Roseville Romance

by Lorelei M. Hart

  But happy...beyond my wildest dreams.

  Chapter Twenty

  Damon

  The next few months were a blur. If I thought taking care of a kid, like a real kid who could sit on the toilet and eat with a fork was bad, I had no idea. Someone should’ve slapped me for thinking it.

  Babies are tough and hard work, and I felt like a mix between Frankenstein and a zombie all the time.

  Lucy taken care of.

  Food.

  Sleep.

  Maybe a shower.

  Patrick had been a champ throughout everything. He’d turned his practice over to a new dentist who couldn’t afford his own practice for three months while he stayed home with me. And now, his last week, he’d booked our family into a beach house so we could enjoy each other before he went back to work full-time.

  I scored big in the alpha department.

  Also, in the son department.

  Oh, and the daughter, too.

  “Lucy, where is Robbie?” Robbie covered his eyes with his hands and attempted to play peek-a-boo with his sister. Adoption went through without a hitch. Robbie was ours and where there were only two then three, now there were four.

  A family I never thought I’d have.

  “I think she’s tired, buddy. Let me rock her. Wanna sit with me?” Patrick picked Lucy up from my lap and settled her into the crook of his arm, facing outward. She loved to see what was going on. Robbie settled onto the other side of his lap and began yawning as Patrick rocked.

  I wonder if Robbie had ever been rocked. It didn’t matter. We were making up for all the things now.

  “She’s fading already, love.” I nodded to our babe, swaddled in a soft white linen blanket. The sun dipped into the ocean in front of us, just outside the sun porch and cast a glow on my family. I turned my head, noticing they all wore some kind of grey, white, or light blue and matched like I’d outfitted them and posed them that way.

  I had to get my camera.

  I ran to the bedroom and grabbed it from my bag. I took endless pictures of them, but this was different. Something in my gut told me I’d never get another chance to take a picture of them like this.

  “Just look at the sun,” I whispered to Patrick who now held not one, but two sleeping kids. He nodded and also dozing off, he looked at the horizon. His chiseled chin was set off by the rose gold of the sunset, and I took about twenty shots, knowing one would be perfect.

  “If they nap too long, they won’t go to sleep at bedtime,” I said. We’d discovered I was the more scheduled parent. Let’s face it, we already knew.

  Patrick was more laid-back. He wanted the kids to have as stress-free life as possible, not without trials like normal kids, but relaxed. He insisted on Robbie having very little screen time and Lucy having none until she was almost in kindergarten.

  He was a natural father, so protective and strong for them.

  Not to mention me.

  “It’s my last week full-time with them. If he wants to sleep in until ten, let’s do it, please. I wish I had room for you, too.”

  I laughed and touched Lucy’s cheek gently. “You’ve got a full lap, Papa.”

  He looked at me, so serious and sincere. “I’ve got a full heart, omega mine.”

  “Me, too.”

  That night we made a fire on the beach and roasted hot dogs. Robbie had s’mores, enough to warrant Patrick wanting to brush his teeth for him, but only said that to me.

  Lucy was strapped to me while Robbie played in the sand. He got a kick out of making sand castles at night. He said something about the moats being spooky.

  “How’d you like to have another one?” Patrick waggled his eyebrows and scooted closer to me.

  “Not until Lucy gets out of diapers, please. I can’t take two in diapers.”

  He chuckled loudly, making Lucy stir. “I guess that’s reasonable. But after that, I’m putting another one in you. Your mom said big families run in your bloodline.”

  My mom had come just after Lucy was born. She stayed a week but then had to go home. There were still children at home who needed her care. I’d never seen her so happy.

  “Look at her. She’s sucking her thumb.”

  I looked down at Lucy by the light of the fire and, in fact, she was sucking her thumb. She hadn’t taken a pacifier and used me as her soothing tool.

  “Oh, it’s the cutest. Look, Patrick. What?”

