The Child Who Changed Them, page 19
“I think you had to live with him to really see that.” She could barely speak through the lump in her throat. Felt as though she was a ghost, right there with her deceased husband. And yet, felt alive, too. More than she had in a very long time. She was breaking free from Peter’s manipulation.
Wood didn’t respond. He’d never been a man of many words.
“He never encouraged you to reach for your own dreams,” she said. It was the one thing she could see clearly. The way Peter had minimized Wood—Peter had done the same to her. She realized that now. But it had been so much harder for her to see.
“You did encourage me,” Wood said. She was so glad he understood that—glad they’d had the conversation they had about it one day, shortly after he and Cassie had been married.
“I love him still,” she said, needing total honesty. She’d never be completely free of the guilt. And probably shouldn’t be. It gave her greater understanding. Greater compassion. A need to look at life from perspectives other than her own.
“I know. Me, too.”
“And he loved us.”
“Absolutely.”
She took a deep, shaky breath. Let it out, her hands shaping Marisol. Guarding and protecting her.
“It’s time to set yourself free, sis.”
Her eyes filled again at the nickname he used to call her, back when Peter had been alive.
“I never want to lose you as family.”
And that was the only reason she’d wanted to have Peter’s baby. The truth was bald. Not pretty.
“That’s up to you. I signed on as your brother for life when I witnessed your marriage to Peter. You know that. Cassie knew it, too, before we agreed to marry. She loves you.”
She nodded.
“Okay, well, I’m going to go...”
That was so Wood. He’d say what he had to say and head out. And she loved him so much like the brother he would always be.
“Tell Greg I’ll be a little while longer?”
“Yep.” With a nod, and a tap to her shoulder, he walked back the way he’d come.
Taking the ghost she’d been with him.
* * *
Greg stood directly under the shower spray, water sluicing over his head, to his shoulders and down his body, when he thought he heard something in the other room. With a quick glance, he noted Beldon was right where he’d left him, lying just outside the shower door.
Thinking the dog had left the room and come back, he turned his back, closed his eyes, lifted his face and continued to allow himself to soak up one of the sensual pleasures he was at liberty to enjoy. Warm water pounding down on naked skin. Relaxing muscles that were far too tense after every workshop venture. He enjoyed the activity. Even more than he’d figured he might. But Marisol’s crib...he wouldn’t accept even the most minor flaw...
The shower door opened. Eyes flying open to a deluge of water, Greg started to turn, arm raised and ready to fight, only to hear, “Steady there, sailor. I come in peace.”
Sailor.
Oh my God. He’d once dared Elaina to try to send his ship out to sea... They’d been in the shower after a particularly energetic bit of lovemaking and he’d been certain she couldn’t get him turned on again so soon.
She’d made him into a sailor that night. And several other times, as well.
As his mind was still processing the words, the reality of her voice inside his opened shower door, she slid fully behind him. Her hands began moving over his back. Down his sides.
The door shut behind her. Whether on its own or with her aid, he had no idea. He just knew that his neglected penis was not missing one second of what was transpiring.
And—oh, God—things were transpiring. A hard round ball pressed up against his lower back as Elaina’s fingers slid around him to find his belly button, and then travel upward, tangling in the hair of his chest. Moving on to his nipples. With hands desperately plastered to the tile of the shower wall, Greg leaned a bit forward, spreading his legs as he did so.
If she wanted something from him, she’d tell him so.
This part of “them,” he had down pat.
And so did she.
Slim, feminine fingers slid down his torso, finding the bush of hair at the apex of his thighs, and then moved lower. Closing around him with just the right amount of pressure to drive him out of all rational thought. He moved within her fingers, some idea lingering about being inside her, bringing her with him, but didn’t have a chance to focus on it as he exploded, almost immediately, in her hand.
She’d been gone most of the afternoon. And for months, too.
For a few brief moments, as he recovered, he allowed the water to wash over them, allowed himself to savor the feel of her warmth against his back.
Until there was a very definite complaint. Or call for acknowledgment at any rate, from a tiny body part with a big punch right to his kidney.
And he noticed the water had started to go cold.
“We need to talk.” Elaina spoke the words into his back before she let him go, and he nodded. Turned off the water. Reached for towels and handed her one.
Then got hard all over again when he saw her naked body, quite pregnant with his child, in his shower with him.
He’d seen her belly during the ultrasound, but the whole picture...was something his imagination hadn’t drawn nearly as perfectly as the real thing. He had no breath, standing there looking at her.
So beautiful. Just so beautiful.
She covered herself up with the towel he’d handed her. Started to dry off, still covered. And he heard again the ominous words she’d stated just seconds before.
We need to talk.
Very little good ever came from those words beginning a conversation.
