by Jessa James
Now they watched HGTV, cooked quiet meals, and discussed family gossip.
“Don’t forget to stir!” Ashleigh called out to him, yawning loudly. This baby was taking all of her energy.
Walker, who was surprisingly light on his feet despite being such a well-built man, appeared suddenly behind the couch; years of moving behind and through battle lines had trained him to be stealthy at all times. Ashleigh was startled by his sudden appearance.
“Jesus!” she said, “couldn’t you make a little more noise?”
Walker laughed and leaned over to kiss her forehead.
No matter how many times she complained about being as big as a house, pregnancy had only made Ashleigh more stunning. Her blue eyes sparkled, her hair was thick and glossy, her complexion glowed roses and cream. Plus, Walker never failed to notice, her boobs looked incredible.
Her curves, which had charmed him before from a stripper’s pole, were far more lush now. This far into her pregnancy, they couldn’t really do much, but he hadn’t stopped noticing, or wanting.
“You don’t even know if I’m cooking something that needs stirring,” he said, smiling down at her. Then, he kissed her again, lingering this time.
“You’re stirring something all right,” Ashleigh murmured as she kissed him back.
Walker groaned. He could feel his pulse elevating as the kiss lengthened. Sex wasn’t an option anymore, but there were plenty of other things they could do...very enjoyable things. Walker could feel himself getting hard. Fuck the dinner. He wanted to play.
* * *
He slipped his hands under her blouse and caressed her lush breasts. Ashleigh threw her head back and moaned.
“Come over here so I can touch you,” she said, gesturing him over to her side of the couch.
Just then, a timer went off in the kitchen. Walker cursed.
“Can it wait?” Ashleigh asked, breathing heavily.
“Not really,” he said, unaccountably irritated at the oven timer for remembering to do its job, “but I’ll remember where we were, I promise.”
“Stirring the pot, that’s where you were!”
Ashleigh grinned as he walked back to the kitchen and, with a pointed glance at her, stirred something in a frying pan. She giggled, then yawned again. Pregnancy was hard work, even when it didn’t look like it. She turned her attention back to the TV.
“No!” she yelled at the couple on screen, who were debating decorating choices for a house they wanted to purchase. “Don’t pick that paint color! What is wrong with you? Your house is going to look like a giant lima bean!”
Walked laughed at her from the kitchen. Lots of times, watching Ashleigh was more entertaining than the actual entertainment.
He turned his attention back to the stove. He’d gotten pretty good at cooking during the past few months,along with doing a lot of household chores he’d never paid much attention to, like cleaning baseboards, organizing the mail, or emptying the lint trap on the dryer.
Walker smiled, remembering how Ashleigh’s face had scrunched up as she had showed him how to do the last chore.
“What do you mean, you’ve never done this before?” she’d asked as she’d pulled out the trap from its slot in the dryer to show him.
“I literally never knew that thing existed until just now,” Walker had replied, “Much less that it had to be emptied. I wonder if all dryers have these, or just ours?”
Ashleigh had just rolled her eyes at him. She was no longer surprised about the huge gap between his deadly competence as a SEAL and his daily life. Walker could break a man’s neck, run a ranch, but he was still baffled by things in the “non-bachelor sphere,” as he called it.
For his part, Walker had really begun to appreciate the thousand small things Ashleigh had done to keep their lives running smoothly every day. One morning, after having spent almost an hour cleaning out the entire refrigerator, he had called Marilee up just to thank her for being a mother.
Marilee had laughed over the phone.
“Yeah, Walker, a lot of men get reaaal appreciative of their wives during that first pregnancy! Just don’t forget it after the baby is born, okay honey?” she had said.
Judging that the steaks had seared long enough, Walker shut off the stove and began to plate the food, taking special care that it looked appealing. After all, he’d spent so damn long on the dinner that he wanted to make sure it looked good, to boot!
“Dinner!” he called out.
