An honor Cassie had tearfully granted on the spot.
Elaina had a procedure scheduled and wanted to get back upstairs to prepare.
With a last long glance at Cassie, who, holding her phone to her chest, had closed her eyes, Wood followed Elaina out the door. “I can’t thank you enough for that,” he said. “You’re definitely in the right profession,” he added. “Your bedside manner is impressive.”
She smiled but didn’t look pleased. Or displeased, either. She looked...determined.
“What’s up?”
“I want you to forget everything I said about you being careful not to give too much to Cassie. About your tendency to give up yourself for others.”
He leaned back against the wall, staring at her. “What?”
“I was being incredibly selfish, Wood, afraid I was going to lose you, or something, I don’t know. But that woman in there loves you. And I just realized that I might be the one who’s been holding you back from what you really want. Or my fear has.” She glanced toward Cassie’s room door.
“Cassie’s not in love with me,” he said, standing upright. “Or, at least, there’s no way for us to know that. Not with everything that’s been going on. And...” He quickly moved on. “You aren’t ever going to lose me. And you aren’t ever getting rid of me, either. I’m your brother, by law or not. And—” he swallowed “—believe it or not, I need you every bit as much as you need me.” Because family was family.
She shook her head, tears in her eyes, but a smile on her lips. She hugged him, and then stood back. “Regardless of what you say, big brother, I think Cassie’s love for you is pretty clear. All you have to do is stand back and watch the way her face changes as she watches you...” Big brother. It was what Peter had always called him.
“And while I’ve seen you with a few women in your time, I’ve never seen you look at a woman like you look at her. Not even me.”
He stared at her.
“And...” she continued. “I also want you to know that the next time Jason asks me to spend the night with him, instead of getting up and going home, I’m probably going to say yes. Seeing the change in you these past months, as you found out you were going to be a father, and then as you got to know Cassie... I wanted that again, too. I at least want to try.” She had tears in her eyes as she smiled. “And if I do stay out all night, I can’t have Big Brother checking up on me...”
She was letting him go. Letting him know that she wouldn’t be checking up on him, either.
“Go to her,” Elaina said. “She needs you.”
“I love you.”
“I know. I love you, too. Now go.”
He knew what was happening. Elaina was ready to move on now. To find another man to fill the void his brother had left in her heart. Wood had done his job well. And that particular work was done. Made him so happy for her. And a little sad, too, to let go.
“You tell your Jason that if he ever causes you to shed one tear, he’ll have me to answer to...” he called down the empty hallway as she headed off to work. Because Wood was Wood. He’d always tend to those he loved.
And as she walked away, he had to lean a moment, to close his eyes as an onslaught washed over him, like a floodgate bursting open, as indeed it just had. The gate he’d been keeping on the walls of his heart. It could no longer keep a lock on the love he felt for Cassie Thompson.
The mother of his child. And the other half of his soul.
* * *
The rest of that day was a blur to Cassie, cataloged from moment to moment, but with each superseding the next. She was already dozing by the time Wood came back into the room and fell into a real sleep as soon as he settled on the couch he’d pulled up closer to the bed.
The door opening woke her sometime around four, and when she saw why, she sat straight up in bed. “You ready to meet your little one?” the plump, cheery woman asked, and with Wood on her bed beside her, she opened her arms to receive their son, settling him against her heart.
And crying happy tears.
There didn’t seem to be any private moments after that. She had doctor’s checks, vital checks. Alan, who, because he was doing fine, was allowed to stay in her room, did, too. He needed diaper changes. They wanted her to try breastfeeding right away. People from her office, the ones who’d apparently been standing out in the hallway worried sick as she screamed bloody murder in the process of giving birth, stopped in, one at a time, briefly. Once she had her cell phone, she’d called one of her college friends, and soon they were all texting her, wanting to know when they could meet Alan. Her mother also arrived. Wood ran home to get some clothes, announcing that he’d be staying the night, and Elaina stopped in at the end of her shift.
Her mother went home to Cassie’s house a little after nine, and then it was just her and Wood and their sleeping baby. She had the bassinet next to her bed but didn’t want to put the little guy down. Not until she absolutely had to, to get her own rest. He’d been sleeping next to her heart for months. Another hour or two wasn’t going to hurt him any.
At her request Wood turned off all but a light under a high cupboard and then he settled, half lying on the couch next to her bed.
He hadn’t held Alan yet. She’d offered a time or two, but there’d been so many people in and out of the room, so much going on, his refusals had gone largely unnoticed. Except by her. The closest he’d come to touching his son had been when he’d been on the bed, with his arm around Cassie’s pillow behind her back as she’d held him for her mother to get a picture.
Hurting for him, for whatever was holding him back from fully embracing his son in his life, she looked for something worthwhile to say to him but couldn’t find it. And maybe she was taking a step back herself, because she knew it wasn’t her place to help Wood find himself.
