Brody snickered at Drae’s wry observation. Angie excelled at causing trouble. She was the family whirlwind after all.
“Whatever,” Brody chuckled. I gotta’ roll out soon anyway so Parker is welcome to a bitch fit if it cuts things short. Got Heather’s parents at the house. They flew in for Bella’s birthday.”
Calder’s mood lightened at the mention of Bella Mia Jensen. He fucking loved that kid. She was a hoot and a half. He liked to imagine that’s how Stephanie was when she was a kid growing up on a ranch in Montana surrounded by cowboys and horse piles.
“Hey, it’s cool that they came,” he told Brody. “Got plans?”
Cam and Drae perked up at the mention of plans and sauntered over till the four of them stood in a loose circle. “Shit, Jensen. The in-laws and your kid’s first birthday party? I hope Heather’s mixing the cocktails.”
Cam nodded at Drae’s hole-in-one jest because it was a good point.
“We’re going to Busty’s for dinner because my daughter has declared that’s where you go if real mashed potatoes are what you want.” He snickered and made a face. “She gave Finn a raft of shit about the menu at Pete’s.”
Calder was fascinated by Bella’s many sides. “From what I hear, she can pretty much hire out as a food consultant. Didn’t she revamp Finn’s grilled cheese?”
It was good to see Brody light-hearted and laughing. Heather and Bella brightened his life a million times over.
“Yes to the grilled cheese. How a six-year-old knows anything at all about what cheese melts best is a mystery—although she watches Chopped Junior on the Food Network with Heather. They take notes cause I find little scraps of paper all over the place with recipe names.”
Cameron broke out a smile that made him and Drae look twice. “Lacey went overboard I’m afraid with the wrapping paper and presents.”
“Let me guess,” Drae chortled. “Something about presentation and girls liking the whole package?”
It was Calder’s turn to snigger. “Yeah. A little girl’s version of bitches like romance. Your wife has a way with words, St. John.”
Suddenly, Brody sobered. His face slid into a mask of business-like stone. “Got a lot riding on this get together. Counting on you guys,” he admitted somewhat bashfully, “to have my back. Never been a full-time dad before and she’s never celebrated her birthday. I want it to be perfect.”
Cam slapped him on the back and gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Family’s the main thing, man. Found that out the hard way,” he muttered darkly. “Could have thrown down with a fucking circus for Dylan’s big day. Shit. Almost did,” he said with a quick side-grimace at Drae. “But ya know what, dude? I never had a birthday celebration either. Like…ever. So when it came time to do my son’s first birthday, I just thought about what I yearned for as a kid. It wasn’t circuses or inflatable bounce houses. For a kid with no family, I just wanted to be seen on at least one fucking day every year. That’s what we’re for. To be the family audience, now and forever, as these kids take their place in the world.”
Not for the first and certainly not the last time, Calder marveled at Cam’s unique grasp of family. Considering his bleak upbringing, an orphan bouncing from foster houses to group homes without ever feeling like he belonged anywhere to the mature, family man he was today, well it was kind of inspiring.
“We all love Bella,” Drae assured Brody. “I’m excited about making a fuss for her special day. Good practice and to be honest? Dude, it’s us. Any opportunity to be a spectator when one of us can potentially crash and burn? Guys! Come on. You know that shit is gold.”
“Justice dads,” Calder said with a dry chuckle.
“Fuck, yeah,” Brody replied. “Blunders, laughing at the wrong stuff and filthy language…yay!”
When Calder’s stomach growled, he drawled, “Well, I don’t know about you girls but I’m starving. Past lunchtime. Think I’ll meander to the cottage.”
“You guys finally moved in?” Cam asked.
“More or less. We ended up doing a long, slow arrival rather than a single move-in day. Easier on Stephanie.”
“How’s she doing?”
A warm, contented smile spread across his face at Brody’s question. He was a damn happy guy these days.