  I saw a little distress on his face.

  “As a father, I think that’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen, but as a dentist, I see orthodontists in our future.”

  I laughed so hard I almost fell off the log I sat on. Patrick had to hold me up.

  “What happened to my relaxed, chill father?”

  He sighed. “Not so chill after all.”

  He kissed Lucy’s forehead and then mine before picking Robbie up like a sack of potatoes and bringing him out to the ocean, splashing under the stars, making Robbie laugh and pretend to be offended.

  Who could ask for more?

  Epilogue

  Patrick

  By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, it was as if we’d always been a family. So many changes in a short time, but they all lined up so perfectly, I could barely remember living alone in this house. Not much more than a year before, I’d been a single dentist whose staff was worried about his social life.

  They weren’t anymore. In fact, they were all here seated around the big table in the dining room for the feast. I sat at the head—at my omega’s insistence, the “alpha” chair—with Damon at the foot. Robbie at my right, Lucy in her high chair at Damon’s right. Hal and Suzi on one side of the table and directly across from Hal, Scott.

  Probably the most amazing thing was the way we’d fit him into our little family group. We were taking it slowly, and he was not pushing it at all. He lived in a small apartment and worked for a family-owned construction firm that was big on helping people get on their feet. Robbie had accepted him in a more casual way than I had expected. He was polite to him, seemed glad to see him, but more like a favorite uncle. But our little guy was very busy with school and his other activities like soccer and the club he went to after school. And eating. I watched him shovel down a mountain of mashed potatoes and gravy then start on an equal amount of stuffing. He had a growth spurt coming for sure.

  As Lucy grew, Damon had begun to talk about our next child, despite his stand against more than one in diapers, and I wondered if we’d have another high chair at the table this time next year. He was taking on some freelance photography work, Lucy strapped in her carrier with him wherever he went.

  And me? I was now the owner of a two-chair practice, having hired the young dentist who’d filled in for me while I was on paternity leave. He’d done a good job, my patients liked him, and it was good to have someone to alternate with for emergencies.

  Taking in the happy faces around me in the candlelight’s mellow glow, I felt a swell of happiness and gratitude and stood, tapping on my glass of hard cider. “I’d like to make a toast.”

  The conversation stilled. Damon cocked a brow, but I reached under the table and drew out an envelope. “To my omega, who won the local paper’s photography contest with a photo taken last summer.”

  Damon grinned self-consciously. “It’s the one hanging in the entry, of Patrick and the kids. I guess the judges also appreciated my subject matter.”

  “To Damon!” they chorused and drank, but when the cheers died down, I went on.

  “And to each and every one of you because you’ve all played a big part in helping us to become a family. I thought I knew what happiness was, but turns out I had no idea. I love you all, am grateful to you, and I hope you’ll be here with us every year to celebrate what a true family is.” I tipped my glass and drank it all then moved around the table to kiss my husband, my partner, my omega. My love.

  Blurb

  What better place to meet your fated mate than an extraordinary candy store?

&
nbsp; And what better season than Halloween? Liam is arranging the amazing treats in the window of his gourmet candy shop, Sugar, when a jogger taps on the window. Despite his policy not to let strangers in when he’s alone in the closed store, this stranger is too irresistible to send away.

  Edison has had his eye on the hot alpha store owner for months but has finally gathered his courage to approach him. To his relief and delight, the man of his dreams asks him out on a date. Sweet!

  But when a little boy who attends the afterschool activities at Edison’s community center falls into desperate need, he is called upon to take him into his home and so a family begins. A foster child who has been so badly harmed brings challenges, and only a very strong, loving alpha would want to take on both an omega and the injured child. An unexpected pregnancy ups the ante.

  They have found one another, but are things moving too fast? Can they take care of the children and each other as well as the businesses they are responsible for? Can they make a home?

