Total pages in book: 34
Estimated words: 33887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 169(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 33887 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 169(@200wpm)___ 136(@250wpm)___ 113(@300wpm)
How’s it going?
E made me spill. Throwdown between her and S for who gets C’s shower. They’re co-throwing it, he replied
I cannot tell you how glad I am I’m neck deep in horse shit.
Hale chuckled and sent a thumbs up emoji.
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to sit over there and oo and ah over things you care not a whit about as Elsa opens the presents,” Nora drawled in his ear.
He looked down at her and joked, “Did I do something to be punished for?”
“You got nothing but the good stuff. She pays for it for nine months then however long it takes her to recover. So…yes,” she answered.
He couldn’t argue that.
So he didn’t.
He moved to the armchair next to Elsa’s and sat down.
She leaned his way the minute he did in order to whisper, “Dad, Oskar, Jamie and Tom drifted into the library about ten minutes ago, and Duncan is fading in that direction. Judge is only staying to provide moral support to you, and would probably give one of his kidneys for an excuse to miss this. You want me to cover for you? You can take Judge and run.”
“Baby, I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” he bald-faced lied.
She knew he was doing it, which was why she rolled her eyes.
Then she pasted a smile on her face because Inger was passing her the first present.
Three and a half months later…
Hale had the strap of the diaper bag over his shoulder and the baby in his carrier gripped in his hand.
Elsa carried in nothing but herself, which was good, because, even if she’d only been in the hospital two days, the cats were on her like she’d been gone a year.
Hale watched carefully as she went slowly when she bent to give them love.
Ascertaining she was good, he dumped the diaper bag on an armchair, put the carrier on the coffee table, unbuckled the straps and carefully lifted his newborn son to his shoulder.
“How much did that kill you?” Elsa asked, and he turned to see she was holding Frosty much like he was holding Laird.
“How much did what kill me?”
“Not being able to hold him for the entire trip back from the hospital.”
He grinned at her.
Taking her man and her boy in, her face got soft, before her eyes again lifted to his.
“You didn’t have to take a month off, honey. Mika said she and Tom aren’t going to Arizona for a while, just in case we need some help. Mom is beside herself, and since she first laid eyes on our boy last night, she’s asked me a hundred times when she gets to babysit. Fliss and Carole are in to help. Even Blake said she’d be around if we needed anything, though the caveat to that was emergency shopping. In other words, I’ve got support.”
“And I’ve got a job where I can take six weeks off,” he returned.
She tipped her head to the side. “I thought it was a month.”
“It became six weeks at 5:27 last night,” he replied, rubbing circles on Laird’s back. “And it might become two months in about two seconds.”
Her mouth twitched, and she shrugged off her jacket, threw it on the back of the chair and headed to the kitchen.
He was about to go to the diaper bag to get a blanket to drape over his boy when he saw her stop dead.
She was staring at something in the kitchen, so he looked that way.
When he saw the small white box with a wide, baby-blue satin ribbon wrapped around it, that was when he stilled.
“We should have known,” Elsa said softly, so he tore his gaze off the box and looked at her to see her gaze, tender and warm, on him.
No one could get past the security in their building to get into this unit without them knowing.
No one.
But Rhys Vaughan.
“Open it,” he ordered, his voice so throaty, it was nearly guttural.
She didn’t go to the box.
She came to him, put her hand on Laird’s back and ordered gently, “Give him to me.”
“Elz—”
“Hale, go see what your father gave our son.”
He swallowed, transferred Laird to her shoulder, then, when his boy was settled and she had him, he put his hand to the small of her back and guided her with him to the box.
It was sitting on an envelope.
Hale clenched his teeth and took the box off the envelope.
And there it was.
His father’s handwriting.
Hale.
“I love this man,” Elsa whispered reverently. When she noticed his inaction, she looked up at him and advised, “The box first, handsome.”
He nodded and grabbed the present, tugging at the ribbon.
It fell away, and he opened the white package which exposed a Tiffany blue box. He pulled the Tiffany’s box out of its container and opened it to see a sterling silver baby rattle.