“The reason I made such a big deal of the educational differences between us, of my lack of education when we first met, is because I’ve felt like I’m lacking for so much of my life.”
The words were raw. Bald. Laying there in the near dark.
She felt like he’d volleyed her a live mine.
“If I’ve ever made you feel insignificant, or lacking in any way, Wood, I truly apologize. I hold you in the highest regard. And have the utmost respect for you. I might have given you the wrong idea about my father, but believe me, I didn’t think it was possible for any man to ever measure up to him in my eyes, but you do. Why do you think I wanted you to be Alan’s father after birth, not just during conception? It wasn’t because of how I thought I felt about you, but because of what I saw in you that he needed.”
She couldn’t make out his expression in the shadows, and that frustrated her. Only the baby’s weight against her held her in place. And calmed her, too.
“I haven’t felt like myself since I met you,” he said, as though nothing she’d said had had any effect at all. “I’ve been uncomfortable. Not just with you, but within myself.”
Unsure where this was going, but sensing that what was happening was hugely important, she watched him, knowing she had to hear him out, no matter how much it hurt.
“I’ve been slowly realizing this for a while, but today...hearing you scream...when I thought I was going to lose you... I couldn’t doubt what was real. And then, Elaina...she called me on it...
“Meeting you showed me that the life I had wasn’t enough. That there was so much living to do of which I was unaware. Mostly, it showed me that I didn’t ask enough out of life for myself. Meeting you kicked my ass out of the safe zone I’d somehow slipped into. I will always be a worthy servant to those I love, but I can still have dreams of my own.”
Wow. If meeting her had shown him that, then she was very, very glad to carry the burden of her unrequited love for him. He’d given her Alan, and she’d given him back his ability to dream bigger. To want, not just do.
As her mom had said, it
was all meant to be.
He stood. Came over to sit beside her, one arm around her pillow again. They’d had a baby together that day and yet, other than a couple of hand-holding incidents, and some hugs, and knee touches, they still hadn’t been physically intimate.
“So now I’m asking, Cassie.” His free hand reached out to her, handing her something. She took it with her free hand and then saw what she was holding.
A small jewelry box. Ring size.
But it had to be earrings. A thank-you for having his child. It used to be a thing, men buying gifts for the mother of the child on the day of birth, and Wood was traditional like that.
Her free hand was holding their son’s bottom. She couldn’t get the box open.
“What are you asking?” She was staring at the box. She couldn’t help it. She’d made a deal that day, a life-and-death deal, and already, she was wanting more than she could have.
What was the matter with her?
“I’m asking for my own dream, Cassie. I’m asking you to marry me.” He flipped open the lid of the box that was still in her hand, exposing the biggest solitaire diamond she’d ever seen in real life. Bigger even than her mother’s, which she’d always thought huge. “Or rather, telling you that I believe I’m enough to make you happy, and hoping that you’ll marry me.”
Cassie held their son, aware of his warmth against her, needing it, and still holding the box, too. “But...my emotions are all in such a mess right now. I’m not going to take a chance on using you, Wood, on trapping you in a relationship that you’ll later wish you didn’t have...”
“Yet you’ll trust your son to love me.”
“I know he will.”
She had no doubt about that. None.
“What if I tell you I trust you to love me?”
She stared at him. Frightened all of a sudden. Her heart started pounding.
She’d made a deal with God.
And a promise to herself, too. She hadn’t thought about it in a long, long time, but sitting there, feeling completely trapped suddenly by all the things she needed so badly, just hours after she’d almost lost everything, she remembered the girl who’d sat alone at the cemetery the night they’d buried her father. Her mom and Richard had been at her dad’s house, cleaning out his stuff, and she’d taken the car...
She’d promised herself that she’d never, ever let herself fall so deeply in love with anyone that she couldn’t get over the relationship if it ended. As much as she loved her dad, she couldn’t be like him. Couldn’t spend her whole life pining for someone who’d chosen to leave.
At least he’d had her mom for a while. Had known bliss.
At least he had his memories.
Cassie didn’t even have those memories of being with the one she loved. In some ways, she was more alone than her dad ever had been. But still...
“Can we at least wait a couple of months?” she asked.
She’d die a slow death if Wood married her just because she needed him.
“I’m scared,” she told him.
“Because you’re in love with me,” he told her.
She knew she was. It all made sense now.
“You know how I know how much you love me? Because today, in your worst moments, I was the one you needed. I was the only one who could calm your heart. Because, all these months, you’ve put my happiness before your own,” he told her. Her eyes filled with tears, she looked at him. Needing him. Loving him.
“Love’s a scary thing,” she told him. “You hear everyone talk about falling in love and you see these couples all sappy and in love and getting married, and...it scares the heck out of me. My dad, he was such a great guy...and his heart was just broken...”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe he’d had what he wanted and was happiest just spending his time off with you.”
