Soon after, we helped Kiley out with a holiday party for the kids in her program. She attended one of Mimi’s hockey games and a practice, plus she and her husband and their toddler daughter had dinner with us. Lucy and I were relieved when Kiley assured us that Mimi was exactly as she appeared: a kid adjusting to changes in her life and using that to her advantage—just like any other normal kid. To show our gratitude for Kiley’s help, I gifted her vouchers for both Lakeside and the bowling alley for her program so she had options for the kids’ activities.
Nails skated down my arm, pulling me from my thoughts.
“Whatcha thinking about so hard, Daddy-o?”
I glanced at Lucy, lying in bed next to me. “If the next four weeks will be as busy as the past month.”
“The holidays are their own kind of crazy. Add in December being birthday month for Mimi, and I’m facing end-of-the-year wrap-up at LI . . . for us, December is extra crispy crazy.”
“Extra crispy crazy?” I smiled at her. “You’ve got fried chicken on the brain.”
“Can you blame me? My brain is fried,” she admitted with a yawn. “I mean, Mimi’s birthday party requests weren’t excessive; the build-your-own-cupcake station is getting to be standard birthday party fare. But where on earth did she get the idea for fried chicken and waffles? And a mashed potato bar?”
“I caught her and Calder watching old episodes of that show on MTV where the kids have over-the-top birthday parties, so that’s probably where she saw it. High five for talking her out of having a chocolate fountain, mamacita.”
Lucy hit her palm to mine. “She’s already hinting for a sleepover party for next year, but I told her not until she’s ten, so we’ve got a year to prepare for it.”
Slipping my arm under her lower back, I rolled her on top of me.
“You are such a beast that you can maneuver me around with one arm.”
“You love it.” I pushed her hair over her shoulder, letting my fingers glide through the silky softness. “I hope we’ll have another child by Mimi’s tenth birthday.”
As she stared at me, I noticed her deep brown eyes weren’t bright with possibility.
“What?” I asked her warily.
“I love you.”
Here we go. “And?”
“And babies are a lot of work. Before you get that ‘Shit, is she gonna lecture me again about not being around when Mimi was a baby?’ look on your face, my concerns have nothing to do with what happened back then. It’s about now. Because your non-hockey-playing life is so overloaded with Stonewall Enterprises responsibilities that you don’t have time for a baby.”
Okay. So that stung.
“I’ve done the baby thing by myself once. That was enough.” She scooted forward and braced her hands on the mattress, one on either side of my head. “Although it feels like we’ve been together for a long time, it’s only been a few weeks. We all need time to get into a solid groove as a family before we start adding new members. That means no babies for a while. And no puppies or kitties or fish or ferrets or hamsters or guinea pigs or potbellied pigs or whatever critter of the week Mimi has been not-so-subtly hinting would be a great Christmas gift for her.”
“Luce. Do you want to have another baby or two with me?”
“Yes.” She feathered her lips across mine in barely-there kisses. “But the old-fashioned girl inside me wants us to be married before another baby happens.”
That caught me by surprise. Lucy had never hinted that she wanted that. “I asked you to marry me, and you turned me down.”
“You haven’t asked me recently,” she cooed.
“Lucille Quade, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
“Where’s the ring?”
I squinted at her. “What?”
“You can’t propose without a ring.” She nipped my chin. “I’m only doing the marriage thing once, so your proposal better be epic and not something you blurt out in bed because you felt pressured.”
Where had all of this come from?
From the girlie, romantic side of her that Lucy rarely acknowledges, which allows you to ignore all that hearts and flowers shit that you’re bad at anyway.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Don’t get your hopes up that my proposal will be some epic thing like Jensen did for Rowan.” My cousin had popped the question at a U of M football game, where Rowan was the collegiate cheer team coach and he’d hired the marching band to spell out MARRY ME ROWAN during halftime. “Or like Walker did with Trinity.” That proposal had happened in front of our entire family at a barbecue. “Or like that fucking showoff the Hammer did for Annika.” Axl had gone all out during the Wild’s last home game of the season, proposing to her on the ice in front of the crowd at the Xcel Energy Center. “Brady is the only one who’s shown any sense.” He’d bought the rings, booked the ticket and whisked Lennox off to be married on an island, just the two of them.
“Uh, no thanks. All of those are far too public. It’s a life-changing moment for two people, and it should be private.”
There was my practical Luce.
“Anyway, back to the original issues. To have a baby, you do realize we’d have to stop using condoms.”
I snorted, but my heart beat faster.
“Speaking of condoms . . . I’m tired of them.”
It’s for your own good, woman.
“I know you’re protecting me, Jax.” As she spoke she teased my mouth with hers and kept our gazes locked. “You’re meticulous about hygiene. Maybe that’s why you haven’t had an outbreak in a year and a half. I don’t have to tell you that the virus isn’t transferable through your sperm and there’s still a two percent chance you’ll infect me even when you’re not showing symptoms even if we use condoms.”
“Jesus, Lucy, what—”
“I love making love with you. Love it. I crave it. You can make me beg you for it. But since we’ve renewed our intimate relationship, you haven’t let me go down on you. Not once. That’s not protecting me, baby. That’s denying me.”
