I envied her bravery.
Caz, on the other hand, stayed in France until it was safe to go back to the states. And just like any charges that were brought against him as a juvenile, ultimately the powerful Gaboury family managed to sweep this new scandal under the rug as well, thanks in part to the fact people were grateful for what Caz had done to spare voters, and the country, from such criminal leadership. He was practically hailed as a hero because of it, which–despite his newfound fame as a gigolo–seemed to soften his adoptive family. “See?” I told him. “They’re your family.”
He wasn’t convinced. “You’re my family, pussycat,” he asserted. “They’ve simply got too much to lose. This isn’t about me. It’s about them.”
I touched his arm with my hand. “Are you ever going to reconcile with them, Caz?”
“Maybe someday,” he conceded. “If I can make it work for me.”
I merely rolled my eyes and sighed in exasperation. He was, and always would be, Caz.
By the end of August, only Father, Dev and I remained at the chateau, and we missed everyone else terribly every single day. But we had decided to remain there for Father’s final days. Though his health had rebounded, the clock still ticked. And we wanted to make sure he was as happy and as healthy as he could be every day that remained.
It seemed to make him very happy to share these first days of our new life together with us. We talked a lot, often going for walks in the meadow, where Dev would roll him along to enjoy the fresh air and the beautiful scenery. Every day he stopped to talk to Mother, and we’d leave him alone to do it.
At night Devlin would play the piano, and I watched Father’s face soften and relax as he remembered all the happier days at the chateau, days I knew included my mom. Like me, Father loved the romantic classics the best, and Devlin tirelessly indulged each and every request.
I would place my hands on my swollen tummy, feeling my daughter practically dance in the womb as she listened to her father play. Those were my favorite moments of all.
The weather cooled and the seasons changed. The months marched on steadily as my tummy grew even bigger. I found a midwife in the village who moved in with us by the end of October, ready to welcome our daughter into the world at last.
Devlin’s birthday came and went without a sign of her arrival, which bummed me out way more than it bothered him. “She’s our princess,” he said as he held me. “She deserves her own day.”
“But I wanted to give you the best present ever,” I pouted and he chuckled as he kissed me.
“You already did, darlin.’”
The next day Father fell ill again. He hadn’t taken the change of seasons very well, but refused to even consider going back to Los Angeles. I wanted to spend time with him, but he shooed me away. He wanted me to be in perfect health for Chloe’s arrival, since I had insisted on a home birth.
I wanted her born at Chateau du Cabot. Father had already surprised us with a vintage wine all our very own, Chateau du Cabot Chloe, a sweet moscato d’asti in honor of our sweet new arrival. We had bottles already chilled and waiting, but each day passed without a reason to uncork them.
That father had taken so ill concerned me. “What if he doesn’t make it?” I asked Devlin as I held onto him that night.
“He’ll make it,” he promised, but I knew he was worried too.
We made love every day because we always had, but these days we hoped to jump start the birthing process. He gave me more orgasms than I could count, and at long last, on November 10th, six days past my due date, I felt the first labor pain.
I knew this first stage of labor could last forever, so I made myself as comfortable as possible. I took hot baths to soothe my aching back, and Devlin was right beside me, helping me in and out of the tub. I didn’t bother dressing. I wore a simple cotton nightgown, which I would discard closer to the time of the birth.
My water broke that afternoon, and pains began to intensify. Dev held my hands and tried to get me to focus, but as each hour passed, I began to worry that I might have underestimated what I was about to do. “You can do it, baby,” Dev crooned. “You’re the strongest woman I know.”
I shook my head as I fought through yet another contraction.
By nightfall, I hadn’t progressed as much as I had hoped. I was stalled at four centimeters dilated. Both Father and Dev wanted to go immediately to the hospital, but my midwife assured them that this was normal for a first birth. She used her portable instruments to monitor things, and was certain that I would deliver normally.
I doubted her all the way till midnight, when I was laboring hard but barely making any progress. By then I had been in labor for fourteen hours, and I was pleading to anyone who would listen to just knock me out and rip her out of me if that was what it took.
Devlin sat behind me on the bed, cradling me with his body as he rubbed my back. He sang to me every single song he knew. I almost wished we had a piano in the bedroom, just so my daughter could be born to the beautiful sounds he made when he played.