And while the sex they’d just shared had been wonderful, it did nothing to reassure him.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Sex was what they did when there was nothing else between them.
All he had in the bathroom was a pair of thin cotton pajama bottoms and a T-shirt. He pulled them on and left her to redon the clothes he saw thrown over the edge of the bathtub on the opposite side of the room.
The noise he’d heard earlier. The poodle had to have known she’d been there, but he had not given anything away.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said dryly to the dog, who’d moved from the shower rug to the bed at some point.
He could hear Elaina dressing—pictured the jeans and loose-fitting cotton top, covered by the calf-length cardigan she’d left in that afternoon. Running a hand through wet hair that he hadn’t taken the time to comb, he paced back and forth from the end of the bed to the chair and table under the window, and back again.
He’d leave if she asked him to. Immediately. Move out in the morning. He’d even understand if she told him that the sex had been a fond farewell.
He’d give her whatever space she needed.
He had no choice there. And no desire to do anything where she was concerned that was directly contrary to what she needed.
But he was not going to turn his back on her. Or Marisol.
Back and forth he walked. Repeating what he knew to be his deepest truths. He might be getting ready to lose a piece of his life, but he’d found himself in the process of loving Elaina Alexander.
And for that he’d be forever grateful.
“I’m sorry.” Her words stopped him in his tracks. She stood at the bathroom door, sandals on, ponytail perfectly intact even while wet.
And his heart sank.
Still, he stood there. Listening. Ready.
Loving someone, standing by them, wasn’t just easy, or fun, or happy. He hadn’t lightly made his promise to always be there for her. He’d meant the words.
Still meant them.
If she needed him to jump out, he’d jump.
And knew that if he needed her to video-call him every night he wasn’t putting Marisol to bed, she’d do so. Because their promises to each other worked both ways. She’d do everything in her power to give him what he needed.
She just couldn’t be anyone but who she was...
“Sorry for what?” he asked, when she just stood there, seemingly unable to express what she had to say.
“For coming in here...into your space...without permission...with you in the shower...and then...touching you like I did.”
He wasn’t sorry. Not in the least. Hell, he’d gotten the best end of the deal, to be sure. But... “Why did you do it?”
He needed to know.
“Because when I got home and couldn’t find you...your SUV was here but you weren’t... I glanced down the hall, saw your bedroom door open, called out, you didn’t answer, and you weren’t in the shed. And then I saw Beldon run into your room and followed him, heard the shower and...” She shrugged. “I just was so glad...and... I’ve missed your body so much.”
She shook her head as her words trailed off.
None of which told him what she’d actually come to say.
“Why were you looking for me?”
She shook her head again, looking at him. Looking different, somehow. Her eyes more alert, open wider, and her chin tilted up higher.
She looked...determined. Something he’d only seen at the hospital, explaining why a scan read she’d done was absolutely accurate and needed to be acted upon.
She’d been right, too.
“I think... I don’t know... I’m not good at just doing what I want to do for someone, without consultation and agreement...”
He breathed his first sigh of relief since his orgasm.
“Okay, so let’s consult.”
“I’ve already...kind of...moved forward...”
And relief left the premises. Still, he stood there. “Moved forward how?”
“I got us plane tickets. To Las Vegas.”
For the first time since she’d invaded his shower, he started to question if she was okay. To worry about her.
“We’ve never talked about going to Las Vegas.” Yes, he’d grown up an hour and a half from there. And Vegas was the closest national airport. But...
“I know.” She stood there, nodding, her belly hardly looking pregnant beneath the top, with the sweater wrapped around her edges.
“When were you planning on going?”
“Whenever we’re ready. Both of us. The tickets are open-ended.”
Something about her, an energy, the way she was kind of wiggling on her feet like she had to pee, but not really...finally got through to him. Actually traveled across the room and entered his body was more like it. His nerves started to buzz.
Maybe just coming back to full life after the orgasm...
“I want to marry you, Greg. If you’d been out in the shed, or come when I called, you’d have found me perfectly rational and kneeling in the kitchen with a pair of wedding rings in my hands...”
She’d come home to propose to him?
It was then that he noticed the two little black boxes on his dresser, by the door. He hadn’t made it that far in his pacing. Wasn’t sure he could make it over there then, with the way his heart was pounding.
He sat on the end of the bed. Ridiculous. Stood up. And walked slowly toward her, holding her gaze the whole time. Waiting for her to blink. To look away. To shut down on him.
When they were toe to toe, she was still gazing straight into his eyes. Into his soul, felt more like it. “Will you marry me, Greg? I love you so much. More than that, I’m in love with you. I know now that that’s why I broke up with you before, and why I wanted you to live here, and why I was so glad that you’re the father of my baby, and why I couldn’t let myself love you before I came to terms with my past.”