She sank her teeth into my lower lip and tugged. “I want you in my mouth, no condom. I want to feel your hands on my head, pulling my hair, as I take you over the edge and drink you down.”
My dick jumped to attention.
“Please,” she whispered against my jaw. “Let me have my wicked way with you.”
Before I answered, Lucy pushed up onto all fours and started kissing her way down my body. Slowly, giving me a chance to change my mind.
But she was right. I wanted this.
Propping myself on my elbows, I watched her enjoying my body. Her little hums of approval as she licked my nipples. Her deep inhale as she nuzzled the hair between my pecs. Then an actual growl as her tongue traced the groove of flesh between my waist and hips known as an Adonis belt. She went a little crazy there, and that in turn made me crazy, especially when the ends of her hair randomly arced across my flesh—little tickles of sensation and my body tightened in anticipation.
When Lucy reached the end of—or the start of, depending on your perspective—my happy trail, she looked at me as she swirled the flat of her tongue around the head of my dick.
That visual was permanently etched in my brain as was the next one: her sucking my shaft in deep until the tip hit the back of her throat.
Watching her watching me, I understood why she’d pushed me on this—intimacy shouldn’t have boundaries. She’d broken the last one with every lick, suck and sexy, flirty look from beneath her long eyelashes.
And I’d forgotten how amazing this felt.
One thing I hadn’t forgotten? She liked it when I took charge. I curled my hand around the bottom of her jaw as I began to move my hips. “I’m not gonna last.”
Her smirk said she knew that.
After she’d blown my top, she crawled up my body, lazily droppin
g kisses across my skin, turning me into a mass of gooseflesh from head to toe.
“There. Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I cracked one eye open. “I don’t know. Maybe you’d better do it again so I can be doubly sure.”
Twenty-three
LUCY
I hadn’t gotten good and pissed off at Jax for weeks.
Weeks.
But as it was now the twenty-third of December and I’d yet to see the Santa gift for Mimi that he swore he’d purchase, I’d reached the pissed-off stage.
He’d been burning the candle at both ends since he’d taken over Lakeside, as he’d also been dealing with the bar remodels, some issue at the office building he owned that he was being very vague about, as well as the bowling alley. He’d missed half of our cookie baking night with Calder, Rowan and Jensen. He’d arrived just in the nick of time to Mimi’s school holiday program. And I suspected the man hadn’t shopped for a single Christmas gift.
Which was why I showed up at Lakeside when I knew he wasn’t there so I could snoop through his office and see if he had gifts stockpiled that he hadn’t brought home.
Margene chased me down the hallway after I booked it past her office.
“Hey. Lucy. Jax isn’t here.”
I know. “That’s okay. I’m just looking for something he might’ve left here.”
She stepped in front of the door, the bells on her elf hat jangling. “You can’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s two damn days from Christmas. What if he’s got your present on his desk?”
I couldn’t help but ask, “Does he? Have you seen it?”
She shook her head.
“Of course you haven’t, because I doubt the man has bought even one gift. But it’s not my gift I’m worried about, Margene. He wanted to be ‘one hundred and ten percent’ involved in the Santa thing, so I let him take care of it. It’s roughly thirty-six hours before that gift needs to be under the tree for Mimi. And if he’s dropped the puck on this . . .”
Her shoulders slumped. “I ain’t gonna lie. I’m here all day, every day, and I’ve not seen Jax carrying in any packages, nor has FedEx or UPS delivered any boxes with his name on it for the past week.”
“Just fucking awesome.” I leaned against the opposite wall. “Better start looking for another job because I’m gonna kill him.”
Margene snickered. “Maybe he had that stuff sent to his folks’ place? Or even Nolan’s? Knowing that little snoopy miss would find it here and—”
“Because hiding it someplace other than in our six-thousand-square-foot apartment with locking cabinets and tall shelving that Mimi couldn’t possible access even if she had a ladder . . . makes so much more sense?”
She reached out and patted my shoulder. “Men suck at holidays, sweetie. The decorating and the shopping and the cooking and the wrapping and the freaking out about being in charge of everything—that falls on women’s shoulders every year. Even when we swear next year we’ll go the minimalist route—fewer gifts, simpler meals, less social obligations. My husband was as surprised as the kids when they opened their gifts on Christmas morning, because he didn’t have a damn clue what ‘we’d’ bought them.”
“Jax has spent one Christmas with Mimi. One. And it wasn’t even an entire day.” I breathed in. Breathed out. “I’m not looking for perfection. But I feel like this is the last year the jolly man in the red suit will still hold that magic for her. I want Jax to get to experience it with her. If her Santa request isn’t met . . . she’ll be disappointed. And I’ll be upset because her disappointment is one hundred and ten percent avoidable if I would’ve taken care of it like I always do.”
“Maybe that’s where Jax is right now,” she said a little loudly. “You need to have some faith in him.”
“I guess.”
Margene reached over and hugged me. “Go finish the million other things that need to be done in the next day and a half. I’m sure when Jax gets home later tonight, and you ask him, he’ll assure you he did what he’d promised.”
