by Amy Cecil
Tears well in my eyes. “Really?”
“Really,” he says. “Look, I know this is all new between us, and we have a lot to learn about each other, but there is no other woman I want to be with. When I wake up in the morning, my first thought is of you. When I go to bed at night, I dream of you. I love ya, darlin’.”
Oh! My! God! He said it. Do I say it back? He’s looking at me and waiting. I need to say something, but do I open my heart? Do I lay my heart vulnerable at his feet, in the hope he doesn’t trample over it? Oh, fuck it. I do love him, and I’m not gonna hide it from him anymore. “I love you too, Sainte.”
That cocky, smug grin of his—the one I used to hate—appears, and I realize now, I really do love that too. He pulls me into his arms and kisses me again. When he breaks the kiss, he asks, “Ready for bed?”
“No, not yet. I need to make sure the coffee is set for tomorrow.”
He nods. “Oh, okay.”
As I walk into the kitchen, I call back to him, “And what was that all about with Ari and Rebel?”
He follows me into the kitchen. “Try to imagine what it is like for Rebel dating Ice’s kid sister,” he says, and the realization hits me.
“Oh fuck, I never thought about that.”
“I thought if we took their room, maybe you could come up with the excuse that you wanted to be here early to ensure everyone had coffee and breakfast. Then perhaps they could get some privacy for a night or two.”
I punch him lightly on the arm. “Why, Nick Saintero, you are quite the romantic.”
He grins. “I aim to please,” he says and pulls me into his arms for another kiss. I am so in love with this man!
After we check the coffee and last-minute stuff for the morning, we head to bed.
Chapter 25
Sainte
I hear a noise and immediately jump out of bed. What the fuck is going on? I look at my watch: 3:15 a.m. I sit up, which causes Honey to stir.
“What…?” she mumbles groggily.
I place my finger over her lips and whisper, “Shhh.”
I get out of bed. Once my boxers are on, I grab my gun and walk to the door. Slowly, I open it, and to my relief, I see Ricco and Ice standing in the living room.
I put the gun down and turn back toward Honey. “It’s okay, just Ice and Ricco.”
She lies back down.
I step out into the living room. “What’s goin’ on?” I ask.
“It’s Emma.”
“Labor?” I ask.
“No, something’s wrong.” He’s pacing frantically. “You know how she’s been saying all day that she hasn’t felt good? Well shit, she just went from not feeling good to something I don’t know, and she’s burning up. The ambulance should be here any minute.” He continues to pace. “Where the fuck are they?” he yells. “She says her vision is blurry and spotty and has a horrible headache. Stomach not doing too good either.” He rakes his hand through his hair. He’s fucking worried sick.
“Oh, shit. Well Emma needs you to be calm, so you have to get yourself together for her, man.”
“I know, but that’s my whole world upstairs.”
I nod. “I know, and she and the baby are gonna be just fine.”
“You don’t fuckin’ know that, Sainte! Nobody knows.”
“You’re right. I don’t, but if you don’t have faith that she and the baby are gonna be okay, then what hope does she have? She needs you to be strong.”
He takes a deep breath. “Okay.” He takes several more deep breaths, sits on the couch, and places his head in his hands.
I turn toward Ricco. “What are you doing up?”
“Same reason you are up. I heard a noise and thought it was an intruder.”
“Oh yeah. Well, I got this. Go back to bed. I’ll go to the hospital with Ice.”
He nods, placing his hand on Ice’s shoulder. “Have faith, Ice. We’ll all be praying for you both and the baby.”
Ice nods, and Ricco heads back to his bedroom.
When Ricco leaves, Ice looks at me. “I can’t lose her, Sainte.”
I have never seen him this broken before. They have to make it. The blare of the sirens approaches the house, and Ice jumps up to open the door.
I quickly make my way back to my bedroom. “Honey, something is wrong with Emma. The ambulance is here, and I’m gonna go with Ice to the hospital. He shouldn’t be alone.”
“Oh, no! What happened?”