  The Alpha’s Candy-Kissed Omega is a MM non-shifter mpreg with a hot successful alpha, a sexy, caring omega, a little boy who needs them both and an adorable baby. Plus a surprise or two along the way.

  The Alpha’s Candy-Kissed Omega

  By

  Lorelei M. Hart

  Chapter One

  Liam Delmonico

  October first...an hour before dawn...my wait was finally over. Sure, all the holidays were great and as the owner of Sugar, a boutique candy store, I was able to indulge in my love for them. I got orders for my Mother’s Day long-stemmed triple-chocolate roses from thousands of miles away. Stockings filled with miniature truffles for Christmas. Valentine’s Day...don’t get me started. But Halloween was my personal favorite.

  My staff and I had already created trays of everything from teensy, intense dark chocolate bats to white chocolate—not my favorite, but some of our customers loved it—to hand-painted terrifying clowns. We would begin shipping them out later in the week, packed in our special overnight mini-chill chests. It didn’t take much heat to ruin chocolate’s perfection or, horrors, to have it bloom, that whitish film all chocolatiers dread.

  While we specialized in chocolate items, we made many other kinds of sweet delights. Candies of all kinds. Everything prepared on site from the highest quality ingredients. We had even surrendered, at special request, for that most pedestrian of treats, a copper kettle setup, right inside the shop, where twice a day Hazel, our fudge-maker supreme, prepared her grandmother’s recipes for old-fashioned creamy squares of mouthwatering awesomeness while customers watched.

  As I trundled the cart we’d set up the night before toward the front window, I flicked on the lights in the shop. Outside, the last leaves of autumn skittered along the sidewalk and the sky was just starting to brighten to the east. We’d cleared the display before going home, so I had a blank canvas for my creation.

  Trace, Hazel’s husband, a remarkable man who’d not batted an eye when he learned the woman of his dreams was once a star football player named Harry, had as usual come up with the painted elements we required. Although his artwork garnered tens of thousands at auction, he painted backdrops and just about anything we wanted and wouldn’t take a dime in return. He only requested we didn’t let anyone know he was doing it, which made perfect sense.

  This year, we had a full haunted house display, six-foot-tall facade and open windows in which our delights could reside. Thus the bats, vampires, witches, ghosts, and other denizens of the night. The moon hanging over it was made entirely of divinity, the spiderwebs, spun sugar, and even the graveyard soil consisted of crumbled midnight-chocolate cookies, one of our few baked items. I stepped back and clicked on the October playlist I’d compiled, a combination of heavy classical music and mostly retro tunes from bands like Oingo Boingo who I felt had the season down to an art. Unable to resist, I did have a few short segments of spooky sounds.

  As “Dead Man’s Party” filled the shop, I sang along, arranging my treats and feeling the Halloween spirit fill me. Thus absorbed, and with the inside lights making it hard to see the predawn street outside, I didn’t notice the man staring in until he rapped on the window, making me jump at least two feet in the air.

  He leaned closer to the window, pointing at something, and saying words I of course could not hear through thick plate glass. After one particularly weird experience with a nutritionist who wanted to lecture me on how I was responsible for all the ills of the world, calling me a dealer in death, my staff had made me promise not to let strangers in after hours, but this “stranger” was pretty cute.

  Although he looked like a guy out for an early morning run, his tight shorts outlined an impressive package, and the grin on his handsome face was knee melting. So...another health nut wanting to tell me the error of my ways, or a guy who exercised to allow the pleasure of a few extra calories into his life? Maybe I could just talk through a crack in the door until I determined who I was dealing with. A lock of hair flopping over his forehead, a weakness of mine, decided it for me, and I moved out of the window toward the door, pointing to it as I did. Twisting the lock, I swung the door open and stuck my head out.

  “We’re not open yet.” Cuz, you know, dawn and the closed sign didn’t give that away.

  “Oh, I know, and I am sorry to bother you, but I just wanted to tell you how much I loved your display. I run by here all the time, and always think it’s great. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to let the creator of candy greatness know this.”