Ashleigh got up and heavily lumbered over to the dining room table. Walker stepped over from the kitchen to pull out her chair - a gentlemanly gesture he’d done for her a hundred times, but that still made her heart squeeze happily. She smiled gratefully at him as she eased into the chair, then arranged a pillow behind her back.
Walker went to the kitchen and returned with two plates piled high with food. He set Ash’s plate before her and sat down at the table next to her.
* * *
“Ooh, steak!” Ashleigh cried out, excitedly examining the contents of the plate. Her nose wrinkled, though, at the sight of a large pile of healthy, steamed vegetables sitting next to the beautiful ribeye steak.
“Are there any baked potatoes in the kitchen, maybe?” she asked hopefully, thinking of how nice it would be to eat one, or maybe five, baked potatoes, running with butter, sour cream, bacon, and chives.
Walker grinned at her. “I’m under orders to feed you and that little alien inside of you plenty of fresh, nutritious food.”
Ashleigh rolled her eyes at him, but laughed, too.
“Potatoes are nutritious,” she defended.
“Not the way you like them, with all that sour cream and butter and cheese…” he said.
“Stop, you’re making me hungrier! Well, the alien and I say thank you, and we hope you bought extra steak,” she replied lightly.
Ashleigh inhaled the first few bites of her steak. Walker’s joke was corny, but he was right about her eating for two. She hadn’t been entirely joking about him making extra steak, either!
“The steak is so good,” she moaned. “And,” she added diplomatically as she speared some asparagus in vinaigrette sauce, “the vegetables are also very nice.”
“I’m happy you both like it all, honey,” Walker replied with a wink.
“I still can’t believe you can cook this well after only a month or two,” Ashleigh said, examining the perfect sear on the steaks with a critical eye.
“It’s not that hard,” Walker said seriously, “I just find good recipes and follow the instructions.”
Ashleigh shook her head. Walker seemed to be good at just about everything he touched. He could fight groups of huge men, track down mobsters, repair plumbing, build a fire in the woods in five minutes, and build furniture - all equally well. His incredible competence was one of the things she loved about him, but it was annoying, at times, too. After all, she’d been cooking for years and still didn’t make steak this good!
They ate and talked, easy in each other’s company, and traded information about the family.
Everyone was busy these days, and happy, too. Sawyer and Remy were raising their boy, Shiloh, and their baby girl, Harper. Colt and Rose were raising Emmy, who, despite her princess curls and sweet manner, had very definite ideas and could be a real handful. And they’d received an engagement announcement that very day from Shelby and Wolfe.
“Shelby texted me a photo of her ring,” Ashleigh said, fingering her own engagement ring, which was hanging on a chain around her neck, now that her fingers had swollen too much to wear it. “It’s yellow gold, and has a huge emerald in the center, and diamonds all around. It’s gorgeous!”
Walker laughed. “Sounds like she picked it out, then. Smart girl.”
“Yep,” Ashleigh agreed, “or she told Wolfe exactly what she wanted.”
“Smart guy. He’ll do okay as a husband,” Walker replied with a grin.
The phone interrupted their conversation. They both sighed. Ashleigh mo
ved to answer it, but Walker motioned her to sit down.
“I’ll get it, honey, you just keep eating,” he said. “It’s probably just a telemarketer anyway,” he added, as he walked over to the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hey man, it’s Sawyer.”
“Hey bro! Were you raised in a barn? Don’t you know any better than to call during dinner? I thought you were a telemarketer or some kind of politician,” Walker joked.
He looked over at Ashleigh, who was happily spearing the last bits of her steak, and, he noticed, beginning to eye his. He thought about the extra steak he’d cooked and held back, knowing she’d been doubly hungry lately.
Ashleigh looked up from the food and met his eyes.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s Sawyer,” he mouthed, before turning his attention back to the phone. Sawyer was saying something.
“Sorry, bro, I missed that last part. I’m watching Ashleigh destroy a steak dinner right now. I think she’s about to make the moves on my portions if I don’t get off this phone, so you better be quick about it.”
