Vince sulks as he walks toward the kitchen to get a cold rag.
I shake my head trying to process what happened and trying not to laugh.
“Is that how I’m going to be?” Sean asks.
“Believe me, it’s great actually,” Gail says. “You know how women have trouble expressing anger properly? The way men can just let it out? Well, you won’t have that problem when you’re with child. Trust me.”
“Thanks for the tip,” I say smiling.
Gail turns to go back into the room she shares with Vince. She suddenly pauses and turns in my direction. She points to my stomach with her eyes half closed with a pained expression on her face. Her bed is surely calling her. “Oh, and congratulations,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say. “It means a lot.”
Before I get out the last word Gail’s already though the doorway and about two seconds later I hear the springs of the mattress and know she’s horizontal again.
I don’t know how the military works, but I know she’d make a great commanding officer. She’s authoritative and solves problems…fast!
Sean dusts himself off and takes my hands. He steps back looking at me, or should I say my stomach.
Vince passes by the two of us shooting Sean a dirty look.
“You could at least make an honest woman out of her if you really love her,” he says.
“That’s exactly what I came here to do,” he says.
With my hands still in his he drops to a knee.
CHAPTER 20
Victoria
There’s always a certain stability I feel when my hands are in his, but this time you wouldn’t know it by the way they’re shaking.
He removes one so he can reach into his pocket and remove a tiny black box which he turns between the fingers of his one hand, expertly opening it.
The diamond inside catches a ray of morning sun and sparkles bright, just like the light in his eyes sparkles every time he sees me making me feel so powerful and womanly every time I see it. To know that I can make this man happy. The only man who can make me truly happy in this crazy little thing called life.
“Beautiful, I’ve been in love with you for a long, long time. At first I was clueless. I didn’t know what it was or what it was called. I was too young to know. What we had looked like something very different then, but when I took one look at you last month I knew what we had and it had matured just as we’d matured. It was full-grown, my love for you. The kind of love that survives and thrives and grows…just like our child which is growing inside you.”
I completely give up on my attempt not to cry and just let ‘em flow.
“You’ve already made me the happiest man in the world. And the happiest soon to be father in the world. Now I just ask you to make me one more kind of happiest…the happiest fiancé in the world to hold me over until you make me what I really want to be…the happiest husband in the world. Will you marry me my love of a lifetime?”
I’m crying so much I can’t even speak. I just nod my head. “Yes,” somehow escapes my lips.
He takes the ring from the box without taking his eyes from mine and slides it on my finger. It’s the same finger he checked when he first saw me again a month ago. He was looking to see if there was a ring there.
Well guess what?
There is now. Thanks to him. And it’s his ring. And it’s never, never, ever coming off.
Did I say never?
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you,” I say so quietly you almost can’t hear it. But he doesn’t need to hear it. He can read my mind like I can read his.
And our minds are on the same wavelength yet again.
We’re already thinking about our child. The first of what will surely be many more to come as we being our life of laughter, happiness and family.
Together.
Forever.
EPILOGUE
Victoria
Seven years later
“I promise I’ll do my homework, dad! I promise!”
“You swear?”
“I swear,” Scott, our oldest says.
“Okay, captain. I guess he can come aboard.”
Sean’s old military buddy Mike lowers the thin drawbridge and Scott runs onto Mike’s boat as quickly as possible.
Sean turns to me and winks. “Problem solved,” he says.
I can’t help but smile a little bit, but I can certainly feel for my son as well.
Sean’s a throwback and a military veteran. He has a different way of parenting sometimes. We always work together and we always stand united no matter how unorthodox Sean’s plans sometimes are.
When Scott was finding ways to cleverly avoid completing his homework, Sean didn’t get mad. He just chalked it up to Scott being the young boy that he was and Sean said he just had to get cleverer…which he certainly did.
Putting together a family boating trip to Alcatraz is one thing. Setting up a scenario where Scott thinks we’re going to leave him there is another. I made Sean promise me he wouldn’t make the ruse go on for long. He agreed and true to his word, as he always is, he didn’t.
“Fear is the greatest motivator,” he’d told me when he came up with the idea.
“That sounds cruel and unusual though,” I said as I winced at the idea.
“Military tactics aren’t always pretty, but they’re used for a reason. They’re effective.”