By one o’clock in the morning, I no longer cared. I just wanted it to be over. I had wanted to push for an hour straight but the midwife insisted it wasn’t yet time. I was nearly delirious with pain, which upset Dev more than anything. “Isn’t there anything you can do?” he asked her.
“Talk to your daughter,” she shrugged. “We’re on her timetable now.”
Dev put his hand on my hard belly. “Come on, baby girl,” he crooned.
On the next big pain I was ready to push, and my midwife nodded. “It’s time, Coralie. Push.”
Devlin helped fold me in half as I strained with a huge cry. As I fell backwards I struggled to catch my breath. “Why on earth did I want to do this?” I muttered.
“Because you knew you were strong enough to handle it,” he said as he wiped my brow with a cool cloth.
“I don’t feel strong,” I muttered.
“Then push harder,” he urged. On the next pain, he once again bent me in half and I pushed as hard as I could.
“Here she comes, Coralie. Keep going.”
Another push, more pain. Blinding, hot, burning pain. “Oh, God, Devlin…,” I cried.
“You’re doing it, honey. You’re doing it. You’re my hero. Come on.”
One more push and I felt pain sear through my body like never before, then the sweet release of my daughter’s body slipping from mine in one quick motion. I fell back against the bed a second before I heard her cry.
There were tears in Devlin’s voice. “Is she okay?”
The midwife smiled. “She’s perfect.”
She placed my newborn baby on my chest, and those dark blue eyes met mine. For the second time in my life, I fell hopelessly in love at first sight. Both Devlin and I burst into tears as we held her, wiping her clean with our hands as she let her displeasure known at being evicted from her cozy home.
The midwife delivered the placenta and Dev cut the cord. My arms felt immediately empty as she took my daughter away just a moment to clean her up and weigh her. Devlin shadowed her, ready to help in any way, unable to take his eyes off his newborn daughter.
He held and rocked her while the midwife tended to me. Finally, after much too long a delay, he placed her into my arms. I had gone to hell and back for her, and I knew that I would have done it all over again.
As soon as I was able, I carried my daughter to see my father, who lay in his bed, strapped to machines that made it easier for him to breathe. “Daddy?” I said and he opened his eyes.
They widened as he realized that I carried my daughter in my arms. “Coralie,” he breathed.
There were tears in my eyes as I held her up for him. “This is your granddaughter, Chloe Charlotte Madeline Masters. We’ll call her Charlie, for short.”
A tear raced down his cheek as he realized what I had done, naming her after my mother and my father. It was the last surprise that we had to give him, our final gift.
I laid her in the cro
ok of his arm, and his weathered old hand cupped her gently. “She is perfect, Maddie,” he whispered to my mother, whose ghost was never far at our chateau. “Perfect.”
He held her until he could barely keep his eyes open, so worn down by his own battle. Devlin took Charlie first, allowing me some time with my dad.
“You did good, Coralie,” he said, and I took his gnarled hand in both of mine.
“I had a good teacher,” I said.
He shook his head. “I made so many mistakes.”
“We all make mistakes, Dad. That’s what makes love so special. You don’t have to be perfect to get it.”
“You’re a good girl, Coralie,” he said. “Your mother would be so proud.” Tears raced down my face. He motioned to the nightstand beside me. “There. A gift.”
I picked it up and pulled the lid off of the small box. Inside was a charm bracelet. My mother’s charm bracelet.
“Dad,” I breathed.
“Tell her story to your daughter, Coralie. So she knows where she comes from, and who she is. She is made of love’s magic. Never let her forget.”
I shook my head. I could barely speak through the tears. “I’ll never let her forget, Dad. I promise.”
He nodded and his eyes closed.
We only had four more days with him after that. He died November 15th, and we scattered his ashes in my mother’s meadow three days later.
We arrived home in Los Angeles just in time for Thanksgiving, where Gretchen had prepared a grand meal for our patchwork quilt of a family.
Aubrey had come home for Thanksgiving, and was the happiest I had ever seen her. She loved Columbia and she loved New York and all the exciting adventures she was having there. She had no boyfriend; she said she’d have time for all of that later, after she figured out a few things first. I honestly wondered how she got so smart.
