by Joss Wood
In the country? What? “I don’t understand.”
Mason folded his arms against his chest. “I want to come traveling with you, Cal. Provided we don’t go mad, I earn enough from my investments to cover my obligations to the boys and to live comfortably. If I need more money, or get bored, there are university departments all over the world who’d be interested in having me as a guest lecturer, organizations that would hire me to solve some of their trickier problems.”
“You and your big brain,” Callie murmured, feeling the need to tease him. It was either that or cry. She felt overwhelmed, terrified, so happy she wanted to burst out of her skin.
“The point is, I could travel with you, I want to travel with you.” Mason rubbed the back of his neck. “If that’s something you might be interested in.”
Something she might be interested in? Really?
It was only a dream come true.
“I know you want to find yourself, carve out your own identity, be Callie. I don’t want to stop you from doing that, from doing whatever you want to do.” Mason’s voice held a hint of panic. “I just want to watch you while you do it. But I understand if it’s something you need to do alone. I won’t like it, but I’ll understand.”
This man...this amazing, supersmart, hot man. He just got her.
Mason didn’t want to change her. He wanted to love her while she explored the next phase of her life. It was an enormous gift, a marvelous realization. She could do anything, be anything and Mason would be there, standing behind her.
Callie wanted to go to him but there were still words to be said, conditions to be discussed. “I would love for you to come traveling with me, Mace, to be with me, more than anything in the world. But I think you should know, now, that I’m never going to marry you. I’m going to love you, probably until I die, but I’m not going to marry you.”
“I’m good with that.” Mason nodded, his eyes filled with amusement. “That way I’ll always know you’re with me because you want to be and not because a piece of paper says you have to be. I’m especially happy about the you-loving-me part.” He pretended to wipe a bead of sweat off his forehead. “That’s a bit of a relief.”
“I think I fell in love with you when you first offered to help me out with my bucket list,” Callie admitted.
Mason’s eyes were steady on her face, his expression all sincere tenderness. “You are the adventure I’ve been waiting for, Cal.”
There was nothing she wanted more than to step into his arms, to embrace her future, but she still had words to say. She held up her hand. “Wait. I’m not done.”
“Make it sharp, Brogan, I need to kiss you.” Mason rolled his index finger in a gesture that told her to hurry up.
“No matter where we are, what we are doing, we come back to Boston every year for three months in the summer. And for two weeks over Christmas. That’s family time, yours and mine. We spend that time with our kids, either together or apart. But we see our kids, twice a year. That’s not negotiable.”
Mason’s expression turned back to tender. “I’m so behind that. Anything else?”
“No.” Callie allowed her smile to bloom, feeling like the luckiest woman in the world. She’d had a husband who loved her, and now she had a lover and a partner to spend the rest of her life with. How lucky was she to be loved by two amazing men?
As Mason put his hands on her hips to pull her to him—God, he felt so good—she slapped her hands on his chest, laughter bubbling. “Apparently, Mrs. Jenkins saw my impromptu striptease the other day. Half the neighborhood is wondering what kind of hanky-panky was happening in your coffee shop. The other half is convinced she’s nuts.”
“Nobody suspects you?” Mason murmured.
“I don’t do public displays of affection, everyone knows that.” Callie made her voice deliberately prim. “It’s not what good girls do.”
“Such a liar.” Mason, deliberately, cupped her breast and swiped her nipple, his mouth an inch from hers. “The real Callie Brogan isn’t a good girl, she’s a hot wild strong woman. And I’m nuts about her.”
Mason’s thumb moved up her neck, across her jaw. “There’s a group of joggers at the top of the street. Behind them is Mrs. Jenkins on her scooter. Want to give them something new to talk about?”
Laughter skittered through Callie. She lifted her face up, brushed her lips against Mason’s mouth. “Oh, yes, please. PDA the hell out of me, Mace.”
Eleven
Darby forced herself to work, to tie up all the loose ends outstanding for Huntley and Associates, pushing from minute to minute, hour to hour.
Even so, her thoughts kept drifting to Jac, wondering if the little girl knew that her little life was about to take another detour, wondering if she was old enough to miss Darby or Judah. But then thoughts of Jac took Darby to thoughts of Judah—as if she could not think about him!—and she wondered how he was holding up.
Despite their fight, his ridiculous belief that he didn’t want children, she knew that handing over Jac would rip his heart in two. It was the right course of action—that fantastic ray of human sunshine had only been on loan to them—but no matter how stoic Judah acted, Darby knew that taking Jac back to Carla would be difficult.
He’d insist on interviewing Jac’s new nanny and Darby was pretty sure he’d offer the woman some additional cash to keep him informed about Jac’s progress, to let him know if she needed anything, to send him photographs. To call him if Carla went off the rails again.
Jac might be his niece but she was also the child of his heart.
Curled up in the corner of the sofa in her mother’s house, Darby looked up when Jules walked into the room, dark hair glistening with moisture. Callie had called to check up on Darby and immediately knew that one of her chicks was in pain. She then called in reinforcements. There was a laptop on the coffee table and Darby knew DJ would be calling in soon from the Netherlands. When a crisis struck, the Brogan women didn’t let a little thing like distance come between them and much-needed support.