And I’d have to agree with him there. It wasn’t often that we needed to motivate our kids, but when we did the crazy plans that Sean came up with had a one hundred percent success rate. And not just success, but overwhelming success. I bet I could convince Scott to start doing math problems right now…on the boat ride back.
And what a beautiful day it was to be on a boat.
Thanks to Sean’s connections Mike had obtained clearance to take our family to Alcatraz on a private boat. Pretty snazzy.
I was no longer surprised at how deep and how far reaching military connections ran. It was incredible what one veteran would do for another, even if they had never met before.
And I was also blown away by what Sean had done for me.
After a short stint back in Baker to get our affairs together and for him to list his home for sale, Sean was able to get his foreign language business up and running in San Francisco and his first hire was me. As much as I enjoyed the camaraderie and the wonderful owners at The Mad Greek, I didn’t see myself serving milkshakes in the desert for the rest of my life. And Sean made sure I didn’t.
And he didn’t stop there.
His online language instruction quickly branched to include a brick and mortar education school where he taught professionals business English. One of his earliest clients was a doctor over from Russia on a work visa and when that doctor casually mentioned he was looking for a nurse at the University of California in San Francisco where he was in residence, well Sean replied back just as quickly he knew a highly skilled and highly qualified nurse who would be perfect for the job.
Our sister in law.
Gail was more than happy to ditch the two hours she spent commuting round trip to Vegas in exchange for a better climate in S.F. and of course way more pay. Sure it cost a lot more to live in paradise, but at the end of the day the added salary more than made up for the switch.
And with Gail securing a job it meant my brother Vince was coming as well. They put their house up for sale and surprisingly it closed in under thirty days.
So now both families lived together, again, but this time in Northern California.
We got a lot of laughs out of the fact that Sean was Vince and I’s neighbor when we were kids and now Vince and Gail were Sean and I’s neighbors now that we were adults. And they were our neighbors, as in right next door.
But I think the big winners were really our kids.
We had four and Vince and Gail had three. We joked who would have the eighth kid and if eight would really be enough.
I think if Sean had
his way we’d have eight of our own. I quickly reminded him I was the one who had to go through the nine months and then the childbirth, luckily enough with Gail by my side during delivery.
He didn’t press too hard when I mentioned that because he knew S.F. was a very progressive city and if he kept pushing the next step would be Gail or I countering his persistence by insisting he wear one of those pregnancy suits they make. He’d have to wear it the entire time I was pregnant.
But deep down inside I did want as many kids as he did. I was just pacing myself. I’d have a child soon but I wanted to try and lose some weight. I just knew if I had a bunch back-to-back-to-back that I’d never get the weight off.
And even though he told me how sexy I was with a few extra pounds, and I was very appreciative he rounded way down only referring to it as a few, I still didn’t want to get too big.
I need to be in at least decent enough shape to be there to chase our kids around the yard, drive them to all their practices, recitals, and sleep overs, and of course I wanted to be around as long as I could to watch them grow up. I wanted to be a grandma and a great-grandma one day too!
But Sean constantly reminded me with more weight he could really let loose in the bedroom, and oh did he ever.
I thought for sure after I had a few kids he’s start to lose interest and our life would be more about our children than our passion for each other. Love? Sure. But I just assumed the passion would wane.
Boy, was I ever wrong.
And this older man never once had to resort to pills, creams, or any of those other things to heighten his desire for me.
He claimed it was all the amazing food I fed him. That and that he just couldn’t get enough of me no matter how much I was able to give him.
And half the time I was literally fighting him off me.
He’d tell me seven times a day after seven years makes complete sense.
Good grief! I need to be able to stand up at least part of the day.
But that was my Sean with his insatiable appetite not only for me but for our family.
And that’s what mattered most.
The sexiest man on earth is the one who’s completely devoted to his wife, and his family.
And that was exactly what Sean was each and every minute of every day…and night! ;)
EXTENDED EPILOGUE
Sean
Twenty years later
“Anything?” the commanding officer of the entire U.S. Military asks my son.
“Working on it, sir.”
My son frantically, yet with control, shuffled papers in front of himself looking for a pattern.
He was a real life code breaker.
Most assignments of this type had been given to computers long ago. Computers with their algorithms that could crunch numbers and letters and symbols with such speed and accuracy that no human could keep up.
