by Lexi Blake
She’d hung up on him and he did not envy Stef when he had to explain the mistake to Marie.
“What are you doing with my phone?” Rachel asked, giving him a death stare.
He shrugged. This was what a man got for helping out. “Callie called and said I should call Marie and tell her Logan is here and half dead or something. Jen and Stef are taking him to the clinic.”
Rachel’s jaw dropped. “Jen’s having the baby?”
Huh, now that he thought about it, that could have been what Callie had said. She should have been clearer. “Now see this is why you shouldn’t name people after other people. It gets confusing.”
Rachel groaned and took the phone. “I’ll handle it from here.”
Marie slammed into her truck as Gemma’s voice came over the line.
“Bliss County Sheriff’s Department. This is Gemma.”
“Gemma, you should let Nate know that I’m going to kill Stef Talbot if he hurt my boy.”
“Whoa,” Gemma said. “I just talked to Rachel. She tried to call you back. Max is an idiot. Logan’s fine. Jen’s in labor with Baby Logan. Not your Logan. Not that she would be in labor with him. The point is Max isn’t allowed to answer her phone anymore and you don’t have to shoot anyone. She also said something about a phone tree.”
Marie breathed a sigh of relief. She could take it from here.
“Nell, Jen’s in labor,” she explained a few minutes later.
Nell held the phone to her ear, a smile on her face. “Mel, this is Nell, I’m calling to let you know something wonderous is happening and a new era is being birthed into this world we call Earth sometime tonight or tomorrow. It’s a joyous time.”
“Cassidy, baby, it’s Mel. You were right about Shelley. She’s here to steal the boys’ seed. The invasion is coming.”
And that’s how Bliss does a phone tree.
Chapter Nineteen
Stef and Jen
Stef Talbot held his wife’s hand, but he wanted the whole ordeal to be over with. She was tired, in so much pain. She squeezed his hand tightly, but he wondered how much more of this she could possibly take.
Hours and hours had gone by and it had gotten progressively worse. At first the contractions were bubbles of pain that she’d managed to smile through, then she’d squeezed his hand and promised him it wasn’t bad, and now she screamed and groaned with every single one.
And they wouldn’t let up. It was midnight. A whole night of her pain had gone by with no end in sight.
He was utterly helpless. He was surrounded by friends, and he’d never felt so alone in his whole life.
Max, Rye, and Rachel, Callie, Nate, and Zane, his father and Stella were all out in the waiting room, but he didn’t want to talk to them. He didn’t want to tell them how much pain his wife was in, how small and insignificant he felt in that moment.
He wanted it all to be over.
She finished another killer contraction and Jennifer’s head flopped back to the pillow, her hand slacking in his. She was covered in sweat, her face red from exertion.
“Please take the drugs.” He’d stopped commanding her a few hours back. It hadn’t worked. She’d snarled back at him and refused. She had a birth plan, she’d told him, and it didn’t involve drugs.
“Okay. I’ll take them,” she said, her voice a tortured whisper.
Thank god. He looked up at Naomi who was calmly writing in a chart. “She needs an epidural now. Call the anesthesiologist.”
He’d decided natural childbirth was for the birds. Rachel must have an unnaturally high tolerance for pain. Jennifer didn’t need to compete with her. Callie had been perfectly happy with her epidural. She’d started out with every intention of getting through it and four contractions in was screaming for drugs.
When Jennifer was relaxed and out of pain, maybe he would be able to breathe.
“Mr. Talbot, she’s at a nine. The time for an epidural has passed.” Naomi set aside the chart and gave Jennifer a friendly smile. “I’m sorry, honey, but it won’t be long now.”
“I hired an anesthesiologist to be on call.” He’d only agreed to her birth plan because he had a team on call. Jennifer had insisted the baby be born in Bliss and not in Del Norte, where the nearest full-service hospital was. Logan Talbot was going to be born in Bliss according to his momma, and that meant his father had to be prepared. He wasn’t about to let anyone ruin his plans. “I want him in here now. I want him doping her up and making her feel better and I want it right now.” He used his deep voice, the one that got people to do what he wanted.
