Love at Blind Date Complete Series: Books 1-4

by Lorelei M. Hart

  Gran wanted to waive the rent but both Keith and I insisted on paying. Financially we were in a good place, but as we’d made so many huge decisions, we postponed making any more.

  Emotionally, things were great. Keith’s prominent bump was making long hours standing impractical, and he was eager to get the shop officially opened before the baby arrived.

  While Keith was out of the house during the day, I knuckled down to writing. I’d spent the month in the city attending a technical writing course, learning how to write for TV, and came back each weekend. It was weird me in town and Keith living in my place not far from Gran and his grandfather. Floyd stayed with my grandmother during that time and came home with us each weekend.

  Gran and Keith’s grandfather were also moving in together. Gran had suggested they live at her place as it was more wheelie-walker friendly. But Gramps’s home held special memories for Keith having grown up there, so my grandmother was now hellbent on having ramps and handrails added to that house, even though he barely used the walker anymore. She was a whirlwind, and Gramps was loving it.

  But there was one problem we had to deal with. Floyd! Neither of us wanted to give him away. But we couldn’t have him saying “Fuck” in front of our child. My research showed we had to give him positive reinforcement when he said appropriate words and ignore him if he cursed.

  It was a slow process, but we were getting there. In the past, Shifter World had been on in the background while I worked, and Floyd loved words such as ‘lover,’ ‘cheat,’ and ‘gossip.’ So now he watched kids’ programs and bopped along to the catchy tunes while I wore noise-cancelling headphones. I was hopeful the cursing would be gone by the time the baby made an appearance.

  Floyd had done his stint on Shifter World and now had fans. I’d made a social media account and uploaded pics and videos each week. One crazed stalker had discovered where we lived and hid behind a hedge for days trying to snap pics until Floyd caught sight of him and yelled, “Loser.” The guy took off. Though what he said was technically not a swear word, we still had a ways to go with the behavior modification techniques.

  In his limited spare time, Keith had been doing up the second bedroom as a nursery, with plenty of help from me. He was the project manager, and I was the guy doing the grunt work. Building shelves, painting, and putting together a crib.

  Jason, Keith’s former boss, had given him something that sealed dirty diapers in plastic, and when it was emptied made them into a sausage-like rope thing. After Keith showed me a pic online, my stomach heaved, and I’m sure my face turned green.

  “So, you’re going to be my birthing coach in the delivery room and cut the cord, but a sealed diaper makes you lose your lunch?” Keith had tut-tutted.

  “I’ll get there. Promise.” Though the image of those diaper cylinders was forever etched into my brain.

  “Ethan! Ethan! Are you ready?”

  “Coming.” Keith calling me brought me back to the present. “Wow!” He’d hinted he was designing a new suit for the grand opening of the shop. But I was speechless as my gaze roamed over the baby-blue jacket and pants. He twirled around. “You like?”

  “Gorgeous.” I ran a hand over my jaw. “But you’re missing something.” I raced onto the deck and snipped a pink rose. “Perfect,” I said as I tucked it into the buttonhole.

  When we pulled up at the shop, with Floyd in the back, it was decked out with balloons and streamers both inside and out. Gran and Gramps were there along with half the town. Jason came with his brother-in-law, Colin, who was an old school friend of Keith’s and also the creator of the Love and Hate app. Jason gave us a gift of a pair of tiny yellow overalls dotted with bunnies.

  The mayor officially opened the shop by making a speech, and then it was Keith’s turn.

  “Thank you for coming. You’ll be happy to know I’ll keep it short. I want to thank everyone who helped me get to this point, including my Grandpa over there who taught me how to be the omega I am. Also Jason, who trained me as his apprentice tailor, and the love of my life, Ethan. His never-flagging support and love have kept me going, even when I had doubts. He believed in me, and I’ll never be able to find the words to thank him.”

  “Sex!” Floyd blurted out.

  Oops! Now there’s one word. “Floyd,” everyone shouted as non-alcoholic champagne flowed, and the guests nibbled on Mexican tapas from our favorite restaurant.

  128

  Keith

  “She was supposed to be here by now,” I whined. “First babies come early.” I made that part up, but I wanted it to be true. My first official Father’s Day was supposed to be tomorrow, and the way things were going, I was going to have to wait an entire year. And that was a stupid reason, but I was pregnant so it was good enough for me. Besides, my belly entered the room a week before I did and my feet were the size of a small car. I was ready to meet my baby already, and she was having none of it.