“Still on cloud nine. Her feet never touch the ground.” He spoke the truth. His lady was on a twenty-four seven bliss high.
“As it should be. I know it’s early, early days for us but Victoria seems to be having an easier time with this pregnancy.” Drae mirrored Calder’s contentment.
They each went their separate ways not long after with Calder making the haul from the Justice compound, passing through the security gate at the turn off to the private family zone, and down the re-paved back road on his way to the modest slice of heaven he and his ladylove created.
27
These were the days she wanted to remember. Having a baby at her age was such a blessing that it seemed a shame to waste even one second of the wonder and joy she felt.
And not just her either.
Stephanie broke into a wide, open smile when she thought about Calder’s over-the-moon happiness. Rubbing her popping baby belly, a sigh of deep contentment escaped her lips.
Was it comedy night in heaven the night they created the child she carried? Had to be. No other explanation for her fiftieth birthday and the words, congratulations, you’re pregnant to be joined at the hip.
It was lovely to idly sway in the big porch swing of their newly constructed cottage cabin. She loved the cozy little house that partially resembled Calder’s Colorado cabin combined with her fantasy of a country cottage. The mash-up of styles was a winner. Nestled in a bucolic piece of greenery and red desert situated on the villa’s back road, her new home was everything she hoped for.
In fact, earlier when she’d been rearranging things in the pantry she stopped her work, grabbed an iPad and went online to order up another thank-you bouquet for their amazing architect-slash-dream designer, Caleb Merrill. What he’d done with her and Calder’s wish list was beyond amazing and the way he adroitly handled the addition of a baby nursery earned the guy a few dozen floral arrangements and a permanent spot on her Christmas card list.
Word around the family was that Caleb and his girlfriend Charlize were coming to town for the grand opening. Stephanie couldn’t wait to see the couple again and give them the grand tour of the finished house. They hadn’t seen the last things that really made the construction a home—namely some jaw dropping desert landscaping and an artificial turf play-yard that should be photographed for a magazine.
The sound of a truck approaching got her peering down the curved driveway and propelled Stephanie off the swing with a shout of glee. Happily skipping down the steps she jumped on her hot fiancé the minute he exited the truck.
Calder’s beaming smile when he grabbed her waist to swing her around made her laugh merrily.
Pressing her belly into his, she stood on tiptoes and wrapped around his neck. The demand to be kissed wasn’t exactly casual and to her great luck, she had a man who treated something as simple as a kiss like it was a work-of-art to be relished and enjoyed.
She was purring and writhing in his arms by the time their lips separated.
Giggling she quipped, “I can hear your stomach growling.” Taking his hand, she said, “Come on. I have a surprise.” Walking backwards, she held his fingers tight and grinned with an extreme pleasure as she pulled him along. “You’ll have to close your eyes when we get inside.”
As soon as they cleared the door she told him to shut his eyes—a command that made him laugh. “Shit, Duchess. At least I show up with a damn blindfold!”
“Hush your mouth, shugah,” she drawled. “Unlike you, I don’t have a habit of planning in advance.”
She led him around the living room twice just to throw off his sense of direction and let him bump into some furniture to keep things interesting. By the time she pulled him down the hallway where the bedr
ooms were situated, she’d turned him around so many times she could have led him straight to the back yard and he wouldn’t have known.
At the door to the baby’s nursery, she stopped and gave her butterflies a second to settle.
“Ready?” she whispered a hair’s breath from his mouth.
“I’m all yours, Duchess.”
She shoved at the closed door so it swung open, pushed him three steps inside the room and said, “Okay. You can open now.”
His silence when his eyes took in the scene before him made her pause. She sidled next to him and put her head on his shoulder.
“Look what came.”
When Calder still didn’t say anything, she raised her head and sought his eyes. He was tearing up. She couldn’t love him more if she tried.
“Do you like it?” she asked with quiet hesitation.
“Oh my god,” he murmured thickly. “A crib kind of makes it real, huh?”