It seemed no one had given Naomi the memo. She shrugged off his command. “I explained when she got to four centimeters that we didn’t have long. She’s too far in for an epidural now. Dr. Harris is still on call, but he’s only here in case she needs an emergency C-section, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. She’s doing great.”
Jennifer’s body seized and she screamed again, reaching for his hand. He let her damn near break his bones as she rode out the wave of pain.
“Oh, god, it hurts.” She sobbed. “It hurts so much. I want to push. I want it to stop.”
Every word tore at his soul. Why had he ever thought this was a good idea? She was precious. He should never have put her through this. “I’m going to fix this.”
Naomi was moving to the end of the bed. “You do that, Mr. Talbot. Jennifer, I’m going to check you again. Don’t push yet.”
“I’ll take care of it, love. I’ll make this right.” He hated leaving her, but he had a job to do. He stepped out of the larger of the two patient rooms that Caleb had renovated in the last several months. The Bliss County Clinic now boasted a small emergency room, one operating room for the worst of emergencies, and two recovery rooms. And one very full waiting room.
“Hey, is she holding up okay, Stef?” Rye asked.
“She’s in pain. She needs drugs.” He looked around. Where the hell had Caleb gone?
Rachel was shaking her head. “See, I think woman should get drugs the whole last month of their pregnancy.” She pointed at her slightly rounded belly. “This baby is getting drugs. And he’s not being born on a table at Stella’s. You know why? Because Stella doesn’t have any drugs. Caleb has drugs.”
Maybe his wife wasn’t so far behind in that particular competition. But that didn’t matter now. His eyes caught on Caleb as he walked into the waiting room wearing green scrubs. The man with the drugs. “Caleb, get in there and tell your nurse to call the anesthesiologist, or better yet, call him yourself. And then when you’re done, you can fire her because she doesn’t listen to orders.”
A brilliant smile crossed Caleb’s face. “Couldn’t get Naomi to do what you wanted, huh? That’s why she’s the best nurse I’ve ever had. And it’s too late for an epidural.”
“Goddamn it, Caleb. She’s in pain.”
“That’s what happens when you try to push a baby out of your body. I keep telling you people it’s a bad idea and you keep on making kids.”
He wasn’t about to let this go. “You owe me. You get my wife her drugs and maybe I won’t sue you for shooting me with a tranquilizer gun.”
Caleb shook his head sharply. “Look, I’m not sorry about that. You’ve been an ass. And no jury is going to convict me. As for the epidural, I could go into a lengthy medical explanation of why it’s a bad idea at this late stage of labor, but I’m just going to say no and leave it there.”
The door opened, and Naomi looked out. “Doc? She’s ready.”
Caleb slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, Talbot. Let’s go and pull a tiny human being out of your wife’s vagina. Damn, I might still get a nap in today. Your son cost me a good night’s sleep, my friend.”
She was ready? Ready to have their baby? His heart seemed to slow down just when he thought it would go supersonic. He heard the people around him, his friends and family, wishing him well and cheering Jennifer on. Callie had tears in her eyes, and she hugged him briefly. Sh
e said something that was probably meaningful, but it didn’t penetrate. The world seemed to have slowed to a sluggish crawl, and he couldn’t hear much past Caleb’s voice.
She was ready. He wasn’t ready. Not even close.
The door opened and Jennifer was already in stirrups, her legs spread in an odd facsimile of lovemaking—but this wasn’t sex. It was the product of sex. It was pain and work and creation, and he had no real place here.
Jennifer screamed, her face red as she pushed.
Caleb looked between her legs and smiled. It was a surreal moment. He settled onto the stool at the foot of the bed. “There you go, Jen. You’re doing great. He’s crowning. Another couple like that and we’re all done here. Easy breezy.”
“Easy breezy, my ass, Caleb Burke. You try shoving a bowling ball through your hoo-haw.” Jennifer snarled his way.