Margot, on the other hand, had a brand new husband on her arm. Rhys had come a long way from working undercover at the Harvey, but he fit right into our motley crew.
Caz showed up with a couple of dates on his arm, cocksure as ever. But even he was smitten the second he laid eyes on Charlie, who captivated everyone who saw her in the space of about a second. Her dark silky hair contrasted with her pale skin, and I suspected those slate blue eyes would eventually lighten. Whether she had my blue eyes or Dev’s green eyes didn’t matter.
Charlie was already her own little person.
“Can I ask for her hand in marriage now?” Caz joked and Dev sent him a playful scowl.
“You’re not dating my daughter, Caz.”
Oliver and Darcy also joined us. Thanks to everything that had happened with Suzanne, and given it was Suzanne’s doctor that had prescribed the pills, the charges were knocked down to manslaughter, where Darcy would serve probation, due to a compromised mental state at the time of the crime, thanks to years of abuse. It was clear she suffered post-traumatic stress, and Suzanne had manipulated her accordingly. It was one more charge to her growing list of felonies, and Darcy was just one more victim she had targeted. The support she got from the public was fierce and quick.
Darcy already had a book deal, with Andy Carnevale co-writing, to share her story so that people could understand the cycle of abuse and the consequences that resulted.
By the time we sat down for our Thanksgiving dinner in what was now my Bel Air estate, I knew what we were most grateful for was our freedom from the past. Time marched on. It always would. We would carry what served us, and discard all the rest.
Later, when we retired to the den, Lucy sat next to me, holding a chubby, happy Axl in her arms. “Did you ever think it was going to end like this?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I’m glad I didn’t know,” I told her as I cuddled Charlie in my arms.
She nodded. “Me too.”
Devlin played for us, all the old songs that meant anything to us over the last crazy year and a half. He sang for Lucy, he even sang “Sweet Child of Mine” in honor of Axl and Charlie.
Finally he played my song, the one he sang to me so many months ago in a hotel suite in Las Vegas. He promised to love me just the way I was, and I knew it was true. Not just because he still worshipped me despite the fact I had gained back twenty of the thirty pounds I had lost, but because he was still there. Through it all. Through everything. He had never left, even when it had cost him everything. He had found a way. He had never given up.
Not many men would dance with the devil to give you a happily ever after, but mine would. And did.
There was a time when I thought Devlin Masters was made of magic.
Now, I knew he was.
And at long last, after everything, he was mine, all mine.
#forever.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ginger Voight is a screenwriter and bestselling author with more than twenty published titles in fiction and nonfiction. Her nonfiction works cover everything from travel to politics, while her works of fiction range from romance to the paranormal, as well as dark “ripped-from-the-headlines” topics, such as those featured in her book Dirty Little Secrets.
Ginger discovered her love for writing in the sixth grade, courtesy of a Halloween assignment. From then on, writing became a thing of solace, reflection, and security. When she found herself homeless in L.A. at the age of nineteen, she wrote her first novel in longhand on notebook paper while living out of her car.
In 1995, after she lost her nine-day-old son, she worked through her grief by writing the story that would eventually become The Fullerton Family Saga. In 2011, she embarked on a new journey: to publish romance novels starring heroines who look like the average American woman. These “Rubenesque romances” have developed a following thanks to her bestselling Groupie series. Other titles, such as the highly-rated Fierce series, tap into the American preoccupation with reality TV, giving her contemporary stories a current, pop-culture edge.
Ginger isn’t afraid to push the envelope with characters who are perfectly imperfect. Rich or poor, sweet or selfish, gay or straight, plus-size or svelte, her characters are beautifully flawed and three-dimensional. They populate her lavish fictional landscapes and teach us more about the real world in which we live, through their interactions with each other, and often through gut-wrenching angst. Ginger’s goal with every book is to give her readers a little bit more than they were expecting, with stories they’ll never forget.
For more, please visit gingervoight.com. Follow Ginger on Twitter (twitter.com/gingervoight) and “like” her author page on Facebook (facebook.com/gingervoight) for all the latest news on her public appearances and new releases.
Masters Forever (Masters #3) Page 31