Callie walked into the room carrying mugs of cocoa. Darby took her cup, looked down at the little marshmallows bobbing in the creamy richness and felt her throat gag. Her life, everything that mattered, was on a plane heading to Europe and her throat was tight, her stomach cramping. Darby placed her mug on the table and rested her head on the back of the sofa, closing her eyes.
She heard the incoming Skype call, DJ’s voice, but didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t want to face this moment, this life that didn’t have Judah or Jac in it. Her two Js, the loves of her life.
Callie sat down next to Darby, placed her hand on her thigh and Darby opened her eyes to look into Callie’s bright blue eyes.
“I’m okay, Mom,” she said, because she felt she had to. She was a strong independent woman...
Who felt like her heart had been ripped in two.
“Has Jac gone back?” DJ asked.
Darby looked at the laptop screen and nodded. “Carla is at home and she’s hired a nanny.”
“You knew this day would come,” Jules softly said.
Darby couldn’t argue with that. “I did, and I thought I could handle it.” She shrugged. “Turns out I can’t.”
They all turned at the sound of footsteps in the hallway and Darby was surprised to see Levi walking into the living room and not Mason. Running a hand through his damp hair, he looked at Darby with worry on his face. “Mom called, said that Jac and Judah had left.” He shuffled from foot to foot. “I wanted to see if you were okay.”
Darby was touched by his concern. She’d managed to contain her tears with Callie and Jules but knowing that her big brother had left work early to check up on her flipped the switch to make the waterworks flow.
“Oh, crap.” Levi held up his hands. “Sorry. I’ll go.”
Darby shook her head and held out her hand to
him, frantically wiping her face with her other hand. Levi walked across the room and sat down on the arm of the sofa and Darby leaned into him, needing his strength.
She felt his hand on her head and forced the words over her tongue. “He offered to give me a baby.”
DJ was the first to respond with a loud “woo-hoo!”
Callie grinned and Jules wiped an imaginary bead of sweat off her brow. “Yay, no sperm donors. He’s hot and smart and yeah, we like him.”
Darby looked up to see Levi’s reaction. Of the three of them who knew her so well, it was her brother who immediately understood that Judah’s offer wasn’t welcome.
“You want a baby, Judah has said that he’ll give you one. What’s the problem?” Levi asked, frowning.
Darby lifted one shoulder and played with the ring on her middle finger. “Judah doesn’t want a child and is only offering because he wants me to be happy.”
Jules’s face softened. “Oh, that’s so romantic. He loves you.”
Maybe he did. She understood their confusion: a gorgeous man was offering her a relationship and a child. Her perfect, much-dreamed-about life was a yes away and she was crying. It shouldn’t make sense, but it did, to her.
Darby shook her head. “He cares for me, I admit that. But you know me, I’m not prepared to settle.”
Jules and Callie exchanged a confused look. “How would you be settling?” Callie asked before lifting her mug to her mouth.
“His idea of a perfect relationship is different than mine. He wants us to travel, to design buildings, to be childless and free. My idea of a perfect relationship is a house we’ve both designed together, having a career while raising a passel of kids. A husband that is fully committed to our life, to me, to his kids.”
“You’re worried that if you have children together, he might feel resentful, that he will put his career, and not you and your children, first,” Levi stated.
Darby nodded. “I could, almost, maybe, play second fiddle to his career—”
“Oh, you could not!” Jules interrupted.
“Maybe not,” Darby admitted. “But I know myself, if we had children and he wasn’t the type of dad to them I know he can be, if he didn’t give them his all, I’d lose respect for him. And that wouldn’t be fair because I knew how he felt going in.”
She continued, “I also think that if we go through this process, this difficult and expensive process, to have children and we didn’t give them everything we had as parents, that would be—” Darby searched for the word “—I don’t know the exact word I’m looking for...immoral? Unfair? No, I think I’d prefer to do it on my own.”
When none of her family responded, Darby wondered if she was overthinking this, whether she’d been too analytical, too hard. She hoped they wouldn’t try to change her mind because she would be easily tempted to take a chance, to try it Judah’s way.
She loved him that much. She didn’t want to be without him.
But a voice deep in her soul, that part of her connected with the earth and the universe and whatever life force that created her, insisted she shouldn’t. It was better to find another way to have the babies she so desperately wanted.
If she actually wanted babies and not control.
She couldn’t get Judah’s words out of her head, had turned them over and over again. Examined them from every angle. Darby ran her hands down her thighs, wrinkled her nose and looked up at Levi. He’d tell her straight; he wouldn’t try to cushion his words. Levi was unflinchingly honest.
“Judah said I want children because I like control, because I haven’t failed at anything else and that I don’t want to fail at this either.”
Levi lifted his eyebrows and fury darkened his eyes.
She held up her hand, not needing his protection but his honesty. “Do you think he’s right?”
Callie opened her mouth to speak but Darby kept her hand up and her eyes on Levi. She wanted his opinion.
Levi opened his mouth, closed it and rubbed the back of his neck. “I think it’s a factor.”