Caleb kept on smiling. “I have never in all my life been disappointed I was a guy. Stef, take her hand. She needs to break something. Let’s go.”
Another contraction seized his wife and he did as Caleb asked, feeling like a zombie the whole time. He wasn’t really here. It was a weird dream. Jennifer screamed as she pushed, squeezing his hand until he thought it would crack.
“Oh, there’s a boy. The head’s almost out, sweetheart. One more push should do it. Do you want to see, Stef? Miracle of life is right here,” Caleb offered.
The miracle of life was bloody and sweaty and he didn’t want to see a head coming out of his wife’s vagina. He clung to Jennifer’s hand. “I’m fine.”
He was far from fine.
Jennifer turned her face up. “It’s okay, babe. Oh, god.”
She squeezed again, every muscle in her body tense as she pushed one last time. She relaxed suddenly, a bright smile on her face.
“Hello, Logan. Welcome to Bliss, son.” Caleb was holding something bloody and squirming in his hands. He handed the tiny thing to Naomi, who wrapped it in a blanket and started to coo. “Stef, come cut the cord.”
“No, I don’t want to do it. You do it.” He wasn’t a doctor. He might screw something up.
“Scaredy cat.” Caleb slipped a clamp in place and used the scissors and cut the cord that bound mother to child. “Show Momma her baby boy and then we’ll get all the after parts done.”
“After parts?” That wasn’t the worst of it?
“It’s nothing,” Caleb said. “Just some afterbirth. As in everything having to do with this process, Jen is going to do all the hard work. All you have to do is hold that baby.”
“He’s not crying,” Jennifer said, sitting up.
Naomi was right there, placing the baby boy on the nursery station. “Because he doesn’t have anything to cry about. He’s perfect, Jen. Apgar of nine. He’s seven pounds nine ounces of pure Bliss baby boy.”
Jennifer held the bundle in her arms, her eyes wide with wonder as she stared down at the baby they had made together. “Hello, Logan. Oh, Stef, he’s perfect. He looks like you. He has your hair.”
But Stef held back. He couldn’t feel anything—just a numb awareness that he was glad this part was over. Jennifer seemed fine. The baby seemed fine. And he felt numb.
Jennifer looked up at him. “Hold him, Stef.”
She thrust the bundle at him. It was too small for his hands. He would fumble. His wife would kill him if he dropped their son. She’d worked so hard to bring him here.
He had a son and he still felt numb. Julian had told him he would feel something but all he felt was nervous about Jennifer yelling at him if he dropped the baby.
There had been no grand revelation. No magical waterfall of feelings had rained down on him. He was tired, and he wanted to make sure his wife was all right.
He held the baby close to his body because it seemed like the best way to not drop it. Him. He had to start referring to the baby as him. Although Caleb was bad at reading sonograms. It wouldn’t be the first time he screwed up. Rachel had thought she was having a boy her whole pregnancy. “Is it really a boy?”
Jennifer frowned. “Yes, Logan’s a boy. You weren’t watching?”
“Of course.” He hadn’t wanted to watch. He’d watched her. He’d held her hand and prayed to get through it.
Naomi was suddenly at his side. “Here, let me have him. We’ll get him cleaned up and ready to meet his family.”
He gave the baby up in a heartbeat.
“Follow her,” Jennifer urged. “I don’t want him to be without one of us.”
He didn’t want to leave her, but he knew damn well there were some orders even a Dom followed.
Naomi set the baby in a small bassinet and the blanket fell away. Logan cried out at the loss of his warmth, a loud roar of a cry. Naomi had cleaned him up initially, but now she set about washing him.
Stef looked down at the small thing whose eyes were still closed. His legs were kicking and his arms jerked.
It was kind of cute in a tiny human way. And definitely a boy.
“Here, wipe down his belly, Mr. Talbot. It’s his first bath. Be careful of the cord.” Naomi pressed a warm cloth into his hand.
Stef shook his head. “No, I don’t know how.”
“Sure you do.” Naomi stepped away.