I hugged her back. “Thanks, Margene.”
“Do you want me to tell him you stopped by?”
“Nope.” I put my gloves back on and rewrapped my scarf around my neck.
By the time I’d reached my car in the parking lot, I’d already gone to the next item on my long list.
JAX
Three raps sounded on my door. “You can come out now. She’s gone.”
As soon as I opened the door, Margene laid into me. “Please tell me Lucy has it all wrong and you’ve got Mimi’s Santa gifts squirreled away in here.”
“Dammit.” I ran my hand through my hair. “I knew I was forgetting something.”
“Jaxson Lund! You are in such deep doo-doo.”
“I know, I know. But I’ve had a million things on my mind . . .”
“Not a valid excuse, especially not this time of year when we women have to do every damn thing ourselves.”
Do not defend yourself. In this moment it doesn’t matter that you have Lucy’s gifts in your car.
“You do know what Mimi wants from Santa, right?” Margene demanded.
I had a vague idea. “Of course.”
“Is it something you can trot your butt out to the store and buy right now so I’m not ordering funeral flowers for you next week before I start searching for a new job?”
“Hilarious, Margene. I can buy what Mimi wants, but it’ll take me a few hours to get it.”
She pointed at my cell phone. “Well, what are you waiting for? Get. It. Done.” She slammed the door behind her.
It wasn’t very often I exercised my right to use the Lund Industries corporate jet, but this qualified as an emergency. The first call was to my dad to make sure the plane was on standby and ready to go.
The second phone call was to my mother.
“You forgot to get Mimi’s Santa gift, didn’t you?” was how she answered the phone.
Awesome.
“Yeah. I need your help. Like right now. And I’m hoping that you don’t have one of your ten million social engagements tonight, but I’m so screwed, Mom. Please, please, please save my ass and help me save Christmas.”
She laughed. “Oh, this is so good. If I do this, you will owe me big-time, understand?”
“Anything.”
“Anything?” she repeated with curiosity, which meant the return favor would likely haunt me, but beggars and all that.
“Yes, anything.”
“All right, boy, hit me with the five W’s.”
“I’ll fill you in on the flight to Chicago.”
Twenty-four
LUCY
I yawned and clutched my coffee mug. My third cup and it was only six thirty in the morning.
But it was Christmas morning and Mimi had no problem getting up at the ass-crack of dawn.
“Want me to make another pot?” Jax murmured sleepily beside me.
“No. I’m good.”
“Mmm. Me too. This robe is so comfy I just wanna nap.”
After the Santa-extravaganza, Mimi had forced us to open our gifts from her first, which were super fluffy bright red matching robes, personalized with MOM and DAD and MIMI and 2017. It was such a sweet gift and Jax had been surprised by it too, so I’d have to thank Edie for taking Mimi Christmas shopping.
“Mommy! Look at this one!” Mimi held up a tiny pair of bright purple ski pants.
“Those are awesomely cute.”
“And the jacket doesn’t even match, just like a real snowboarder’s outfit.”
Jax chuckled.
I leaned closer and whispered, “Did you buy the entire American Girl store?”
“Damn near. You should see the camping gear. It is way cool.”
Jax had scored high points with “Sa
nta’s” gift: an American Girl doll who looked like Mimi. There were boxes of clothes and accessories, everything from the hockey uniform the doll came outfitted in, complete with helmet, stick and tiny Chicago Blackhawks sweater with LUND and her dad’s number across the back, to a lion tamer’s outfit and a chef’s uniform.
“She’s gonna want to play dolls with you, Daddy-o.”
He kissed my cheek. “I can’t wait.”
For the next hour we watched an animated Mimi inspecting every item in detail, so it was a perfect, lazy Christmas morning where we could just . . . be.
Upon reaching the last box, a strange look crossed her face.
“Something wrong, sweetie?”
“I don’t see the outfit I really, really wanted.”
That surprised me, given the fact she sat among the rubble of a dozen outfits and accessories, and it wasn’t enough? When had she become so greedy?
“Which outfit was that, squirt?” Jax asked carefully.
“The big sister outfit with the baby carrier. So when you and Mommy have a baby, me ’n my doll match.”
And I just melted. Mimi hadn’t said anything about us having a baby since we’d met Brady and Lennox’s boy, JW. In typical Mimi fashion, she’d needed time to process it before she’d accepted the idea.
“See? Even Mimi’s on board with the baby project,” he whispered.
Then why haven’t you asked me to marry you?
Maybe in this day and age it seemed silly to want that piece of paper and a ring, but I did, even when I had the promise of forever from Jax every time he told me he loved me.
After we ate breakfast, a delicious overnight French toast that Jax and Mimi had prepared the night before, Mimi wanted to open the other gifts.
Jax and I had agreed to buy only one thing for each other, so I had a serious case of present anxiety at seeing his lone present from me beneath the tree.
We waited until Mimi had opened all of hers before she handed us the last two boxes.
“Mommy should go last,” Mimi said slyly and tossed the wrapped box to her father.
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