  “A due date is not set in stone.” Ethan put his hands on my bump and brought his lips close the way he did when he was about to talk to our daughter. Daughter. I had a daughter and would meet her soon—if she ever decided to stop being stubborn, that was.

  “Listen, sweetie, your daddy is not very patient. He wants to meet you, and he wants to be a dad on Father’s day, which is tomorrow.” He kissed my belly which still turned my knees to jello. “Just do me this solid, okay.” He whisper-shouted.

  “I fixed it.” He stood up all proud. “But it’s past your bedtime so let’s get you tucked in.” He took my hand. “And if you’re good, I might even kiss you goodnight—”

  “What? Kisses are on the line?” I just stared at him, wide-eyed. I was missing something. There were no conditions on his affections. None.

  “I meant lower kisses.” His other hand reached for my cock.

  “If you can find it,” I sighed. “I haven’t seen it in weeks.”

  “Oh, I’ll find it,” he promised.

  And he did.

  Ethan gave the best goodnight kisses.

  I rolled over, my entire body covered in sweat. It was official, I was going to puke. I climbed out of bed and to the bathroom as quickly as my ginormous body could take me, reaching the toilet as the feeling subsided.

  Strange.

  I started the shower, needing the sweat off of me, and climbed inside. The water felt good beating down on my back, the coolness relaxing me, and the feeling struck again. I held onto the wall trying to decide if it was better to puke where I was or try not to slip and fall on the way to the toilet, when it subsided.

  “Love. Are you okay?” Ethan’s sleepy voice asked as he pushed back the shower curtain.

  “Yeah, I just...I was sweaty,” I lied as it started to happen again.

  “That looks more like gonna puke than sweat. Let me help you.” He climbed in with me, pajama pants and all. “Do you want me to wash you?”

  “Sure?” Part of me wanted to sink into his arms, part of me wanted to be done in here so I could lie down, and a third part wanted help to the toilet, just in case.

  “Let me.” He kissed my cheek. “You’ll feel better not being stinky at the hospital.”

  Wait. Hold on. What? I did not smell. “Hey, I’m not—stinky.” I turned around, ready to argue about the last word in Ethan’s sentence. “Hospital?”

  “You’re in labor, silly.” He kissed me again and grabbed the shampoo bottle. “Nauseous, sweaty—labor.”

  “That’s not what labor is like.” I saw the video. I was in the dads’ groups. I would know. “We took the classes,” I reminded him. “You were there.”

  “Did you read the book?” He soaped up my hair. Gods, his fingers on me felt good.

  “I meant to.”

  “Then trust me, you’re in labor.” He tilted my head under the running water to help rinse it. “Happy Father’s Day.”

  I, of course, still thought he was wrong, but by the time I had dried off and gotten dressed, his thoughts didn’t sound so crazy.

/>   But I was stubborn, refusing to believe it. I’d taken the classes, dagnabbit, and they said pressure. It would start with pressure.

  We went on like that for three hours. Him telling me I was in labor and me insisting he was wrong and I was coming down with something—and then my water broke right there in the kitchen, my jeans a soppy mess, clinging to me and my mind racing a mile a minute.

  “Ethan—I’m in labor!” I screamed.

  “Yes, love. I know.” He took my hand. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “No, I mean, I’m in labor. I’m going to have a baby. Like, for real. I have to squeeze a baby out of me.” All rationality fled and my poor sweet alpha had to deal with it all, from getting me cleaned up, to getting me to agree to him driving us, to listening to me tell the nurse I couldn’t do it and there had to be another way—a baby would not fit—she’d get stuck.

  It was official, I wasn’t rational, and I could see it but not stop.

  “What if I’m like this forever? What if I can’t stop being—I don’t know the right word...crazy, maybe?” I started to cry between contractions, not from the pain or the relief of being out of pain, but because I wanted to be a good dad, to be the best dad.

  “Oh honey, your hormones are jacked.” He kissed my forehead. “You really should’ve read the book. This happens. At least you didn’t threaten to kill me if I ever touch you again...that happens too, and I like touching you.”

  “You’re just—” the pressure started to build, the pain deepening. I tried to breathe through it, like the nurse kept telling me, but I couldn’t. Instead I screamed. I screamed so loudly another nurse came rushing in just as it was beginning to ebb.

  “Need the doctor?” she asked so calmly, like I hadn’t just sounded so feral that I was half concerned they’d be in to see if I was from Shifter World and shifters were real.