The baby squirmed, but he’d stopped wailing. He had a tuft of dark hair, and it was easy to see that he had the Talbot nose and the same stubborn chin he saw in the mirror every day. DNA had worked to make the baby a mini version of himself. He gently rubbed the cloth across the baby’s belly.
And Logan Talbot’s eyes opened for the first time. He looked up at his father and those green eyes hit Stef Talbot with the force of a lightning strike.
He had Jennifer’s eyes, those same eyes that stared at him with amusement and made him look at the world in a different way. Those eyes were right there, and he suddenly understood.
Jennifer’s eyes, her heart, and her soul would live on in this child. She would teach him to view the world with her amusement, her open heart. She would house her love in this boy so that when she was gone, her love would live on in Logan and his children and his children’s children, a long line of hope and faith that sprung from his wife’s pure heart—and from the love he felt for her.
His son. His son was kicking his legs and staring up at him, an amused expression on his tiny, perfect face.
This son would run through Bliss, likely trying to catch up with Charlie and Zander and looking for the maximum amount of trouble he could cause. He would sleep in the woods and get scared by Maurice. Mel would train him to look for aliens and Stella would finally have the grandchild she’d longed for. Logan Talbot would sit at Stella’s Café, his feet not quite touching the ground, downing pancakes and feeling like a big man.
He would grow up here. He would love this place.
And Stef would show him the world.
Suddenly he knew there was only one thing that mattered about being a father. He would screw up. He would do it multiple times. He would want to pull his hair out over and over again. But now he wasn’t afraid because there was only one real promise he had to keep.
He looked at his son, reaching out to touch that sweet face. Logan’s hand touched his.
“I will never leave you.”
And in that moment, Stefan Talbot became a dad.
Chapter Twenty
Aidan, Lexi, and Lucas
Lucas sighed as Aidan pulled the truck into the drive. “What happened to her phone again?”
Aidan put the car in park. “Abby said it died. It won’t hold a charge anymore, and Lexi threw a near hysterical fit until she promised we would get her a new one. She was ready to drive her into Alamosa herself but I convinced her to meet us at the G.”
“So we’re taking her into town? Isn’t it kind of late for that?” As far as Lucas was concerned, the phone could rot. He would never buy her another one again. He felt guilty, but there was a part of him that wished they were still back at Trio. He’d been able to forget some of his troubles with all the cra
ziness going on there.
“No. I told Abby to bring her back to the G so we could lay out a few new rules. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’ve been neglectful. I haven’t been doing my job because I got distracted.”
“By the shit with the city council?” He’d been angry that Aidan had let it go on so long without bringing him in. “That could have gone very poorly.”
Aidan’s hands tightened around the steering wheel, and he stared out the window. “I don’t like bringing you into ranch business.”
Another thing he had a problem with, but then he’d spent the afternoon watching Jack and Sam. Sam could act like a goofball, but there was no question he was Jack’s partner. “Sam is a true sub, yet Jack treats him like a partner when it comes to that ranch. Hell, Finn is as submissive as they come, but Julian never hesitates to use his skills.”
If this had happened to Julian, Finn would have been in on the plans from the beginning. Julian would have dumped it into Finn’s lap and fully expected him to deal with the situation.
But Aidan apparently didn’t trust him.
Aidan’s eyes closed briefly. “You don’t understand. Sam was in on the ground floor of Barnes-Fleetwood.”
Well, of course. He was tired of it, tired of being shoved to the side. He undid his buckle and opened the door. “Yeah, well, tell me how it goes with Lexi.”
“Lucas, get back here this second.”
But he was exhausted. “No. I’ll head out to the motel. I’d like a night to myself.”
The car door slammed behind him and suddenly Lexi was standing on the porch, her eyes hollow as she stared at them. “Lucas?”
“I’m not taking you into town.” He brushed by her. She wouldn’t care that he was leaving. She would only care that he wouldn’t give her a new phone. She shut him out the same way Aidan did. She didn’t even ask him to read her contracts anymore.