Four months later…
“I feel the hot coming through my shoes,” Kara and Brand’s cousin whined.
My eyes swept to Kara and Brand.
Kara was looking at me, lips twitching.
Brand was pressing his together, probably so he wouldn’t say anything.
He lost this fight and opened his mouth but not a word came out before…
“Brand,” Creed warned low and I looked at him to see him tuck our son, Jesse, tighter to his chest.
I loved that.
Loved it.
I looked back at Brand and his face was red, not from embarrassment, from trying to keep his mouth shut.
I burst out laughing.
Creed
Thirteen months later…
Creed shut the door on the rental, his other hand curled around the handle of the cooler.
He moved through the trees into the grass, feeling the warmth of the sun shining on his head and beating through his tee.
He walked through the grass, his mind registering the cool of the turf on his bare feet.
Something you didn’t get in Arizona.
Something you got in Kentucky.
He lifted his head from his study of the grass, his eyes took in the scene and his body rocked to a halt.
Brand was in the lake, screwing around, able to entertain himself just as he was skilled at entertaining others. He was happy to be swimming on his own.
Kara was in her bikini at the side of the lake, feet probably sunk to the ankles in mud. Still, she was smiling and bouncing in the water, a giggling, squealing Jesse in her arms.
Sylvie was sitting at the end of the pier in shorts and a cami, her tanned legs over the side, her arms behind her, weight in her hands, head tipped back to the sun. The huge rock that he’d placed a diamond encrusted band under in Vegas two months after she moved to Phoenix blinking in the rays.
As he suspected, neither of his kids had a problem with him making Sylvie his wife. They also didn’t blink when told they were getting another sibling. Brand had two new people to jabber to and Kara had two new people to love.
They were happy.
Sylvie was happy.
So was Creed.
He forced himself to come unstuck and started moving again thinking what he thought when Kara was put in his arms. When Brand was set there. When he tucked his and Sylvie’s bundled Jesse close. When he studied his Sylvie, sleeping in sheets filled with rose petals.
He was thinking his Dad would like one fuckuva lot all the love that Creed had created, but better, earned.
“You got him?” he called to Kara as he put his foot up on the pier.
“Yeah, Dad,” Kara called back and shit, she was growing into her beauty. A year, two, he was going to be fucked.
God, he hoped the kid in Sylvie’s belly was another boy.
Please, God, he prayed, let it be another boy.
He moved down the pier and saw Sylvie had twisted, her torso just slightly but her neck all the way around. Her arms were still behind her. The diamonds he gave her twinkling. The green at her neck sparkling.
Every day, every single day, she wore his green.
Every day.
She smiled at him.
Warmth that had nothing to do with sun radiated down the pier and saturated him all the way through.
Creed smiled back.
There she was, his woman wearing his ring, his green with his baby in her belly sitting at the end of their pier.
His Sylvie.
His dreamweaver, able to weave dreams doing nothing but sitting on a pier and smiling.
The way it always was.
The way it always would be.
He stopped at the end by his wife and put the cooler down. She instantly flipped the top open. Creed bent and rolled up his jeans.
When he got them up, he settled at the end of the pier with Sylvie, his feet in the water and he saw hers were covered to her ankles, her watery toes painted a bright pink, the same color that was on her nails. His feet were covered up to the tops of his calves.
She handed him a frozen Snickers bar, he took it and she tore into hers.
Pregnant, his woman could eat. He’d never seen anything like it. She consumed everything in sight.
She also didn’t slow down and she was nourishing two so she needed a lot of energy.
Then again, not pregnant, his woman could eat.
She just ate like she lived, consuming life and enjoying the fuck out of it.
It was one of the myriad reasons he loved her.
Creed ripped open his candy bar and slid his arm along Sylvie’s shoulders.
She leaned into him, head to his shoulder and bit hard into her Snickers.
Creed followed suit and his eyes moved to the lake.
They were back in Kentucky because they told the kids a little of their history and Kara and Brand were curious about where their Dad came from, something, for obvious reasons, he had never shared much about. Something, because of this, they’d always been curious about.
Now they were in the lake that, since they could cogitate, they’d seen on their father’s back.