by Emerson Rose
After more tears, more hugging, and more kissing, I squeak out, “I love it, thank you.”
He stands taking me with him and holds me against his chest. “Anything for you, anything, you know that. Go hug your mother, I think she’s crying,” he whispers in my ear.
He releases me and nudges me toward her. “Mom, I can’t believe you’re here to stay.” I bend over to hug her frail body lightly, so I don’t hurt her.
“Well, you weren’t coming back to Cali, so I came to you. With a lot of help from Alex, of course.”
I kiss her cheek and straighten up with my hands on the arms of her chair. “I didn’t want to leave you, Mom, and you know it. I asked you to come with us, but you said you were born in California, and you would die there, too.” I cock my head and raise one eyebrow.
“Alex is very convincing.”
I snort. “Yeah, you’re telling me. Now you see what I was dealing with early on.”
“Yep, he’s good at getting his way.”
I straighten up and look behind me at Alex casually leaning his hip against the counter with his hands in his pockets. Faye squawks drawing our attention to her. “I’m going to marry your daddy, sweetheart, is that okay with you?” I round the island to lift her from her high chair and kiss her soft, round cheek. She feeds me a Cheerio, and I laugh.
“I think she approves,” Alex says joining us and kissing his baby girl on her forehead.
“I’m glad,” I say, and he does the same to me.
“You know what?” he asks.
“What?”
“I’m glad you’re going to be my wife instead of my nanny.”
“Yeah, I was a pretty crappy nanny, wasn’t I?” I look at Faye in my arms. “I promise to be a better mommy.”
“And we will give you lots of brothers and sisters so you’ll have someone to play with,” he says.
I shake my head. “There you go again speeding down the track at one hundred miles per hour.”
“I like life fast with you, what can I say?”
“Nothing, you don’t have to say anything. I like life fast with you, too.”
Epilogue
Five Years Later
“One, two, three, six, ten! Ready or not!”
“Corinne, you have to give them more time than that, you skipped numbers,” Alex says packing a stack of folders into his briefcase.
“She’s still learning, babe, and they’re older anyway. Make them work for it.”
He frowns as he watches our daughter race out of the room to find her older sister, Faye, and Faye’s friend, Mia. “She should play by the rules.”
“You’re grumpy this morning, what’s wrong?”
“I have to go out of town tomorrow. You know I hate being away from my family.”
“It’s only for a few days, we’ll be fine.”
“You’ll be fine, but what about me? I need you with me. I won’t sleep.”
My husband is such a powerful man in front of the world, but in the dining room of our home surrounded by his family, he is a soft, loving husband and daddy who likes to sleep under his own roof at night.
“I packed your sleeping pills, and we will FaceTime every night and morning.”
He slides his briefcase off the table and walks to me. Bending down so we are eye to eye, he says, “It’s not the same, and you know it.” I tap him on the nose, and he kisses me softly until the baby in my arms squirms.”
“I’ll see you later. Are you going to work today?”
We just had our third baby, William, three months ago, and I’ve recently been working my way back up to full-time hours. Life is perfect except for the absence of my mother who died three years ago. If I could have one wish, it would be to have her back so she could spend time with all of her grandchildren.
The shops are thriving, and I still run the original location while Jacob’s husband, Mason, runs my second location, and a quirky, sweet woman named Kiki is in charge of the other. Jacob and Mason married two years ago and live together in the cottage on our property. I love having them so close. They are godfathers to our children, and they are known as Uncle Jacob and Uncle Mason to the children and the staff.
Alex’s practice is thriving, but he has taken a step back to spend more time with us. He only represents a few select clients that he feels passionate about.
“Yes, Greta and Kristine are both here today, they’re taking the kids swimming.”
“Swimming? When you’re not home? I don’t like it.”
I sigh. Never has there been a more overprotective father. “You know Faye and Mia are great swimmers, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And Kristine is a certified lifeguard.”
“Your point is?”
“William won’t be in the water, and the girls will be with a lifeguard. They’re safe, and I have to get back to work.”
“You don’t have to do any such thing. You can stay here and be a full-time mother if you want to.” He knows I love my job, and he would never ask me to give it up. He’s just upset about going to New York for his case.
“I love you, Alex. Go to work.”
The kids come racing through the room, and Corinne grabs onto her daddy’s pant leg. “Home base!” she screams making William cry.
“Wait a minute, weren’t you the one counting and searching?” Alex asks when Faye and Mia race in on Corinne’s heels.
“She doesn’t know how to play, Daddy. Tell her she’s doing it wrong,” Faye demands.
“Corinne, your sister is right. You need to abide by the rules, or those playing won’t know what to expect or how to win. If you can’t do that, you will have to find another game. Or,” he sets his briefcase down on the floor and throws his hands over his head. “The tag monster is going to get you and tickle you until you scream for mercy!”
All three girls scream and run out of the room followed by the biggest kid of them all, my husband, Alex Wolfe.
