by Nella Tyler
“I love her,” I told Cade. “I’d give anything for her.” Tuck laughed.
“In that case, go find her,” he told me. “Don’t be surprised if she cries all over you, though—she’s gone weepy since having that kid.”
I hurried across the field towards the house, putting Tuck behind me, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I could see that he wasn’t even trying to follow me. Where would Autumn be in her parents’ house? Tuck had mentioned the living room, but when I stepped into the front door, feeling a little weird at not even bothering to knock, I didn’t see a single sign of her.
I went into the kitchen from a lack of any other idea of where to go and saw her standing over the stove. “Autumn.”
She turned around and her gaze locked onto my face. “I swear, Cade... It wasn’t…” I shook my head.
“Your brother explained everything,” I told her. I closed the distance between us and wrapped my arms around her waist. “What are you cooking?” Autumn shook her head, shrugging.
“I’m not even sure,” she said with a breathless laugh. “I just felt like I needed to do something.” I chuckled lowly and buried my head against her neck.
“Well, I can think of something you can do right now,” I murmured in her ear. “That is, if you can leave Addie…”
“She’ll be safe,” Autumn said, her breath hitching in her throat as my hands started to wander over her.
“Then let’s go back to your place.”
Epilogue
The basket in my hands was heavy, but I didn’t mind that much. Addie wasn’t big enough to do more than carry the big thermos in both hands, and I was happy to have the chance for a break from other chores, even if I did have to waddle slightly. Cade and Tuck were hard at work, both of them hovering over a length of hose, debating—amicably—God only knew what.
“Will the two of you take a break for a few minutes so all this delicious food doesn’t go to waste?” I couldn’t help but smile to myself at the fact that the two of them were on such good terms, especially when I remembered how hard Tuck had tried to get Cade fired only years before.
“Autumn! You shouldn’t be walking all this way in this heat,” Cade said, frowning as he moved away from the equipment to meet me. “You’re going to go into early labor or something.” I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t going to bother telling Cade yet again that I had worked just as hard during my first pregnancy. I put the basket down anyway and looked at Addie.
“Set that container down here next to the basket,” I told her. “We’ll have a picnic with Uncle Tuck and Daddy.” No matter how often I said it, calling Cade Daddy for Adelyn still gave me a little thrill. Cade really was her Dad—at least, from every possible definition except for biology. He had stepped up where Titan had let both her and me down; he deserved the name.
“Here,” Cade said, looking me over anxiously. “Let me get the blanket and lay it out under this tree.” Tuck followed Cade over to where Addie and I stood, and I could see that he was struggling not to laugh at his future brother-in-law. Things had become much simpler and much more relaxed between the man I loved and my brother, ever since a few months after Titan had left my life for good.
“Did I ever tell you that I did all my chores on the day Addie was born?” I watched as Cade shook out the blanket and laid it down under the tree. Tuck picked up both the basket and the big thermos full of iced tea, giving me a quick wink.
“Addie is one thing,” Cade said. “Her little brother-to-be is another. I don’t want you working so hard.” I sighed and sat down on the blanket, and Addie threw herself down next to me with all the enthusiasm she could muster. My little toddler was almost old enough to start pre-school, and Cade and I had an appointment later in the week to visit the few options in town to decide which would be the best for her.
It felt weird, but perfect that Cade was so involved in Addie’s life; even if he’d only entered it when she was almost a year old, he had taken over his fatherly duties in such a way that anyone who saw them together would think that he’d been there from the moment of her birth.
“Working so hard is how she ended up pregnant, if I recall correctly,” Tuck joked. Addie had asked questions about where her brother had come from, and we had tried to answer them accurately, but not exactly in graphic terms. Mom, Dad, and Tuck had found out about the explanation, and it had become a family joke—with comments about my “work ethic” and Cade’s “hard labor” flying right over my daughter’s head.
Tuck went to work emptying the basket; it was early in the growing season yet, so I’d been busy clearing out the pantries for the bounty to come. There was a beet salad, some chicken salad, fresh bread that I’d baked off that morning, some cheese and hard-boiled eggs, and a few other odds and ends from the pantry—even some hand-pies with the leftover strawberry-rhubarb filling mom and I had put away the year before.
All the while, Tuck and Cade were chatting about the problem they’d been working on when I’d arrived. I shook my head, smiling to myself. Everything seemed to have come together right about the time that Tuck and Cade had discussed—and gone through with—jointly investing in the farm. It had made it possible for Dad to buy up a little more land to expand the fields, which would mean that Cade and I could get half of the property one day, and Tuck would get the other half. Of course, my brother and my lover were going to work the lands together, but splitting up the farm meant that everyone had a little bit of space.
But as I watched two of the most important men in my life chatting like old friends, I couldn’t help feeling amused. “You know, Cade, we should probably just go ahead and go to the justice of the peace,” I said, cutting into their conversation as I nibbled on some bread with chicken salad.
