Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
He gave me a scowl, and then turned that angry face to his brother.
“What the fuck is that?”
Dante looked down at the baby carrier he was holding.
Realizing what Baylor wanted, he turned the carrier around and showed him.
My breath caught.
“Dude,” he said. “What’s with all the pink? You hate pink!”
I wanted to smother my man with kisses.
With him high as a kite, I would’ve thought he’d say something about Dante’s child, but he didn’t.
“Can I hold her?” Baylor demanded, waving his hands out in front of him with an expectant look.
Dante looked like he was trying to deduce whether this was a good idea or not. I could see the thoughts crossing his face, one after the other before he decided that it couldn’t hurt.
He set the carrier down on the floor, bent down, and pulled the small baby out of the car seat.
The little girl was adorable in all her pink. She also looked tiny in her father’s hands, so I couldn’t even gauge her age by comparing her to anything—mostly because Dante was massive in stature.
“You’re wasting time,” Baylor sang to his brother.
I bit my lip and looked at Dante as he placed his daughter into Baylor’s waiting arms.
“Ow!”
My stomach sank as Dante touched Baylor’s belly, but Dante didn’t apologize. He held onto the little girl until he was sure that Baylor wouldn’t drop her.
And that was when I decided that I’d start working on Baylor’s desire not to have any children anytime soon.
Just looking at him now, a tiny little girl in his arms, it let me know that he was ready to be a father just as much as I was to be a mother.
“You okay?”
I blinked and turned to Dante.
“Sure.” I cleared my throat. “What’s her name?”
Dante looked at his brother and daughter when he said, “Mary.”
I studied the little girl’s face.
The up-tilted eyes and flattened features. Her tongue was stuck out of her mouth, and her face was scrunched up and puffy looking. Her body was splayed out in Baylor’s arms, but she didn’t look too upset by this.
It took me all of ten seconds to realize two things.
Mary had Down syndrome, and Baylor either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Either way, I’d never, not once, wanted to throw myself into my husband’s arms and hug him more.
The one and only time he could’ve been loose with his tongue and get away with it, he said just one thing.
“She’s beautiful.”
And she was.
I would actually go as far as to say that she was the cutest baby I’d ever seen in my life.
And not only did she have her father wrapped around her little finger, but she had her uncle now wrapped around the one on her opposite hand.
Two huge, alpha males, one totally drugged up and the other worried and broken, stared and looked at the beautiful miracle in Baylor’s arms.
***
“I can’t believe he came.”
I opened my eyes to hear Baylor talking.
My eyes peeked open, and I smiled when I saw Rafe sitting at the edge of Baylor’s bed, talking to him.
“You don’t know what it took to get him to come,” Rafe said. “I drove to his place, told him what happened, and he looked at me like I’d grown a second head. I had to practically tell him that the fucker was strapped in the bed two rooms down from yours before he agreed to come.”
“He’s just down the hall?”
Rafe nodded his head.
“He is.”
I swallowed thickly.
“Think I can say I’m still high on pain meds and get away with murdering him while he’s handcuffed to the bed?”
Rafe seemed to consider it for a long moment, then eventually shook his head.
“No,” he said. “There are guards outside his room, just waiting for something like that to happen. You’d have to come up with a pretty good reason to be in his room, and since I doubt you can walk upright at this point, I don’t think you’re going to figure out a way to sneak in there.”
I breathed a sigh of relief and sat up, my neck stiff from the awkward angle that I’d had to lie in to curl up in the chair.
After Dante had left after making sure that Baylor was all right, the rest of the family had started to trickle in one at a time.
It’d taken over two hours for them all to work their way through, and now, I supposed, it was finally Rafe’s turn.
I wondered how long he’d been waiting out there.
My wince of discomfort was caught by both men, and suddenly I was under the close scrutiny of two pairs of worried eyes.
“Are you okay?” Baylor asked.
I nodded, which only made me wince again.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
The crick in my neck was starting to send painful stabs of sensation straight down my spine.
“You’re lying.” Baylor snorted. “Come ‘ere.”