Ashleigh, hearing the crack at her, stuck out her tongue. Walker grinned back at her.
Unusually, Sawyer didn’t laugh at the repartée. Walker’s brow furrowed. That wasn’t like him.
“Walker, Arlo just had a heart attack,” Sawyer choked out. “They’re taking him to the hospital right now.”
Walker was stunned. He stared dumbly at the wall for a few seconds. Sawyer’s voice came through the telephone insistently, but it sounded very far away.
“Walker? Are you there?”
Walker shook his head and forced his mind to focus.
“Sorry, Sawyer, yeah, I’m here. Okay. Okay. Did y’all already call the ambulance?
“Yeah, he’s on his way now. Marilee and I are headed over now.”
“Okay, we’ll meet you at the hospital, then,” Walker said.
“Okay, we’re headed that way. See you soon,” Sawyer replied.
Walker hung up the phone and relayed the news to Ashleigh. She speared the last bits of her steak, snatched up her purse and phone, and, moving faster than she had in months, they headed out to the car.
“Did Sawyer say how bad the attack was?” she asked.
“No,” Walker replied, “he didn’t say anything. I don’t think he knows anything. He said they were putting him in the ambulance just now. God knows if he’ll even make it to the emergency room before…” he trailed off.
Ashleigh didn’t know how to respond to that, so she just sat very still and prayed that the Roman luck would hold out.
Walker was quiet during the rest of the drive, but at some point, he reached for his wife’s hand, and he didn’t let it go until they had reached the hospital.
2
Colt had gotten into his car and floored it all the way to the hospital after getting a call from Sawyer about Arlo’s heart attack. SEAL training had included a course on specialized driving; how to maneuver around checkpoints and roadblocks, how to escape cars that were chasing you, how to keep a car on the road if the driver had been shot or lost consciousness - that sort of thing.
He had used every trick in the book on the drive over.
Colt knew had probably scared to death some of the slow, local drivers. It was a small town. Drivers here still waved at each other when they came to a four-way stop. They were probably wondering what the hell had gotten into that Roman boy, but Colt didn’t care about that right now. All he could think about was getting to the hospital as quickly as possible.
Rose and Emmy were on their way in a separate car. As luck would have it, Rose had been out with Emmy at a grocery store close to the hospital when Colt called her to tell her the news.
“I’ll meet you there, Colt. I’ll get there in 5 minutes.”
With that, she had abandoned her cart full of groceries with an apology to the store manager, strapped Emmy into her car seat, and rushed to the hospital.
Rose was good in a crisis, both sympathetic and organized. She had the rare ability to focus on the situation at hand, while also envisioning various outcomes and options. It was a product of her training as a veterinarian, and from years of coping with her difficult past, which had made Rose far more mature than her youthful appearance would let on.
Colt had seen her calm down angry bulls with gouge wounds and hysterical dog owners in waiting rooms with equal skill. That calm, collected manner was something Cold had admired about Rose from the moment he met her. Right now, he was more grateful for it than ever.
He pulled into the parking lot, jumped out of his car, and scanned the lot with trained eyes, then picked out Rose, who was carrying Emmy, about 200 feet away. He could tell that she had not spotted him yet, so he called out to her and waved his hand. He began walking toward her, limping only slightly despite his prosthetic leg.
Rose rushed up to Colt. Her big blue eyes were shadowed with worry, but she threw her free arm around him for a hug and a kiss, almost knocking him off balance in her enthusiasm.
Emmy, unaware of the adults’ distress, squealed happily to see her daddy.
Colt kissed them both.
“Are you okay?” Rose asked him when they separated. “You must have driven like a bat out of hell to get over here as quickly as you did.”
“I’m fine,” he replied, giving her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder, “but I might have shocked a few of the old biddies on the road by going over 25. Anyway, it’s Arlo we should be worried about.”
