Baby Talk & Wedding Bells

by Brenda Harlen

  A moment later, she heard the soft murmur of his voice through the baby monitor that she now realized was on the bedside table. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but his tone was soothing, reassuring.

  A few minutes later, she heard his footsteps enter the room again. She lifted her arm away from her forehead and peeled open one eyelid—then the second, when she saw that he was carrying an enormous wedge of lemon meringue pie on a plate.

  “I thought you went to check on Saige.”

  “I did. She’s fine,” he assured her. “But I thought you might be ready for dessert now.”

  “That’s for me?”

  “It’s for both of us,” he said.

  She wiggled up to a sitting position, tucking the sheet under her armpits to ensure she was covered.

  He grinned. “It’s a little late for modesty, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not going to sit here naked and eat pie,” she protested.

  He shrugged, broke off the tip of the pie with the fork and held it toward her—then pulled it away and ate the bite himself.

  She frowned.

  “Mmm...this is really good. The lemon is the perfect balance of sweet and tart and the meringue—” he cut off another piece, popped it into his mouth “—is so incredibly light and fluffy.”

  “You said that was to share,” she reminded him.

  “You give up the sheet and I’ll give you some pie.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Those are my terms,” he told her.

  She hesitated; he took another bite of the pie.

  Her mouth watered as she watched the fork slide between his lips, swallowing up the flaky crust, tart filling and fluffy meringue, and she decided he was right—it was a little late for modesty.

  She dropped the sheet; he grinned. This time, when he scooped up a forkful of pie, he held it close for her to sample. She could smell it—the tangy sweet scent—just before she parted her lips to allow him to slide the fork into her mouth.

  She closed her eyes and sighed with blissful pleasure. “Oh, yeah. This is really good.”

  He lifted the fork again, but the pie slid off the tines and onto her thigh, near her hip. She yelped. “That’s cold.”

  “Sorry,” he said, even as he lowered his head to clean up the dessert with his mouth. He licked her skin thoroughly, making her suspect that the mishap might not have been an accident after all.

  “Two can play that game,” she warned him, and scooped some of the meringue off the pie with her finger, then smeared it on his belly before cleaning it up with her mouth.

  He retaliated by dabbing lemon filling on each of her nipples and suckling the rigid peaks until she was gasping and squirming.

  And so they went back and forth, taking turns savoring the dessert from one another’s bodies. Then they made love again, the remnants of the pie creating a sticky friction between them and necessitating a quick shower afterward.

  A shower that ended up not being so quick, as the slow, sensual soaping of one another’s bodies had their mutual passion escalating again. When Braden finally twisted the knob to shut off the spray, it had started to go cold, and they were still dripping with water when they tumbled onto his bed again.

  As Cassie drifted to sleep in his arms, she realized that she’d gone and done what she’d promised herself she wouldn’t: she’d fallen head over heels in love with Braden Garrett.

  * * *

  Braden’s maternal grandmother had been a resident of Serenity Gardens for the last ten years of her life. Of course, she’d passed away more than a dozen years earlier and the residence had undergone significant renovations and benefitted from a major addition since then. Thankfully, the main reception desk was in the same place and, after buzzing up to Irene Houlahan’s room, he and Saige were cleared to find their way to Room 508 in the North Wing.

  When they arrived at her door, it was ajar. He remembered that his grandmother had often left her door open, too, to welcome any neighbors who wanted to drop in for a visit. Still, he knocked on the portal and waited for Miss Houlahan’s invitation before pushing the door wider.

  The old woman was seated at one end of an overstuffed sofa in the living room, a thick hardcover book open in her lap. The permanent furrow between her brows relaxed marginally when her gaze lit on his daughter by his side, and she closed her book and set it aside. “Hello, Saige.”

  His little girl didn’t have a shy bone in her body, and while he hovered on the threshold, she happily toddled across the room to the sofa. Once there, she climbed up onto the cushions, surprising Braden as much as Irene when she pursed her lips and kissed the old woman’s wrinkled cheek.

  “Well,” Irene said, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to respond to the gesture. “It’s not often that I have the pleasure of such a young visitor.” Then she lifted her gaze to Braden’s. “And since you’re not the Grim Reaper, you can come in, too.”

  He fought against a smile as he stepped farther into the room.

  “I don’t imagine you were just ‘in the neighborhood,’” Irene said.

  “Not really,” he admitted, setting the vase on the table beside the sofa. “We came to deliver these.”

  Saige, having noticed the stack of photo books on the coffee table, slid off the sofa again and reached for the one on top. Braden caught her hands and gently pried them from the cover. “Those are Miss Houlahan’s books—they’re not for little girls.”

  “I always believed books were intended to be read by anyone who was interested,” Irene contradicted him. “But I don’t imagine pictures of coffee tables would be of much interest to a toddler.”

  Braden had been so focused on ensuring his daughter didn’t damage the item he hadn’t taken note of the cover, but he did now. “A coffee table book about coffee tables?”