No human but our son.
We’d started Scott on languages immediately after his first word. He’d said, “mom” which absolutely melted Victoria’s heart. And I was right there to tell him, “Mama. Madre. Mutter. Majka. Ma or Maji.” I would have continued by Victoria gave me one of those well-deserved “not right now” looks. She was too lost in her perfect moment.
And now was the perfect moment for Scott. If he could just crack this code he could keep the cold war cold and would become an international hero in the process. I’d always thought I was pretty good with language, but Scott? He was a savant.
The kid was incredible and I’d say that even if he wasn’t my own flesh and blood.
I’d like to think he got it from me, but after seeing how quickly his mother picked up languages when she started helping me grow my business all I could say was “wow.” I think she outdid me with her ability to grasp different languages.
And that ability had been passed down to Scott.
We loved all our kids equally and felt they truly had their own unique and very strong skill sets, but Scott was on the global stage with his right now. Not exactly though, because what he was doing was Top Secret and wouldn’t be divulged unless he was successful. And even then he might get recognition until years after the fact.
But he didn’t care. That’s my boy. He was doing it for love of his country and fellow citizens. And even though now I’m one of those citizens the military reinstated my Top Secret clearance for this one assignment of his so that we could bounce ideas off each other if necessary.
My son often joked that that trip to Alcatraz where I pretended we’d leave him was the turning point that made him who he was. Although he was scared out of his wits that day it completely focused him.
He took a raw talent we weren’t really aware of at the time and channeled it into what it was today. He’d immersed himself in languages at age seven and never looked back.
I see the goose bumps on Scott’s arm as I look over his shoulder.
“Dad! Dad!” he says as he turns to me.
He jumps up out of his chair and hugs me harder than you should hug an older man, not that I consider myself old. Fifty-seven is the new thirty-seven after all.
I see a tear stream down his eye and I can’t help but do the same. I must be getting soft. I guess I have that tendency when I see my kids overwhelmed with happiness.
“Call in the general. I’ve got it.”
I take a step towards the door to get the general who’s just on the other side, likely speaking with the commander in chief yet again.
Suddenly I feel a hand grab my wrist.
I turn.
“Want me to show you first?”
I look back at the door and then back at my son.
I nod, never really sure if this room is under surveillance, but suspecting it surely must be.
My son guides me to the chair he was just in and quickly goes through all the steps how he figured it out.
I’m sure it makes complete sense and it will wow everyone, but to be honest I don’t hear a single word.
I only see.
I see how excited he is. How enthusiastic he is. And most importantly how happy he is.
That’s all I ever really wanted for my children and to see this level of happiness from them is a father’s dream.
And I know I’ll get to see it again tonight when we all talk about it at the dinner table. Or at least as much as he’s allowed to disclose, which will likely be nothing. I may have a Top Secret clearance for this one project, but even that only stretches so far.
I laugh to myself realizing the irony, but know my wife will see the excitement on his face and know he figured it out after putting his all into it.
And then I’ll get to share in her excitement when I take her hand and we jokingly argue over who’s son our boy is.
But we always come to the same conclusion. He’s ours, just as all our children are.
And we love them all equally and will do so forever.
But our love for them starts with a slightly different love for me. One that can never be matched or replaced.
One that makes my world go round.
One that makes life worth living.
My love for my wife. My one and only.
The most beautiful woman in the world and she’s mine…mine all mine!
A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT HE WANTS
Book 1: Baby Lust
Book 2: Veteran
Book 3: Built
Book 4: Bambino
Book 5: Rescued
Book 6: Leader
Book 7: Professor
Book 8: Burned
Book 9: Worldly
Book 10: Pistol
Book 11: Policed
Book 12: Driven
Book 13: Lucky 13
Book 14: Lumberjacked
Book 15: Protector
Book 16: Carpenter
Book 17: Italian Stallion
Book 18: Gardener
Book 19: Budapest Billionaire’s Virgin
Book 20: Billionaire’s Babysitter
Bo
ok 21: Cocky CFO
Book 22: Fireman’s Filthy 4th
Book 23: Mechanic
Book 24: SEAL’s Secret
Book 25: Police, Pooch, and Smooch
Soldier's Secret Baby: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 53) Page 6