The End
Page ahead to begin Bonus Book Three – Major’s Baby by Emerson Rose. This is one of her Best Selling novels from her Bad Boy Heroes Collection.
Major’s Baby — Bonus Book Three
Major’s Baby
By
Emerson Rose
Description
Major Sawyer Steele needs control.
Stunning, bossy, and damaged, Major’s rules are designed to protect his own heart just as much as the hearts of those who dare to show him interest. His past is a book he’d rather not re-open, and his future is something he’d rather not think about.
Enter free spirit Violet Washington.
Wielding equal parts beauty, brains, and sass, Violet’s been hurt before and prefers one night stands over boyfriends. Her heart is safer that way. Nobody gets hurt. Everyone goes home happy.
But the second they collided rules were obliterated. Boundaries were pushed. Hearts were challenged. And expectations were questioned.
It was just one weekend; one breathless, s*x-infused weekend neither of them could forget no matter how hard they tried. But just when they both thought the past was behind them, Violet finds herself preparing to tell Major Steele that their little weekend together……is about to last a lifetime.
Prologue
There is a place and a time in the garden of life for order and discipline, but neither belongs where my love and passion grows. – Violet Washington
Weddings. I sigh and turn in a circle, looking at the chaos in my bedroom. My little brother’s best friend is getting married next weekend, and for the eighth time, I am a bridesmaid and not a bride. I’m not the marrying type, or so everyone says, and it must be true because I’m twenty-seven with no husband in sight. The phrase, ‘Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.’ was coined after me.
I need to finish packing, but Mom keeps interrupting me. She’s here to help me get my things together for Mattie’s wedding, but she’s not really helping at all. I had to stop and show her where to find the coffee in my
kitchen. Twice, she’s shown me things she thinks are hilarious on Instagram. I made sure to remind her that she’s a traitor for spending so much time on Instagram when her daughter works for Facebook. She laughed and flashed another overly sarcastic meme in my face.
“Mom, have you seen my dress?” I call over my shoulder, walking into my closet to look one more time for the damn thing.
“The long, pretty cornflower blue one?”
“Yes.”
“With the low V cut in the back and the pretty sash?”
“Yes, Mother, that’s the one. Have you seen it?” I ask, rolling my eyes. Mom is such a space case sometimes. I wonder how on earth we made it from state to state with our belongings all those years that Dad was in the military.
“I don’t know.”
“Mother, you just described it to a tee, and now you’re saying you don’t know where it is?”
She shuffles around the corner into my bedroom, holding her cup of coffee with one hand while looking at her phone.
She looks up at me briefly. “You asked if I had seen it and I have—just not lately,” she says, leaning against the doorframe.
“That doesn’t help me much. We need to get on the road if we want to make tee off at two thirty, and I can’t leave without my dress.”
“Fourteen thirty, Violet. You were raised with military time. Why don’t you use it?”
I heave another sigh. This used to be an everyday argument when I lived at home, and it’s one I don’t miss.
“Because, Mom, the rest of the world uses normal time.”
“Well, it just makes more sense,” she says, shaking her head.
I’m not arguing. It’s a lost cause and I need to find my damn dress.
“Here, put these by the door,” I say, thrusting the only two small bags I’ve managed to pack in her direction.
She huffs when she’s forced to put her phone in her pocket to hold the bags. “Oh! In the shower!” she yells, and I jump.
“The shower?”
“Your dress. It’s hanging in the shower, remember? You put it in there yesterday to get the wrinkles out.”
“Oh yes, the shower. Take it easy on the coffee, Mom. You just scared the shit out of me.”
I retrieve my dress from the bathroom, and when I pass the large mirror over the vanity, I catch my reflection. I look tired. The circles under my eyes are starting to show my insomnia, and my lack of makeup only adds to the effect.
Oh well. We’re going to be outside drinking beer and sweating on the golf course all day. I don’t need makeup. I’m not trying to impress anyone anyway. I’ve recently sworn off long-term relationships with men. One-night stands? Yes. Boyfriends? No. Crummy luck with men follows me around like a heavy, black storm cloud.
I’m a jerk magnet, and I’ve come to accept it.
1
Target Girl
Major
“Whoa, shit!” she yells when we crash into each other and no fewer than fifteen personal hygiene items go flying into the air and crashing to the floor. I hold onto my bulbs because, unlike this woman, I don’t try to balance an unmanageable amount of purchases in my arms without a basket.
She’s on her knees collecting her things before I can apologize, which technically, I don’t have to do because it’s not my fault. She ran into me. I should move to help her, but she’s really fucking beautiful . . . down there . . . on her knees. For fuck’s sake, Major, get a grip. You’re a damn Marine. Help her already.
I crouch down just as she’s standing, and we collide again. This is ridiculous. I stiffen when her head cracks against the bottom of my jaw and she moans and grabs her head.
“Ow!” she yells for the second time in a matter of seconds.
“Stop moving,” I say, taking her by the shoulders. “I’ll take care of it.”