“I don’t know,” I say, as I quickly get dressed. “I’ll fill you in on the details when I know more.” I button my jeans. “Can we count on you to take care of our guests?”
“Of course.” I give her a chaste kiss and head back into the living room. They are bringing Emma down on a stretcher. Shit, this is bad. She’s white as a ghost, sweating profusely, and seems a bit delirious. What the fuck?
Ice and I follow the paramedics out, and they place the stretcher into the ambulance. “I’m going with her,” Ice says and jumps in after her.
Just as they are closing the doors, I holler back, “I’ll meet you at the ER.” The rear door closes, the remaining paramedic gets in the front seat, and the ambulance takes off. I grab my keys and jacket and run to my bike.
When I get to the hospital, I find Ice pacing in the waiting room. “What’d the doctor say?”
“It’s preeclampsia.”
“What the fuck is that?” I ask.
“Apparently, it happens when a pregnant woman’s blood pressure gets too high. That’s all I know for now. The doctor is with her now.”
“So we wait.”
“We wait,” he says, defeated.
I swear I have never seen him this bad. I thought it was bad when Hawk was in the hospital, but this is so much worse.
A few minutes later, the doctor approaches us. “Caden, Emma is resting comfortably,” she says.
Ice breathes a sigh of relief.
“But she is not out of the woods yet. Preeclampsia is a warning sign for us to keep a close eye on her blood pressure, and she’s resting because we had to sedate her.”
“Sedate her? What…” Ice is clearly overloaded and confused, as am I. “What does that mean? Is she going to be okay? What about the baby?”
“Well, for the moment they seem to be doing all right, but she had a seizure and is susceptible to another blood pressure spike. I’m gonna be honest with you, Caden. Preeclampsia can lead to eclampsia, which in rare cases could result in seizures and could become life-threatening. We needed to stop it to save them.”
“What?” Ice says desperately.
“Hang on. It’s a warning, Caden.”
“So what do we do?” he asks.
“In my expert opinion, I think we should do an emergency C-section. Emma is thirty-three weeks along. She’s far enough along that we shouldn’t risk her having another seizure, and the survival rate of little ones this close to term is around ninety percent.”
Little ones? Did she just refer to more than one baby? Ice is too frazzled to notice, but I sure as hell did. Is Emma fucking having twins?
“And her survival rate?” he asks.
“At this point? Ninety-nine point nine percent. If we wait, that percentage drops drastically.”
“So you are asking me to risk my child to save her.”
“You are not the first father who has had to make this decision, and you won’t be the last. It’s not easy for anyone.”
“Would Emma be able to have children later on?” he asks. Good question. I didn’t even think of that.
“Yes, but we would not recommend it. She would be considered high risk and would need to remain on bed rest for most of her pregnancy. Her blood pressure would have to be carefully monitored, and there is a good chance this could happen again.”
“Fuck!” He turns away, raking his hand through his hair. Looking at me, he asks, “What would you do?”
Aww fuck, I don’t know. I think that if this were Honey, my first thought would be to save her.
She may never forgive me, but I couldn’t imagine my world without her in it. “Save Emma,” I say and then immediately regret what I said. I’ve just given his kid a death sentence.
“Is Emma awake?”
“No, she is out and will be for the next hour. She is not coherent, and I recommend we don’t wait. Time is of the essence, Caden, if we want to save both of them.”
“Take the baby,” he says and walks away.
The doctor reaches after him but then looks at me to go after him. Shaking her head, she says, “He is more than welcome to go in there with her, but I can’t wait. If he chooses to, he can talk to one of the nurses at the station over there.” She points. “I gotta go.” She obviously doesn’t have any more time to spare and rushes back into the OR.
I run after Ice.
“Ice,” I call. “We’re gonna have to wait. Let’s get some coffee and calm down.”
He stops and turns back toward me with a nod.
“You can’t run off. Emma needs you. You know you can be in there with her if you want.”
“I can?”