She’d never thought of her father’s single state being his own choice. She’d always seen it as something out of his control. Something that had happened to him that he couldn’t fix.
“Love is scary,” Wood said softly, his voice tender in the darkness. “Even with this little guy here. We both would have been devastated if he hadn’t made it through today. But look at you now...beaming, holding him. Knowing a happiness beyond anything you can imagine...”
She looked up at him, saw the glow in his eyes as he gazed at the sleeping baby she held. “It is beyond anything we could have imagined, huh?” she asked him.
He looked back at her and nodded. “Would you choose not to have this experience, not to know him, to protect your heart from ever feeling pain because of him?”
“Of course not.”
His gaze intent, he watched her. Waiting.
She knew what he was pulling out of her. Just as he knew it was there.
“I do love you, Wood. I want to make you happy. For the rest of your life, I want to make both you and Alan happy.”
“Then take my ring, put it on your finger and say that you’ll become my forever family.”
Cassie dropped the box, ring and all. Wrapping her hand around Wood’s head, she brought his face to hers and stopped his words. Her lips took them, her tongue took them, her breath took him. There was no first kiss, no tentativeness. She slid her tongue into his mouth, accepted his in hers and made love in the only way she could having just had a baby and having said baby cradled against her.
Wood didn’t fight her advances. He actually made the way easier for her, gathering her, including Alan, against him as he climbed fully onto the bed with them, holding them against him as he kissed her back.
She would never in a million years have believed that she could feel any kind of good sensation down below after the day she’d had, but tiny spurts of desire spiraled, and she had to stop the kiss.
“I take that as a yes?” Wood asked, finding the ring box in the covers, removing the ring and slipping it on her finger. She teared up, of course, but didn’t care. She’d never known love could feel like this. Never known emotion could be so intense.
Or so intensely right.
And kissed him some more.
They talked some, too. About him moving into her house, starting immediately. She asked about his dog. He said that if Elaina wanted Retro, he’d let her have her, but if that happened, he wanted to get another dog for the two of them, a friendly cousin to Retro when she came to visit. They talked about the nursery furniture that was pretty much done but still sitting in Wood’s shed, waiting for her to have it picked up. He’d be delivering it himself now. Along with the rest of his stuff. He was going to sign his house over to Elaina, if she wanted it.
There was so much to think about. To be thankful for. Overwhelmed in the best possible way, she almost started to cry again.
“When did you find the time to buy this?” she asked, distracting herself by watching the ring sparkle in the dimmed light.
“I didn’t. I asked your mother to do it for me on her way in from the airport.”
Which explained why the ring looked like her mother’s, but bigger and better. Because Susan knew Cassie so well. And wanted more for her than she’d ever had herself.
It was a mother’s way.
“I thought I was losing you in the ambulance this morning... I knew then that you were my only dream. My true life...”
“I was praying,” she said. “My dad used to say that the waves bring in the good and the bad, and the one thing we can count on is that when they’ve brought something bad, hold on, good will follow. I was making a deal that if this one wave could be good, if Alan could be okay, I’d give up wanting what I couldn’t have.”
“Meaning me?”
She nodded, tearing up again as she looked at him. “I love you so much, Woodrow Alexander.”
“I love you, too, Cassie. And more, I’m forever in love with you.” He kissed her again. More ge
ntly, with less tongue. “You are the one I want to be with forever,” he told her.
And then brushed his thumb against Alan’s cheek.
He was still holding back. She loved him too much to watch it happen.
“You know, Wood, something else occurs to me.”
“What’s that?”
“I think it’s time for you to accept all your dreams coming true,” she said. “You aren’t just a bystander here, watching over things, tending to them—you’re as much a part of this as I am. As the paperwork we sign before we leave here will show.” Shifting enough to move the baby over to his body from hers, she helped him settle his son in the crook of his free arm.
She was never going to forget the look of sheer awe on Wood’s face as he looked down at the baby he held. Not ever.
“I chose his first name,” she told him, her throat tightening with emotion. “You should choose his second.” She’d been wanting to make the offer for a while.
“Seriously?” He looked from the baby to her and back.
“Dream, Wood, dream. Ask for things for yourself.” She was, after all, the lawyer in the family. The one trained to watch out for the rights of others.
“Then his name is Alan Peter.”
“Alan Peter Alexander,” she said, trying the name out loud. It didn’t ring quite right. So she tried again, knowing she was truly opening her heart at last. “How about Peter Alan Alexander?” she asked.
And as if he had a say in things, the baby woke up.
* * *
Don’t miss the previous volumes in Tara Taylor Quinn’s the Parent Portal miniseries—A Baby Affair and Having the Soldier’s Baby—available now from Harlequin Special Edition!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Date of a Lifetime by Lynne Marshall.
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