Darby ignored the protests from her female backup team and slowly nodded. She placed the balls of her hands into her eye sockets and tried to push the pain away. She dropped her hands, opened her eyes and watched as Callie and her sisters argued with Levi, who didn’t try to defend himself. He just sat there, absorbing their ire, his eyes on her face.
When she couldn’t take any more, Darby lifted her hand. “He’s right.”
It took a long moment for her words to sink in. When silence dropped into the room like a heavy wet blanket, she looked at her mom, then Jules, then DJ, making eye contact with each of them before leaning into Levi’s thigh.
“He’s right, so is Judah. Not a hundred percent, but a little bit right.”
Callie frowned. “I don’t understand, Darby.”
“I didn’t either, until Judah had the balls to say it. It’s something I’ve been battling with over the past few months, but I wouldn’t put my fears into words, so I couldn’t identify it.” Darby stood up and walked to the fireplace, picking up a photograph of her, Levi and Jules, taken when they were toddlers. Jules sat in Levi’s lap, her arms around her middle and Darby stood next to them, a small gap between her and Levi.
“I’ve always been competitive, it’s a part of my nature. You are our father’s son, Levi, but I am his daughter.” She turned and looked at her brother, holding the frame of the photo. “You and Jules always had this special bond. My earliest memories of you are of me, wanting that bond with you.”
Levi nodded, a small gesture, but Darby took it as encouragement. It was time to lance the wound, to allow all the poison to escape.
“When I was seven, you gave Jules a music box for Christmas. You gave me, God, a ratty baseball card.”
“You threw a hissy fit and wouldn’t come out of your room for the rest of the day. I couldn’t understand what I did wrong. You’d just started to play baseball and that was my favorite card.”
It had been mangled and torn and, yeah, ugly. What had she been supposed to think? But he’d thought he was doing something nice, she’d been insulted. Darby shook her head. Boys. She’d never understand them.
“I saw the disparity in the gifts as you loving Jules more, something I’d long suspected. That Christmas Day I vowed that I would never be second-best, that I would always, always be first and maybe, someday, you would love me as much as you loved her.”
“God, Darby,” Levi muttered, standing up. He walked over to her and pulled her into his chest, holding her against his big body.
Darby sucked in his strength, wanting to stand there forever, but she pushed him away, determined to get this done. She knew her mom and sisters were crying and she couldn’t look at them because then she’d totally lose it. “So, my competitive streak was born. Recently, when I heard that my time was running out to have IVF, I suddenly got cold feet. This was my goal, why couldn’t I pull the trigger? What if I failed? What if it didn’t work? What if I only wanted to become a mom because I didn’t want to fail?”
Levi dropped to the rug and pulled Darby down so she was sitting opposite him, mirroring his crossed legs. He placed his big hands on her knees and looked into her eyes, the green of his brilliant in the soft light.
When he spoke, his voice was a low soothing rumble. “Even as a little girl, you were so damn fierce, so very independent.” His mouth quirked at the corners. “So damn opinionated. Jules allowed me to protect her, to play the older brother, you refused to. I couldn’t help you over puddles, you’d plow through them. I’d tell Jules that a tree was too dangerous to climb. She’d listen. You? You climbed higher. You were fearless, determined, God, so annoying. I couldn’t protect you because you wouldn’t let me protect you and it drove me nuts, it still drives me nuts.”
He took a breath and continued, “For any pain I caused you, I’
m sorry. I should’ve found another way to deal with you, to make you feel as special as Jules, but that doesn’t mean I love you less than Jules. Frankly, all three of you are pains in my ass.”
Muted laughter dissolved some of the tension.
“But to come back to your question about whether you are having kids because you’re competitive...”
Darby held her breath, worried that he would confirm her worst fears about herself.
“Is your competitive streak a factor in wanting to have kids? Sure it is. But it’s not your driving force. Beneath your bossy ways, you’re a nurturer, but because you are strong and independent, people don’t see it.”
Levi carried on. “You’d be a fearless mom, Darby, because you are fearless. You’d be the mom climbing trees, playing in the sand, learning to surf. Because you are independent and strong, you’ll raise strong and independent girls and you’ll raise your sons to respect strong and independent women. You want kids because you have something to give them, Darby, don’t doubt that. And yeah, I agree with you. You can’t settle with Judah. You’d resent him for it and he’d resent himself for doing it. You’re the type of people who don’t ever settle, and love, well, love shouldn’t ever involve settling for less than the very best.”
Darby nodded, knowing he was right. She bit her bottom lip, knowing her tears were about to fall. “It hurts, Levi.”
Levi hauled her into his arms, rocking her gently. “I know, honey, I really do. Love—having it and losing it—hurts like hell.”
* * *
In Carla’s luxurious lakeside villa, Judah held Jac in his arms, unable to hand her over, to let her go.
Carla, as he’d expected, showed little interest in Jac and had languidly introduced him to Jac’s new nanny. While Carla lay on a sofa bed, flicking through a magazine, looking pale and disinterested, Judah, keeping a firm hold on Jac, interrogated Joa, Jac’s new nanny.