“What? I thought you wanted a big wedding,” he said, frowning in confusion. I grinned.
“Well you and Tuck are already acting like brothers, so we’re practically married already,” I pointed out. “We just need the paperwork done.” We’d talked a few times about a wedding, especially once I’d gotten pregnant with our future son months before. Cade had wanted to plan the wedding as soon as possible, mindful of my reputation, but I’d already had one child out of wedlock. Having another with the man I loved—the man who was staying by my side—wasn’t going to damage my reputation.
When I’d insisted that I was not going to walk down the aisle with a big, pregnant belly straining at the front of my wedding dress, Cade had backed off of the idea. At that, I was starting to think that I wanted as simple a ceremony as possible, maybe not even at the church.
“We’re going to have a proper wedding, as soon as that guy is out of your belly and you’re recovered,” Cade said, nodding at me. I smiled.
“Fine, fine,” I said. “We have to do that paperwork, too.” I didn’t say what paperwork in particular, but Cade and Tuck both knew. Cade had decided to formally adopt Addie, and we’d agreed amongst all of us that she didn’t need to know that there had ever been another father in her life other than him.
That reminded me of Titan. The last I’d heard about him in town, he’d moved to the west coast, somewhere in Oregon, chasing after yet another woman after the last one dumped him.
I hadn’t heard from him in person in more than a year. He had tried to get in touch once more, insisting that he really did want to have a part in Addie’s life, but I had stood firm, and I’d talked to his parents about the fact that I wanted them to encourage Titan not to try again. He wasn’t interested in his own daughter as anything other than a bargaining chip with me. I’d had his parents mail him the paperwork to renounce any parental rights to Addie, and I’d gotten them back about two months later.
From then on, I’d considered Titan out of my life permanently, and out of my daughter’s life, too.
“So how’s the planning going on the new house?” Tuck sat back on the blanket, sipping his iced tea. Cade looked proud at the question.
“It’s coming along really well,” he replied.
Since Cade had worked in construction for so many years before coming to work for my dad, he knew more than enough people to help him build us a new house. It was going to be on the other end of the property, the new addition Dad had bought a year and a half before, the part that I was slated to inherit with Cade.
We had agreed that we wanted our own place—a real place, not just a guest house, somewhere we could raise Addie and her coming little brother. Cade had been meeting with friends for weeks, explaining what he needed. Since he had a stake in the farm’s profits instead of taking a regular salary, and I had my own stake as well, we’d gone in on the cost of it together and we could afford to get exactly what we wanted.
“They think it’s going to be done by the time harvest is here,” I told my brother. “The architect did the design at a discount as a favor for Cade, and the foreman is giving us a good rate on the building.”
It was hard for me to believe, but by the time that harvest came, I was going to have a new life, a new baby, and a new house. On top of it all, I was going to have a man who loved me to share it all with. Even a few years before, when I’d first met Cade, I never would have imagined that my life could change in such a short time; I hadn’t even thought that I would be in a serious relationship before my daughter was in school.
I had seen a lot of good things come out of the ground at the farm, but this year’s harvest was going to be a particularly good one.
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THE COMPLETE SERIES
By Nella Tyler
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 Nella Tyler
PART ONE
Chapter One
Mackenzie
Fifteen minutes after work ended for the day, I made my way to my favorite bench, not far from the children’s physical therapy center where I worked. It was cold outside, of course, but I’d been stuck in the stuffy, heated office for long enough that it was a nice change, especially with a hot drink in my hands to keep them from freezing in my gloves. I sat down and took a sip of the thick, sweet hot chocolate, looking into Amundsen Park. It was late enough—and dark enough—that the park itself was mostly deserted, but the quiet was nice.
I took another sip of my drink and thought about Thanksgiving; it had seemed to come so much faster than usual this year, and I’d been taken by surprise when the office announced the closure. Nobody—least of all kids—wanted to do physical therapy on Thanksgiving, and very few people wanted to do it the day after. The holidays were a little different; with vacation happening and parents trying to get their shopping done, they were more than happy to schedule as many sessions as their insurance would allow. All day at work I had been debating whether or not to put myself on the on-call list for overtime during the week of Christmas; I had a few days to make up my mind still, but I didn’t know how I felt.
I sighed, snuggling deeper into my coat, trying to convince myself to get up and start for home. I had a ton of shopping to do—and of course, with Thanksgiving being over, and the first full week of the holiday season starting, it was going to be a madhouse anywhere I wanted to go. I was tired just thinking about it, especially after a long day of working with kids who were almost frantic between one school holiday and another. I grinned to myself as I drank down some more hot chocolate, remembering little Ruby-Lee; she had made a lot of progress since I had started working with her three months before, and she had wanted to show off the fact that she could actually walk a straight line finally—by trying to run along a balance beam set on the floor until she’d nearly twisted her ankle.