“Yeah, the doc was trying to get your attention to tell you, then you ran off. You wanna go back?”
He thinks for a minute and then shakes his head. “I can’t. I can’t watch her or the kid die.”
“She said ninety-nine point nine percent. They are gonna survive.” I hesitate for a minute and then ask, “You sure you won’t regret not being there?”
“I can’t, Sainte. I just can’t.”
I nod. “You got this, and so does she.”
We head toward the cafeteria and each get a cup of coffee that we take back to the waiting room. We sit and wait.
An eternity later, which really is only a couple hours, the doctor returns. She approaches, and we both look up eagerly. Ice stands.
“Emma is doing just fine. She’s in recovery.”
“Oh, thank God!” Ice exclaims. “And the baby?”
The doctor smiles. “The babies have been taken to the NICU and are resting comfortably. They will need to remain here for several weeks until their heart and lungs get stronger.”
“Wait, what did you say? Babies?”
“Caden, you are the proud father of both a son and a daughter.”
“Twins?” he asks. “But the dopplers or whatever indicated one heartbeat—a strong heartbeat, but only one.”
She smiles again. “Emma found out about the twins at her first ultra sound. She made me promise not to tell you. She wanted to surprise you.”
“But I only heard one heartbeat.”
“It is very common with twins for their hearts to appear to beat in unison. Only a trained ear, like a doctor’s, can distinguish there might be more than one.”
He sits back down and looks at me. “Twins?”
I slap him on the back. “Yeah, it looks that way. You and Emma were both right, a boy and a girl. Congratulations, dad.”
“Can I see them?” he asks.
“Of course, follow me.”
We both follow the doctor. She takes us down a long hallway and to a glass window. Right smack in the front is a little baby boy and girl, and the tag on the front of the clear boxes they’re enclosed in read: Baby A Jackson and Baby B Jackson.” They are so tiny.
I watch Ice see his kids for the first time, and tears well in his eyes as he stares at them. Turning toward his son, he says, “Hi, Aiden.” Then he turns toward his daughter. “Hi, Cadi.” He is beaming. “I’m your dad.” He waits as if he’s expecting them to hear him and then says, “And this ugly guy is your Uncle Sainte.”
I laugh. “Aiden? Cadi?”
“Yeah, those were the boy and girl names we had come up with. Emma loved both names, so I’m sure that now she has both a boy and girl, we’ll use them both.”
“They’re beautiful, man, absolutely beautiful.”
“Thanks.” He turns back toward the doctor. “Thanks, Doc.”
She smiles. “As I said before, Emma is in recovery, but you are more than welcome to go see her if you like.” She waits for him to answer, but frankly, I think he is too overwhelmed at the moment. “And there is no need to thank me, Caden. I was just doing my job. It’s nights like this one that reminds me why I love my work so much.” She pauses, looks down at the clipboard in her hands, and then says, “I’m gonna go check on Emma. Why don’t you come with me and you can see her?” She turns toward me. “Unfortunately, you will have to go back to the waiting room.” She points toward the doors we just walked through. “Just go out those doors and follow the hallway to the end. Go through those doors, and you will be in the waiting room.”
Ice follows the doc, and I head back toward the waiting room.
About thirty minutes later, Ice comes back and sits down.
“How is she?” I ask.
“Asleep, but the doc says she’s doing great. She should be awake soon.” He rubs his hands over his face and then trails his fingers through his hair, “Holy fuck, Sainte. I’m a fucking dad. And not to just one kid, two.”
“Easy, ready-made family.”
He laughs. “Man, thanks for being here.”
I pat him on the back. “I wouldn’t be anywhere else.” I motion to him that I’m gonna leave. “I’m gonna head back to the waiting room and give Honey a call. I’m sure she’s worried sick and wants to know what’s going on.”
He nods and turns back toward the glass.
When I get out to the waiting room, it’s packed full of people. I don’t have to call Honey ’cause she, the Vitalis, and the whole damn club are here.
She rushes toward me. “How is she? The baby?”