Her eyes narrow and her lips press together in a straight line. She looks pissed or maybe shocked—I’m not sure which—but thankfully, she can follow instructions.
She stills, and I straighten up to retrieve a shopping basket from the opposite end of the aisle. When I turn around, someone is standing with her, presumably her mother the way she’s hovering and checking the lump that I am sure is growing on her head. I crouch down, neatly place each item in the basket, and hand it to her.
“Shopping baskets significantly reduce the instance of head injuries in retail establishments,” I say. I’m being serious, but I can see a myriad of emotions crossing her beautiful face, including irritation and anger—but most of all, frustration.
“Watching where one’s going doesn’t hurt either,” she says, flashing me a quick sarcastic smile.
I don’t have time to deal with her right now, even though I would really like to stand here and continue to watch her mocha skin flush and her deep brown eyes flash with anger.
I look at my watch. Fuck. I have nine minutes to get home and get my day back on schedule. I should ask if she’s okay. I should probably apologize, even though it was clearly not my fault, but I’m in a hurry. I step around the two women, grab the razor blades I was after in this aisle, and make my way through the store to the cashier.
Back at home, I install the light bulbs that unexpectedly exploded this morning. I dispose of the containers and recheck twice to be sure I didn’t miss any glass when I swept up earlier. Then I sweep one more time for good measure and breathe a sigh of relief. I had to rewrite my entire list of things to do today just to insert ‘go to Target’, but the satisfaction of crossing it off was worth it. My day is back on track, it’s sixteen thirty, and I’m on my way out the door to start my afternoon run.
What a fucking relief. I can relax for an hour now and let my mind go blank while I count my steps.
One,
two,
three,
four. Only 1296 to go before I meet Garcia and Davis for dinner and drinks.
Sweat is dripping down my back and between my shoulder blades. One mile into my run, the sun is in my eyes and the smell of fresh cut grass is thick in the air. California in the summer. It doesn’t get any better than this. My mind is multitasking this afternoon. Part of it is counting my steps, another part is counting the palm trees as I pass them, and another is replaying the Target incident.
I can’t stop thinking about that woman on her knees with her Nike sun visor and her long, wavy black hair in a messy ponytail. When we were finished banging heads and colliding into each other, I systematically assessed her beauty. She was understated and casual, wearing shorts and a tank top. Her glasses made her look like a sexy librarian. She looked like she was going to play golf. In fact, the woman who was with her did too. Mother and daughter golf. How sweet.
There was something about her, something interesting and intriguing. I usually deplore sassiness and disobedience in a woman, but when she spoke back to me, it was a turn on. Fuck, I need to get laid. I’m getting a semi thinking about a stranger at Target.
I don’t date, and it’s been a while since I’ve had time to go out perusing for someone to bed, but it’s getting harder and harder to go without sex—pun intended. Serious relationships are impossible, and I don’t do casual well either. I can’t stand the loose unpredictability of that kind of setup. I do one-night stands in impersonal hotels where no one gets attached and no one gets hurt.
Things have been hectic on base lately with new recruits arriving fresh out of boot camp. I haven’t had a spare minute to go out for anything other than dinner. Bars aren’t my thing, so Davis and Garcia compromised, agreeing to meet for dinner even though I’m sure they will try to drag me along for a pub crawl when we’re finished. I’ll tolerate one or two for a hookup, but when I’ve found someone to break my dry streak, I’m gone.
2
Jerk Magnet
Violet
I set my shopping basket on the conveyer belt with a thump, looking at the contents with new interest. Mom was right. I should have written a list. All the way from San Diego to Oceanside, I continued to rem
ember things I had forgotten to pack. By the time we got here, I knew we had to make a quick swing through Target before checking into the hotel.
Mr. Methodical has organized every item by size and color to fit perfectly in the bottom of the small shopping basket. Who does that? And in two seconds, the same amount of time it would have taken me to toss them all in there randomly. But no, he has systematically arranged them to look like a basket in a Target commercial . . . better, actually.
The longer I look, the more interesting this becomes. I’m a software programmer. I naturally look for patterns and similarities when I’m working on a project, and there is more than one trend going on here.
Vitamins and Ibuprofen are in one corner, body wash and deodorant in another—yeah, I forgot my damn deodorant. Contact solution and Band-Aids are nestled in next to shaving cream and razors, and most amusing is the placement of the tampons next to a box of condoms. I can’t help but chuckle at that one.
This week is going to be the perfect opportunity for a much needed one-night- stand.
I suck at relationships. I notoriously choose the worst guys possible. I’m a jerk magnet, pure and simple. My last boyfriend, Luke, had a serious case of wandering eye. The piece of shit would blatantly check out other women and even flirt with them when we were together. One year later, I got fed up and ended it. He admitted he was a cheater—yeah, big surprise—and he told me I was too laid back. So when did not being an uptight nag become a deal breaker? Before that, I was in several short relationships, never longer than six months, which was just long enough for me to become bored and unchallenged.