His heart soared. His body soared. And his mind was mostly blank. “Why you couldn’t let yourself love me?”
“Because it’s so much easier to go through life without having to worry about hurting someone, about doing something that ruins their dreams...or ends their life. Because I was afraid to love and lose again. Because life isn’t perfect and love comes with no guarantees and recovery is so damned hard. And because if you don’t let yourself love, you’ve already lost. And that’s worse than death.”
“You aren’t responsible for Peter’s death.” He hadn’t said the words the night she’d given him the chance. And had been doubting that choice ever since.
“I know,” she said. “The drunk driver is. And Peter started the conversation. He wouldn’t let the matter go. And I engaged because I didn’t want to get home and then have the conversation with him standing over me, convincing me once again to give in to him. For the good of our family.”
He lifted a hand to the side of her face. Just needing to touch her. To feel her skin. Her warmth and softness. “You not being who you are, just giving in, doing what you need to do—that’s not good for your family.”
She covered his hand with her own, holding his fingers against her. “I know that now, too. Thanks to you.”
“To me? I said nothing...there was so much I could have said, and I sat there like...”
“Like a man who loves me enough to know what I need,” Elaina interrupted him. “I had to come to the answers on my own. But you’re the one who sat with me, Greg. Not just that night, but all the nights we spent in your bed, letting love grow without any expectations on me, without any pressure...and then...moving in here...still without ever once pushing me further than I was ready to go.”
“Because you were giving me what I most needed,” he told her. He wasn’t a saint, like she seemed to be making him out to be.
“Because I love you, too,” she said softly, her eyes glistening again. “Because that’s what healthy love does... It lets you hear your partner’s needs without losing sight of your own, and together you find a way to fit together in the best possible way.”
“And the sex is great, too.” He said the words with a grin on his face, but with a voice heavy with emotion and a hint of moisture tickling the corners of his eyes, too.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“Yes, I have,” he said. “I wed myself to you the first time I took you to my bed and found a goddess who moved me more than any other woman ever had. When I had lunch with you and felt...uplifted just to hear you talk. The day you told me you were pregnant with my child and I didn’t believe you. And the day we found out you were right. Yes, I love you, and I’ll marry you, Elaina Alexander. Whenever you’re ready. In Las Vegas. Or anywhere. And I’ll renew my vows every single day from now through eternity, on this earth, or beyond.”
She reached up and kissed him then, open mouth, her tongue knowing exactly how to fit with his. Her arms slid around his neck, his around her waist, and... Marisol kicked.
“I can see our daughter has your strength.”
“I only hope she has your patience,” Elaina said, kissing him again. “And your wisdom.” The words were punctuated by another kiss, her eyes half-lowered, telling him what she needed. He took his time to undress her, touching her where he knew she liked most, how she liked most, and slid into her right there at the end of the bed, laying her on her back, with him still standing.
He went at her speed, angled himself how she liked it and cried out with her as they both reached their climaxes, one just after the other. He was ready to head to Vegas right then.
“Let’s go tonight,” he said boldly.
“Go where?”
“To Vegas. You said whenever...”
“But...”
He put a finger to her lips. “Not to get married, though I’m ready for that, too. Just to get away, me and you, a couple who’s just admitted they’re spending the rest of their lives together.”
It wasn’t until Beldon nosed his leg that he realized they couldn’t just run off like two kids with no responsibility.
“Beldon,” he said, half to the dog, but seriously concerned, too. No kennel was going to be open after five on a Saturday night, not in Marie Cove... And they weren’t those people, the ones who could just throw all caution to the wind.
“We can drop him off at Wood and Cassie’s,” Elaina told him. “I’ve heard that Retro would welcome a playmate.”
“You call them, and the airline, and I’ll get a room.”
And he had to add, “It’s too soon for a wedding tonight, but I’m hoping for one before our daughter is born.”
Her smile, minus any sign of fear or doubt, earned her another very long kiss.
“First, how about another shower, as soon as we get to our room tonight?” she asked when they came up for air.
“I can agree to that plan. And this time you stand under the water...in front of me...so I can see every inch that I’m touching...”
Elaina shimmied up against him as well as her belly would allow, grinning, and then sobered.
“I’ll always have your back, Greg.” He knew by the deeply serious look in her eye that she was talking about the shower...and not.
“And I’ll always have yours.”
As doctors, as people who’d suffered, they both knew that there were many things they couldn’t control, but they’d just made a promise they could keep—for themselves and their family. Forever.
* * *
Don’t miss previous books in The Parent Portal miniseries:
A Mother’s Secrets
Her Motherhood Wish
A Baby Affair
Having the Soldier’s Baby
Keep reading for an excerpt from The Marine Makes Amends by Victoria Pade.
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