* * *
“I know, honey,” she said, “I’m worried about him too.”
“Let’s just get inside and see what the doctors are saying,” Colt replied as they walked into the hospital lobby.
“Excuse me,” Rose said to the woman seated behind the information desk who was thumbing through a gossip magazine. “I’m looking for the cardiac ward.”
“It’s on the third floor, ma’am,” she replied, barely glancing up from her magazine.
“I’d like to roll that up and pop her over the head with it,” Rose muttered in a low tone. Colt chuckled.
They headed over to the elevators. Colt jammed his thumb impatiently at the elevator button several times.
“I don’t think stabbing at it will make the elevator come faster, honey,” Rose said, nudging him.
“We don’t know that for sure,” he replied with a tight smile.
They took the elevator to the third floor as instructed. The rest of the Roman family was waiting there. Remy and Ashleigh were clustered around Marilee, who was sobbing quietly in an overstuffed hospital chair.
Marilee was a hot mess. She had a flip-flop on one foot and a sneaker on the other, her hair was standing on end from her running her hands through it every few seconds, and tear-streaked makeup was running down her face, giving her the appearance of a disheveled, and very distressed, raccoon.
Ashleigh was standing behind Marilee, patting her shoulder helplessly. Marilee was high-strung at the best of times. It could be hard to know just how to react when she got hysterical like this. Once again, Colt thanked the powers that be for Rose’s cool and collected ways. She would know how to comfort Marilee.
At least here, though, in the waiting room of the cardiac ward, her distress wasn’t entirely out of place. Several other people in the room looked similarly freaked out. One woman was pacing the room in workout clothes, muttering to anyone who would pay attention that she’d just thought her friend was dehydrated, that was all.
Rose caught Ashleigh’s eye and pointed to her own face, then made a wiping motion. Ashleigh got the message, pulled a tissue from her purse and gently wiped the smudged makeup off Marilee’s face.
Marilee responded by weeping even harder, sending a fresh cascade of mascara down her cheeks.
Rose shrugged at Ashleigh, whose eyes rolled up almost imperceptibly. Rose walked over to Marilee, took her hand, and began to talk to her in a calm, low voice - what Colt had come to think of as her
‘waiting room voice.’
Walker and Sawyer were standing by a window, looking out and talking to each other in low tones. Tall, muscled, with rigid military postures, they stood out easily in the waiting room full of distressed, rumpled people. They hadn’t appeared to hear the chime of the elevator, so Colt walked over to them and patted his brothers on their backs.
“How’s he doing?” Colt asked Sawyer.
“We’re waiting on the doctors to come out and give us some news,” Sawyer replied. “Thankfully they got him here real quick - the ambulance blasted through so many red lights, I couldn’t believe it. I thought we were gonna actually die just getting here! Marilee wanted to ride with him in the ambulance, but they made her stay with us because they said if she did, they’d end up with two patients, not one...so she rode with me, which was an ordeal on its own because you know how she is...”
“You’re rambling, man,” Colt said, patting his brother on the back again.
“Yeah, I know.” Sawyer replied. “I don’t know...it looked pretty bad, Colt.” He fell silent.
Emmy, oblivious to the depressed atmosphere of the grownups, had spotted Marilee. She was squealing eagerly, trying to get her attention, but Marilee was in another world.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if he’s not okay,” she sobbed, continuing, “And the way he looked, earlier, too! Like every drop of blood had drained from him! I can’t bear to lose him. I just can’t! There are things I have to tell him! What if I don’t get to now? He just has to get through this!”
Remy’s eyes filled with tears. She knew all too well the anguish of those kind of regrets, after all she’d gone through with Sawyer. She squeezed Marilee’s hand and kissed it gently. At this small kindness, Marilee sobbed even harder.
* * *
Ashleigh tried to pull Marilee to her, but her pregnant belly got in the way of the hug and Marilee let out a small ‘oomph,’ making all three of them laugh unexpectedly.