“Are you okay with the colors? I know it’s traditional to go with a pastel but since we don’t know which color to pick, the soft grey and white seemed the right choice.”
“Aw, honey. It’s so…I don’t know what I expected but this touches me in ways I didn’t expect.”
She watched him walk around the room and take it all in. It wasn’t finished by a long stretch but all the furniture they picked out arrived. She was finally starting to see her design vision come to life.
The sturdy hardwood Tuscany crib would one day convert to a toddler bed. She loved the curved lines and the fact that it would be their child’s bed for years to come. The permanence spoke to her soul.
A heavily padded tufted chair in a medium grey color with white-corded trim along with a matching ottoman sat next to a wood table that Draegyn built and painted white.
The crib sat in a recessed nook with a mural on the wall behind it. Charlize gifted them with a painting of a white tree with clusters of white, pale green and yellow leaves on the ends of each branch while three adorable grey koala bears clung to the trunk or played on limbs.
A matching dresser and changing table completed the nursery’s furniture. They had a glide-rocker on order in the same upholstery as the chair. An antique hutch whitewashed to give it a slightly beat up look was crammed with baby supplies still in the original containers. The room was a mess but someone with even half an imagination could see where it was going.
It felt weird being completely speechless but that’s all he had at the moment. There were a lot of things he hadn’t done by the time he turned fifty. He hadn’t for instance been blasted through the earth’s atmosphere in a rocket or worked on the space station. He hadn’t swum in the Great Barrier Reef and never got around to finishing his doctorate.
At a certain point you accept that some of the things you hoped to accomplish or have in your life just weren’t meant to be. For him that included being in a loving relationship with a kid on the way. Sometimes he had to pinch himself to make sure this was all real.
He toyed with a soft, buttercup yellow baby blanket on the changing table. A box of newborn Pampers was opened and a tiny diaper taken out. A small onesie was neatly folded nearby. He picked it up. A heart outline with the words Hug Me sent a jolt through his system.
A noise behind him made Calder swing around in time to find Stephanie struggling to take a shopping bag off a shelf in the closet.
“I’ll get that,” he chided with a couple of good-natured tsks. Expecting his lady to take it easy was a joke and a half. After all, everyone knew Stephanie Bennett had a bad case of ‘I can do it myself—thank you very much’. He loved her for the unflagging can-do attitude but if ever she had a pass to do nothing more strenuous than sneeze, it was now.
“What’s all this?” he asked when the bag was snatched from his hands.
“Look,” she said. Pulling a stack of fabric squares from the bag she laid them out in a side-by-side pattern. “Cheryl organized this. Isn’t it wonderful? It’s something special Stork Expressions does for expectant moms.”
Calder considered the layout before him and tried to figure out just what the hell he was looking at.
She laughed with a comical smirk. “Shugah, honestly!” Gesturing at the whatever with her hand she asked in a teasing voice, “Seriously? You don’t recognize quilting squares when you see them?”
Quilting squares. Hmmm. Still no clue. Luckily, she was on a high-spirited roll, plowed right over his dimwitted expression and neatly filled in the blanks.
“So, all the ladies got a square to decorate. This one is Angie’s.”
She held up a piece of satin fabric embellished with embroidered angel wings and hearts. He was beginning to get the picture.
“Ashleigh will bring hers and Sophie’s when they come for Christmas. Once all of the squares are gathered, Cheryl has a local quilter join them together. It’s quite something when finished. I thought we’d hang it next to the changing table. Someday, it’ll go in the hope chest Draegyn is making.”
He heard the gentle wistfulness in her voice. What they had was the next best thing to heaven. It wasn’t hard to get swept away by emotion over the smallest of things.
Reaching for her hand, he brought it to his mouth for a tender kiss. “Have I told you today how beautiful you are?”
A rosy blush crept up her neck and bloomed on her face. It never failed to delight him that a small compliment could reduce her to mush.