  And the voice matched the face, matched the body. Smooth as molasses and rich as 75% cocoa dark chocolate. A little shiver raced up my spine. “How nice of you. Window dressing is one of my favorite parts of the job, I have to admit.”

  “Those little bats are killer. All the detail. And the webs...wow.”

  “Want to come in for a minute and get a better look?” Sorry, staff. This guy got me. I opened the door wide.

  “Oh, no. You’re busy. I wasn’t trying to finagle my way into chocolate heaven.”

  I wasn’t a swooner, but if I had been, I’d have been laid out on the floor. “Get in here. Now.” My inner alpha was taking over, planning dinner dates and dancing, sunset cocktails on the beach.

  Luckily, he didn’t think I was a nut giving orders to strangers because he stepped inside and drew a deep breath. “Wow. It smells amazing in here.”

  I grabbed a chair from one of the cafe tables and brought it over by my working area. “Doesn’t it? I think that every morning when I come in. Have a seat, and we can talk while I finish up.”

  “If you’re sure it’s no trouble?”

  “None at all. I have a pot of coffee in the back if you’d like a cup.”

  He grinned again and I knew I’d do a lot to keep seeing that. “You’re a lifesaver. I never let myself have mine until after my run, but I think I can call it officially over.” He disappeared into the employees’ only section and returned with a steaming mug of my own mocha java blend. “Can I help you with anything?”

  I shrugged. “If you don’t mind, you can hand me things. Once I get to the other side of the window, I have to keep climbing in and out, so that would be great. If you don’t mind.”

  “No,” he said shaking his head slowly. “I don’t mind at all.”

  Chapter Two

  Edison Marley

  Maybe it was the coffee, or the endorphin high from the run, but this guy was making me dizzy in the best way possible.

  “What the heck do you make these from?” I whisper-touched one of the spiderwebs that clung from the roof and threatened to go into the window.

  “It’s spun sugar. I’ll show you sometime.” He ducked his head and blushed.

  “Maybe it could be a date,” I forced myself to say, uncharacteristically bold. What Liam, yeah, I knew his name now, didn’t know, was that he was my New Year’s resolution. I was fit and financially stable and most of my ducks were in a row, so he had become the one thing I wanted out of the new
year. But since I was such a chicken, it had taken me until October to complete said task. “Unless you have an omega. I’m assuming here.”

  “I’m single. A date would be fantastic. I’m sure there’s lots of other things I could teach you besides spiderwebs.”

  I licked my lips. “I’m sure there are many things. This is a great cup of coffee, by the way.”

  He nodded. “My special blend. One of those fancy city coffee places tried to buy the recipe from me once. I turned them down flat. They have a version of it, but it’s not the same.”

  The guy had integrity, and we’d been at this display for an hour solid.

  I knew I should’ve talked to him earlier.

  Handing over another bat, my wrist turned and revealed the time to me on my fitness band. “Oh, I’ve been here longer than I thought. I’ve got to go to work.”

  Liam’s head popped up. “Already?” He glanced over my head at a clock, I assumed. “Yeah, it’s about time to open. Where do you work?”

  “My Brother, My Sister. I’m the district manager.”

  “That’s over on 4th, right? So close.”

  My face heated along with my ears. “That’s the one. Look, I’ve got to go, but it was great to meet you.”

  “Yeah, you, too. Help me a second.”

  He put his hand over the display, and I helped him balance stepping over the backdrop and house, careful not to destroy what he’d just built so lovingly. But when he came down, he did so tumbling, and before I knew it, we were on the floor, him on top of me, both laughing.

  Hip to hip. Face-to-face.

  And everything else perfectly lined up with everything else.

  Yeah, this alpha liked what he saw.

  “This doesn’t count for the date,” I said, chuckling. He didn’t try to get off me. The weight of him on top of me felt incredible.