  “Cassie’s idea of a joke.” She shifted forward and removed a different book from the bottom of the pile: A Vibrant History of Pop Art.

  “This has some strange stuff in it but at least the pictures are colorful,” she told him. Then she turned to his daughter and asked, “Do you want to look at this one?”

  Saige nodded and Irene set the book on the table in front of her, then opened it up to the middle. Saige lifted all of the pages from the front cover and pushed them over so that she could start at the front.

  “She knows how to read a book,” Irene noted.

  “We read every night before bed, and my mother takes her to the library a couple of times a week.”

  “A child who reads will be an adult who thinks,” the former librarian said approvingly. “Now tell me what the flowers are for, because I’m not so old that I’ve forgotten when my birthday is and I know it’s not today.”

  “Why does there need to be an occasion?” he countered.

  “Because I’ve never known a man to bring flowers to a woman without one.”

  “Then maybe you’ve known the wrong men,” he told her.

  “You’re trying to sweeten me up so I’ll say good things about you to Cassie, aren’t you?” she guessed.

  He suspected it would take a lot more than a bouquet of flowers to do that, but he bit down on his tongue to prevent the thought from becoming words. “No,” he denied. “I’m trying to say thank you.”

  “For what?” she asked, obviously still suspicious.

  “For being there for Cassie when no one else was.”

  She scowled. “I don’t know what you think I did—”

  “I think you saved her life.”

  Irene snorted. “I did nothing of the sort.”

  “I don’t mean literally,” he explained. “But she told me about everything that happened the year her sister—and then her mother—died.”

  Irene peered at him over the rim of her glasses, her
gaze speculative. “Cassie doesn’t often talk about her family,” she noted.

  “She also told me that you appealed to the church to have her stepfather sent away—and gave family services the evidence they needed to ensure that he couldn’t take Cassie with him.”

  “I didn’t realize that she knew anything about that,” Irene admitted.

  “And then, because you recognized that she was just as terrified of the system as she was of her abusive stepfather, you took her into your home.”

  “It wasn’t a sacrifice to give her an extra bedroom.”

  He glanced at Saige, who was braced on her arms on the table, leaning close to scrutinize the details in the pictures.

  “You gave her more than that,” he said to Irene. “You gave her security, guidance and direction. You helped her focus on and achieve her goals.”

  “I didn’t do any of it for thanks,” she told him.

  “I know, but I’m thanking you, anyway.”

  “Well, it was a nice gesture,” she admitted, just a little begrudgingly.

  He held back his smile. “If you give me a chance, you might find that I’m a nice guy.”

  “Maybe I will,” she conceded, with just the hint of a smile tugging at her mouth.

  * * *

  The next day, when Cassie was visiting Irene, she saw the vase of colorful blooms prominently displayed on the coffee table.

  “I see Jerry brought you flowers again,” she noted.

  “Those aren’t from Jerry,” Irene told her.

  “Really?” She grinned. “You have another suitor in competition for your affections?”

  Her friend sniffed. “Not likely. Those are from your suitor.”

  Cassie lifted a brow.

  “Braden Garrett came to see me yesterday.”

  “He did?”

  Irene nodded. “Brought his little girl with him—goodness, she’s just a bundle of sweetness and joy, isn’t she?”

  “Saige is a very happy child,” Cassie agreed.

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with them lately?”

  “I guess I have,” she agreed cautiously.

  “A man like that, with a young child to raise, is a package deal,” Irene warned her.

  “I know.”

  “And you love them both already, don’t you?”

  There was no point in telling the old woman it wasn’t any of her business. When Irene had taken an angry and grieving fifteen-year-old girl into her home, Cassie’s business had become her business. Since that time, she’d been Cassie’s legal guardian and surrogate mother, and she’d never hesitated to ask Irene for guidance and advice when she needed it. In the current situation, she decided that she needed it because her feelings for Braden and Saige had become so muddled with her own hopes and dreams that she feared she’d lost perspective.

  “I do,” she admitted.

  “Why don’t you sound happy about it?”

  “Because I didn’t want to fall in love with Braden,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to give him the power to break my heart.”

  “Loving someone is always a risk,” Irene acknowledged.

  “Please don’t start quoting Pinterest advice to me.”

  “You don’t need any advice—you just need to follow your heart.”

  “Because that’s never steered me wrong in the past,” Cassie noted dryly.

  “Stop dwelling on the past and focus on the future,” her friend suggested.

  “That definitely sounds like Pinterest advice.”

  Irene handed Cassie the book she’d been reading during her previous visit.

  “There’s a lot of good stuff on Pinterest,” she said. “But not a lot of men like Braden Garrett in the world.”

  * * *

  Maybe Cassie should have made an excuse to get out of attending the welcome home party for Braden’s brother and sister-in-law, but she was curious to see him interact with the whole family, and she wanted to be able to tell Megan—who was a huge fan of Ryder to the Rescue—that she’d met Ryder Wallace. Although his crew was still in Georgia finishing up the restoration of an antebellum mansion, he and his wife and their kids had returned to Charisma for the family event.