  “I think it’s about that time,” the nurse at the foot of my bed answered back just as calmly.

  I was not calm.

  “The doctor will be here in a few. It’s just about time for you to push,” the nurse told me. So cheery. So flipping cheery. How could he be? “You’re doing so good. I remember when I had my first baby—let’s say I’m surprised they let me work here now. I was just a wee bit—do you know that parrot on Shifter World? I had a mouth like him.”

  “He’s getting better,” I snapped back. “We’ve been using positive reinforcement and we are going to be good dads.”

  Safe to say the rational thinking hadn’t come back yet. Ethan started to explain as another contraction hit, this one different than the ones previous, and I had to push. There wasn’t a choice. And so I did, the confused nurse coaching me the entire time as Ethan let me grip onto his arm like a lifeline. This was it. I was about to meet my daughter.

  Except then the contraction ended. No baby.

  “I pushed. Where is she?”

  “He didn’t read the book,” Ethan explained to the nurse. “Only a few more of those and she’ll be here.”

  “A few more?” I gasped, and the next one came. So much for recovery time.

  Six. Six more pushes later and Emily Rose came into this world, her first cry the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.

  “You did so good, Keith. So good. She’s perfect.” His eyes were watering or were they mine. It was hard to tell.

  “I want to see her.” The nurse had whisked her to the other side of the room to do whatever the measuring things were after they had Ethan cut the cord.

  “I have her right here,” my nurse handed her to me, wrapped in a striped blanket and wearing a matching hat. “She’s beautiful.”

  “She’s Keith.” Ethan looked down at her, so much love on his face.

  “So the parrot...yours?” The nurse blushed, his eyes averted.

  “Floyd, yeah, he’s ours, and I shouldn’t have snapped at you. He’s a character, all right, but his mouth... really bad.” And hilarious when it didn’t mean negatively influencing my child.

  “I love that show. It’s gotten so much better. It used to be kind of cheesy.” He went on and on with examples, and I just swelled with pride. Ethan had done it, not only following his dream, but kicking ass and taking names at it. He was up for his first award, and while that was awesome, I had a feeling this would mean more. “Sorry about my rambling. I’m kind of a fan. Cool your parrot got to be on it. I need to go do some paperwork, but press the button if you need me and when you think she’s ready to eat. I can help you get the right latch.”

  He left, leaving just my family and me in the room.

  My family.

  The one Ethan and I created together.

  “We should call our grands,” as we had affectionately named them after Ethan officially proposed. “They will want to meet her.”

  “I will in a bit. Right now, I just want to enjoy this moment. I want to savor it and remember it until the day I take my last breath. I didn’t think I could ever be this happy.” He kissed her little head and then mine. “Thank you for giving me the best Father’s Day gift ever.”

  “Happy Father’s Day.”

  Also by Lorelei M. Hart & Colbie Dunbar

  Fate doesn’t use dating apps to pair true mates...except when they do.

  Human Omega Colin Soames has finally made it. Investors are clamouring for his new hit dating app, Love and Hate, and then things get weird. Now he’s on a mission to figure out who’s co-opting his app and why; by going undercover as a potential date. Little does he know that the oddities he discovered weren’t designed to sabotage the app as he first thought. No. Shifters have figured out a way to use it incognito, and he’s about to go on a date with one. If only he knew shifters existed outside of fiction.

  Pack Alpha Bentley Shaw likes being single. He doesn't have to answer to anyone but his pack. He likes it that way even if he is lonely and even if his wolf is restless. Why bother putting your heart out there if you are only going to get hurt? But one drunken night he lets his Beta talk him into trying the new dating app all the shifters are using—just once. How bad could one date be? It couldn’t be worse than the time he tried to date a human—except that’s exactly what Love and Hate sends him.

  Sparks fly, feelings grow, and their worlds are turned upside down in the very best of ways.

  Matched To His Wolf is the first book in the sweet with knotty heat Love and Hate M/M Mpreg Shifter Dating App romance brought to you by the popular co-writing duo of Lorelei M Hart and Colbie Dunbar. It features a human who stumbles into a world he never knew existed, an alpha who didn’t want to date—full stop, two powerful men trying to figure out how to come together as one, and an adorable baby. If you like your shifters hawt, your omegas strong, your mpreg with heart, and your HEAs complete with true mates and a bundle of joy, one-click today.

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