“Do you like my outfit?” she teased while turning this way and that, modeling her wardrobe choice for the day.
Whatever old-school ideas he had of her dancing around in loose, flowy maternity dresses had by now been effectively shot to hell. Stephanie’s idea of how to dress her changing figure was to show it off at every opportunity. If it clung or stretched, she had three in different colors. Framing her adorable swelling tummy was the latest must-have accessory.
And today? Today she had on what had to be the best stretchy thing yet because she’d pulled on an oldie but goodie from his vintage t-shirt collection and donned a concert classic from Foghat. Covering her to mid thigh, it was too short to wear around anyone else, but for him? For him it was perfect because it clung to her bump and when she reached over her head, the shirt rode up to reveal a pair of plain white bikini panties.
He loved white lingerie whether sheer lace and naughty or along a more sensible line.
Applauding as she preened for him, he gave her a wicked leer and lifted one eyebrow a fraction. “Does m’lady fancy a slow ride later?”
“What?”
He chuckled and started singing the old Foghat classic, putting special emphasis on the part about a slow riding woman by winking at her. Nobody rode like Stephanie did.
They slow danced around the nursery as he sang the song and made a mental note to ask Alex to add it to the Thunder playlist.
“I’m giving you till New Year’s Duchess. By then there’ll be no hiding our baby on board. You will marry me in January or you can pack your bags and get the fuck out.”
She shrieked with laughter. “Yes, sir!”
“Aw, come on,” he sulked. “I’m serious.”
The dancing stopped and she pulled back to look at him. The teasing light in her eyes was replaced with a warm glow of love.
“January would be perfect.”
She certainly had his attention!
“In fact, I was looking at some dresses with Victoria just the other day. Found the perfect thing too. White velvet, form fitting of course.”
The smile on his face included a sensuous flame sparking in his eyes.
“My daughter has become obsessed with crafts and she offered to bedazzle the front of the gown with a smiley face on my belly.”
“I hope you’re joking, honey but knowing Tori as I do...” His words trailed off. She got the picture.
Her heart was exploding with delight. Everything was coming together perfectly.
“And your sister will be back by then. I know you want Ashleigh here. We can
have the ceremony at the villa.”
Now, in her defense, Stephanie knew damn well she was spewing a big fat falsehood but it wasn’t her fault. He and Alex never should have warned her not to stick her nose in what was happening just a bit further down the road. She hadn’t noticed at first because of all the work and activity it required to build this house but eventually she put two and two together when trucks drove past their construction site and continued on to who knew where.
She tried not to let the curiosity get the better of her, truly she had. It just didn’t work out that way. So one day when she was absolutely certain no one was anywhere around and she wouldn’t get caught, she did the unthinkable.
Not certain what lay further down the road she wasn’t dumb enough to go exploring on foot. She was pregnant, not stupid. So she stuck an SD card in the camera of the aerial drone they’d played with to record construction progress and sent it flying. It could travel almost two miles, surely that was enough to find out what the hell was going on.
Well, it certainly was enough because within a minute she had a bird’s eye view of an astonishing sight. At the old homestead site where an ancient adobe structure stood, a remarkable restoration and renovation had taken place. What was once a fading symbol of the Valleja-Marquez family was now a small adobe chapel fashioned from the original structure with a small addition cleverly hidden in the shrubs and trees.
The second she realized what she was seeing, Stephanie felt like crap. Secrets, surprises and grand gestures were part of these men. All of them took great delight in the strangest of things. But she understood the significance of the chapel for Alex and Meghan.
So she did a private mea culpa, swore she’d never let curiosity ruin someone else’s pleasure ever again, and zipped her lip.
Recently though, she’d begun to wonder if she and Calder might have their wedding there. It would be beyond perfect. Just the family. Maybe a picnic in the grove and her wearing the scoop neck, keyhole backed velvet dress she fell in love with at first glance.
Unforgettable (Family Justice Book 5) Page 33