  “It’s a good thing your parents have a huge backyard,” Cassie said, when they arrived at Ellen and John’s residence.

  “And that the weatherman was wrong in forecasting rain for today,” Braden noted.

  She looked up at the clear blue sky. “I guess even Mother Nature knows not to mess with Ellen Garrett’s plans.”

  He chuckled. “You might be right about that.”

  As they made their way around the gathering, he introduced her to his aunts, uncles and cousins. When they crossed paths with Ellen, who was in her glory with so many little ones underfoot, she immediately whisked Saige away to play with her cousins. It seemed that everywhere Cassie looked, there were children and babies. And more than one expectant mother in the crowd, too.

  Not long after they’d arrived, John dragged Braden away to man one of the extra grills that had been set up in the backyard. He was reluctant to leave Cassie’s side, but she assured him that she would be fine. Although the words were spoken with more conviction than she felt, he took them at face value and accepted the chef’s apron and long-handled spatula his father gave him.

  “There’s a gate by the garage,” a pretty dark-haired woman said to her.

  “Sorry?”

  “You had that slightly panicked look in your eyes, as if you were searching for the nearest exit.”

  “Oh.” Cassie blew out a breath and managed a smile. “I guess I am feeling a little overwhelmed. And I’m sorry—I know Braden introduced us, but I don’t remember your name.”

  “Tristyn,” the other woman said. “And there’s no need to apologize. I sometimes feel overwhelmed at these gatherings, too, and I’m related to all of these people.”

  “When Braden said the whole family would be here, I didn’t realize what that meant.”

  “There are a lot of us,” his cousin agreed. “More and more every year, with all the babies being born.”

  “Do any of the little ones belong to you?”

  “No,” Tristyn said quickly, firmly. “I’m just a doting aunt—actual and honorary—to all of the rug rats running around.”

  The words were barely out of her mouth when a preschooler raced over to them, giggling as he was chased by a chocolate Lab that was as big as the child. Tristyn swept the little boy up into her arms and planted noisy kisses on each of his cheeks.

  The dog plopped on its butt at their feet, tail swiping through the grass and tongue hanging out of its mouth.

  Since Tristyn was fussing over the child, Cassie dropped to her knees beside the dog. Pleased with the attention, she immediately rolled onto her back. “Aren’t you just the cutest thing?” she said, dutifully rubbing the animal’s exposed belly.

  The dog showed her agreement by swiping Cassie’s chin with her tongue.

  She chuckled softly. “Who does she belong to? And will they notice if I take her home with me?”

  “What do you think, Oliver?” Tristyn asked the boy. “Would you notice if Cassie took Coco home with her?”

  Oliver nodded solemnly.

  “Well, as adorable as she is, I would never want to come between a boy and his dog,” Cassie said.

  “But there is supposed to be a leash between the boy and his dog,” a different female voice piped up.

  Cassie turned to see Braden’s sister-in-law Harper with the leash in hand.

  “But Coco wanted to meet Cassie,” Oliver told her.

  “Is that so?” his mother said, a smile tugging at her lips as she glanced at Cassie. “And have they been properly introduced now?”


  Oliver nodded. “Coco gave her kisses and she didn’t say ‘yuck.’”

  “That doesn’t mean her kisses aren’t yucky,” Harper noted, bending down—not an easy task with her pregnant belly impeding her—to clip the leash onto the dog’s collar. “Just that Cassie has better manners than your dog.”

  Coco looked at Harper with big soulful eyes, silently reproaching her for putting restrictions on her freedom.

  She handed the leash to her son. “Please take her into the house so that she’s not underfoot while Grandpa’s grilling. And don’t bug Grandma for a snack before dinner.”

  The little boy sighed but obediently trotted away with the dog in tow.

  Harper watched him go, then her gaze shifted to encompass all of the people gathered in the backyard. “Now that we’re back in Charisma, I find myself wondering how we ever stayed away so long.”

  “It might have had something to do with your contract with WMBT and Mid-Day Miami,” Tristyn noted.

  Harper nodded. “And maybe it was the right move for us at the time, but now...I’m so glad we’re home.”

  “We all are,” Tristyn told her. “If you’d stayed in Florida to have that baby, there would have been a convoy of Garretts down the I-95.”

  The expectant mother laughed. “Somehow, I don’t doubt it,” she said, then she turned her attention to Cassie. “Is this your first family event?”

  Cassie nodded. “I’ve known Ellen for years and, through her, Saige since she was about six months old, but I only met Braden in March.”

  “The man moves fast,” his sister-in-law noted, a suggestive sparkle in her eye.

  Cassie felt her cheeks heat and hoped the reaction might be attributed to the afternoon sun. “We’re friends,” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” Harper agreed, smiling.

  “It’s true,” Tristyn piped up in Cassie’s defense. Or so she thought until the other woman spoke again. “In fact, they were very friendly in the shed just a little while ago.”

  “We were looking for a soccer ball for the kids,” Cassie explained.

  “And Braden thought a soccer ball might be hiding in your clothes?”