I smile.
“Hey, everyone, Emma and the babies are fine. They are proud parents of a son, Aiden.”
Everyone cheers.
“And a daughter, Cadi.”
“What?” Honey asks.
“Twins.”
Everyone laughs.
“The kids will probably need to be at the hospital for several weeks until they get stronger, and Emma is in recovery. Ice is visiting his kids now and should be out shortly.”
A few minutes later, Ice comes out, and everyone approaches him with their congratulations.
I sit back with a sigh of relief. Damn, that was the worst couple of hours of my life. I can’t even begin to image how Ice was feeling. I keep thinking over and over again: what if that was Honey.
Honey. I know I’ve told her I love her, but I never realized how much until I witnessed what Ice and Emma just went through. The doctor came out a few minutes ago to say Emma was awake, so Ice went back to see her. Honey is sitting next to me, and I look over at her.
“I love you,” I say. No teasing, no playing, just the facts.
She reaches for my hand and without any hesitation, she says, “I love you.”
Chapter 26
Sainte
Over the course of the next couple days, things quiet down at the clubhouse. Ice spends most of his time at the hospital. Between visiting his kids and Emma, he’s been pretty preoccupied, and I can’t say I really blame him. Michael and Zaira left the day after the kids were born. Ice asked me to take point on our newly acquired business. I briefly discussed my plans with him earlier, and he agreed with what I had in mind.
Once Ice agreed, Rebel called the boys in for a meeting. He gave a report on Ice, Emma, and the kids and then told them about my role with the new sex club. The brothers were all in agreement and pretty damn excited about the new revenues the club would generate.
So now the clubhouse is empty, except for the girls and me, and it’s time to inform them of my plans for our new venture.
“Honey, can you ask Brianne and Tara to come down please? I need to talk to you all for a minute.”
She looks at me concerned. “Okay.”
She walks past me, and I smack her on the ass. “Everything is fine, darlin’. Stop worrying.”
She smiles. I know her so well.
A few minutes later, the girls
come down.
“Hey, ladies. I want to talk to you about some work we’ve found for you.” I turn toward Tara. “When those babies get home from the hospital, Emma is gonna need some help around the house. Do you think you would be interested being a nanny to the babies?”
“I would love that!” Tara exclaims. “I love babies!”
Honey’s eyes drop, and I know what’s bugging her. Ice and Emma had talked to her a while back, asking her to help with the kids. But we have bigger plans for her, and by the time I’m done, she will not be sad. She will be challenged and overjoyed.
“Brianne, we have just acquired a new business. Honey will be running that new business, which means she will be required to be away from the clubhouse more. Someone needs to be here to keep things going, take care of the boys, the bar, food, etc. Would you consider it?”
“Yes, I would like that very much. Would I still be able to stay here?”
“Absolutely.”
I turn toward Honey, who is smiling ear to ear. “And if you didn’t catch that earlier, you will be running Serenity Knights and the new club, Silent Knights.”
“Really?” she asks. “Do you all really want me to run it? And are those the new names?”
“We sure do. You and I will be doing it together, but you know I’ll always get pulled away to take care of club business. It’s basically yours to make or break,” I say teasingly.
“Oh, I’ll make it into the hottest club ever. Thank you, Sainte.”
“Don’t thank me. Thank Ice. It was actually his suggestion.” I hinted about it, I admit, but I knew he had to be the one to suggest it. And so he did.
“Well, I know you had something to do with it, so thank you.”
She wraps her arms around me and gives me a hug. “I’ll thank Ice when I see him.”
“And one more thing,” I say.
“What?” Honey asks hesitantly.
“We need all three of you to plan a wedding. Ice and Emma are getting married.”
The girls squeal.
Tara jumps up and down. “I love weddings!”
“Nothing fancy. They just figured they need to get hitched now that the kids have been born. Emma will be home from the hospital on Wednesday. She’s gonna be sore and tired and need a lot of rest. I’m counting on you, Tara, to help her.”