almost surreal.
I’d daydreamed of something like this for so long. Imagined what could have been if he’d never left. I hadn’t known if he liked kids or even if he wanted them. But seeing him now in these surroundings caused a rush of pain from the past to throb inside me.
Pain I thought I let go of.
“You want some juice?” I asked Shaw, pushing it all aside and trying to ignore Alex. His sippy cup was nearby, and I grabbed it, not surprised at all how sticky the entire outside of the cup was. There was even a small piece of French toast stuck to the side. “Here you go.” I offered the cup. He glanced at me and smiled before reaching his chubby hands out for the handles.
I couldn’t resist brushing a hand over the light hair on his head as he drank.
When he was done, he made an “ahhh” sound, then threw the cup on the floor, too.
“Some people’s kids,” Alex quipped, leaning down to get the cup and place it on the table just out of reach. Shaw reached for it, and Alex clucked his tongue. “I know your games. I’m not falling for it.”
I felt his eyes settle on me. I didn’t have to look to know when he gazed at me. I felt it. I felt him. “Bellamy and Liam knew each other way back in the day. Some shit happened to push them apart. Liam never really moved on in the relationship sense.”
“The girl who got away,” I mused.
“But then she came back and they got another chance.” The tone of his voice beckoned me, and so did his words.
I looked up. His wintry eyes pierced my heart.
Clearing my throat, I glanced away. “I guess they were meant to be.”
Bellamy bustled back inside, and I nearly fell out of my chair with relief. I jolted up, getting away from the table and turning toward her. “Need some help?” I asked, even though she was only carrying a large shopping bag.
“Actually, this is for you.” She handed the bag over.
“For me?”
“Liam thought you might need some clothes.”
My eyes widened. “You brought me some clothes?” I don’t know why, but that made me feel so guilty for not wanting to like her.
Subzero (BearPaw Resort Book 4) Page 7