Helen, who’d come in with unbearable sciatic nerve pain, was starting to make progress too. It made my heart ache to have to tell her that she wasn’t likely to ever be able to continue her ballet instruction—at least, not enough for her to become a professional danger—but she was slowly coming to terms with the idea on her own. The twelve-year-old girl had given me a look while we went through the back stretches at the beginning of her session and said, “They’re doing The Nutcracker starting this week. I’m already too old to play half of the parts and too young to play the rest of them.” I had given her a quick hug and told her that there were a lot of things she could still do; the fault in her spinal alignment that caused her sciatica wasn’t something that could really be cured—but at least she could get back into dance for fun if she kept moving along at the rate she had been.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, interrupting my thoughts, and I cringed as I slipped my glove off to answer it. I really—really—wanted a pair of smartphone gloves, but they were so expensive that I hadn’t bought myself a pair yet. Add it to your Christmas list, I told myself as I slipped my phone out of my pocket and tapped the accept icon, without even really looking to see who it was calling me. I set my cup of hot chocolate down and balanced my phone on my shoulder while I put my glove back on; it was way too cold to leave it off for longer than a few seconds.
“Hello?”
“Hey Mackie-sweetie!” My mom’s voice filled my ear and I smiled. “It’s officially the holiday season, and you know what that means.”
“You’re asking everyone to turn in their lists by tomorrow or risk having no Christmas presents?”
My mom laughed on the other end of the line.
“That is one thing,” she agreed. “The other is that I need to know whether I can expect you here for the holidays.” I frowned, worrying at my bottom lip for a moment. I definitely wanted to see my family for Christmas—and there would be a big New Year’s party to go to as well—but I knew that if I spent as much time with them as possible over the holidays, I’d have to avoid a bunch of questions about my love life…or more accurately, my lack of a love life.
“I’m definitely planning on being there for Christmas,” I said quickly. The office would be closed on Christmas day; there wouldn’t be any reason for anyone to be there anyway. “And I’m hoping that nothing will come up on New Year’s Eve that would mean I have to come in. But in-between I’m not sure.”
“It was such a shame last year that you had to leave during the week,” Mom said.
“Well we had a lot of people in,” I pointed out. “Everyone was pulling overtime.” It wasn’t exactly true; I’d signed up and along with everyone else who had signed up, I’d gotten called in. It had been a bit of a relief; being around my family was nice, but the fact that my cousin—three years younger than me— just had a baby and then had been planning to get married in another three months, meant that the entire time I was home everything became speculation about me being a bridesmaid yet again. I had lost track of how many times I was asked when it would be time for me to don a white dress of my own. “I’ll try to make sure I can stay for the whole holiday,” I said.
The office didn’t entirely close between Christmas and New Year’s, but we tried to schedule as few sessions as possible. Of course, physical therapy required a lot of consistency, which is something we explained to all of our young patients’ parents, but even people in the medical field like to be with their families during the holidays if they can.
“You know, if you have a guest you’d like to bring, we’ll welcome them too—and of course they can stay even if you have to step into work for a few hours,” Mom suggested. I tried not to sigh at the obvious undercurrent to her comment.
“If I have a guest, I’ll make sure to let you know so that you’ll have enough food for five guests to come with me,” I joked, brushing aside the question she hadn’t quite asked.
“We’ll make sure to have your favorite cookies,” Mom continued on, and I let her sweep me along in conversation for a while, listening to her plans fo
r the different dishes she would serve for Christmas. “I was thinking that maybe this year we could to a feast of the seven fishes theme,” Mom told me.
“That sounds like fun—but probably pretty expensive if everyone’s going to be there. What about the kids?”
“Well we’ll have some of the normal stuff too,” Mom said, “and your nieces and nephews will eat anything that isn’t moving.” I thought that was doubtful, but I didn’t say anything about it.
“What are you thinking of making?” My hands were starting to go stiff in spite of the gloves, and I could feel my toes becoming numb in my boots. I didn’t want to talk to Mom for too long; I still had to go home and get dinner made. But I knew that she’d think I was just brushing her off if I didn’t ask the question.
“I was going to do a bouillabaisse,” Mom replied, “and some chilled raw and steamed seafood: shrimp, crab, maybe some lobster if I can get it for a good price. And smoked fish dip. I am still working out all the details, but if you can get here a day early maybe, I’d love your help.” I grinned to myself, rolling my eyes slightly. Mom wanted me to spend as much time at home as possible at every holiday.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I promised. “Look—Mom, I’m outside right now and I’m freezing my ass off. Let me call you back, okay? I need to get on my way home before I turn into a Popsicle.”
“Okay, sweet pea,” Mom said, sounding mostly content. “Let me know if you need me to help you out with anything. And make sure you get me your Christmas list!” I agreed to call her and then managed to finally get off of the phone, slipping it back into my pocket. I sat on the bench for a few minutes longer, in spite of the cold that cut through my clothes, and I stared out at the park. I took a deep breath and sighed.