Jacob's Joy: Men of Crooked Bend Book 9

by Taylor Rylan

  “Unless you’re on a call, no more twenty-hour days, sexy. I need you here,” Isaac said as he crawled over me before leaning down and giving me a kiss. When he sucked my bottom lip into his mouth, I moaned at the same time I ran my fingers through his hair, angling his head so I could deepen the kiss. Sadly, he pulled away from me all too soon.

  “Hey, wait,” I said in protest.

  “I thought you were tired?” Isaac raised his eyebrows at me before he lay down on his side.

  “I am, but I’m never too tired for you.” I tried to pull Isaac back on top of me, but he wasn’t having it, so I gave up. “Really?”

  “Yes. I’m tired and you and I both know that Colt will want to be fed in a few hours.”

  I groaned before reaching over to turn the light off on my nightstand.

  “Don’t pout. It’s unattractive.”

  “I’m not pouting. I was hoping to get lucky. I have a sexy-as-fuck man for a husband, and he just all but cock blocked me.” Isaac laughed at that, and I did my best to glare at him. It didn’t work. I quickly joined him laughing.

  “Look, I know it’s just after eight, but maybe after the next feeding I’ll have more energy.”

  “Turn your light off and come here,” I told him. Isaac rolled over and switched off his own bedside light, throwing our room into almost complete darkness, and then he rolled over to me. Once Isaac was wrapped up in my arms, he sighed before giving my chest a quick kiss.

  “Night. I love you.”

  “Love you too,” I told Isaac. It was my turn to sigh.

  Every four hours was what we’d decided for Colt’s schedule, but it was what he’d decided as well because, without fail, Colt would be awake and quite hungry at that time. And you really don’t think that every four hours is a big deal, until you’re actually living it. We were currently in the living room, watching Paw Patrol with Mack, and Colt was sound asleep in his bassinet. We’d been home for three days now, and I was certainly feeling the effects of not having a solid sleep schedule.

  “How did you do this?” I asked Isaac while looking over at him.

  “Huh?” Apparently so was he because he gave me a blank look in response.

  “Do this. How did you do this? With Mack?”

  “You’re kidding, right? This is a cakewalk compared to him. At least Colt sleeps. Mack didn’t by the time I got him.”

  I thought about it, and in my sleep-deprived state, it took way longer than it should have for me to remember that Isaac didn’t get custody of Mack until he was three months old.

  “Okay, but at three months, it’ll be better?”

  “Jacob, go take a nap.” Isaac was smiling at me, so I knew he wasn’t meaning it any way other than me actually needing sleep and he could see that.

  “I can’t do that. That’s not fair to you. But I am seriously wondering why it is that we gave Morgan a week off.”

  Isaac rolled his eyes at me before he responded. “Because we needed time to get to know our new son? Because our schedule is crazy and we knew it was going to be?”

  I sighed because he was right.

  “What do you want for supper tonight?” I asked, trying to change the subject. Isaac started to respond but was interrupted by Ivan when he came over to us and started whining.

  “What’s up, boy? You need outside?” Isaac asked. Both dogs took off toward the door that led outside.

  “Guess that answers that question. It’s a nice enough day, thank goodness.” I watched as Isaac got up and walked to the door to let the dogs out.

  “Papa, go potty,” Mack said as he walked up to me.

  “Come on, bud. Let’s go,” I said as I got up and took Mack to the bathroom. Unfortunately, I discovered he’d already wet his Pull-Up when we got there. “Bud, you’re supposed to go potty in the toilet, remember?” I reminded him.

  “No. Go potty like baby,” Mack said while I wiped him up and put on a fresh Pull-Up. And that’s what they meant when they said that older siblings could sometimes regress when it came to potty training.

  Once we were back in the living room, I searched for Isaac and saw that he was still outside with the dogs, so I sat back down and waited for him to come inside. I didn’t have to wait long because his smiling face returned to me just moments later.

  “Hey, has Mack been having a lot of accidents for you?” I asked as I watched our son play with his new Paw Patrol fire truck he’d gotten for Christmas.

  “I haven’t been able to get him to use the toilet since we brought Colton home. Every book that we’ve read and even Marie has warned us that this was probably going to be happening.”

  I groaned and laid my head back on the back of the couch while closing my eyes and trying my best to not be as frustrated as I was. I knew the majority of the frustration was coming from lack of sleep, not toward our toddler.

  “At the moment I’m wondering why we bothered trying to potty train him. We knew Colt was going to be born this month,” I said as I looked at my husband.

  “Yeah, but hopefully he’ll pick it back up all that much faster next time. I am going to go see about lunch and heat up a bottle for the baby. He’s going to be awake soon,” Isaac said as he got up from the couch.

  When he walked by me, he ran his fingers through my hair and I was reminded how fortunate I was. I had a beautiful family, and so many people didn’t have that. I got up from the couch when there was a knock on the back door. With a new baby, we could have been expecting anyone, but nobody had given us a heads-up they were coming by, so I got up to investigate.

  “Hey, Logan, Rhett. You’re just in time; he’s going to want to be fed soon.”

  “Umm, we have two of our own—we’re not dying to feed a baby,” Logan told me with a smile on his face.

  “Oh no. I just meant that he would be awake,” I told them as I held out my hands and shook my head.

  “Give him a break, Logan. You remember what those first few days were like. Can’t you tell our poor sheriff is sleep-deprived?” Rhett said as he playfully slapped his husband’s stomach. “Personally, I wouldn’t mind feeding him for you. I don’t know how you can do it with a toddler to chase around as well. At least our two are both immobile.”

  “We do it…painfully? Would that describe it well enough, do you think?” Isaac asked as he smiled at me. I nodded in agreement. There was nothing easy about bringing home a baby when you had a toddler to chase after.

  We were interrupted by Colt’s cry, signaling he was awake and ready to be changed and fed.

  “Dada, baby cry. Dada!” Mack said as he came running into the kitchen. Isaac got down on his knees to be at our toddler’s level, and Mack ran right into his arms.

  “So Colton’s awake, huh? Does Papa need to change his diaper?” Isaac asked, looking up at me. I knew I was tired because when Isaac looked at me from his knees while holding our toddler, I definitely shouldn’t have been having the thoughts that I was. They were quickly staunched when I smiled at everyone and turned to go pick up our newborn and relieve him of his wet and possibly dirty diaper.

  “Hey, big guy,” I said as I reached into the bassinet and picked up our son. I could tell immediately that he was certainly wet and dirty, and I didn’t blame him for fussing about it. I carried him into the office where we had a changing table set up with everything we needed. We’d discovered Mack’s love of playing with the baby powder, so we had to make sure everything was up and out of his reach otherwise he liked to make it snow in the house.

  Colt quieted some when I picked him up, but he was still squirming, so I hurried. Once the diaper was changed and his onesie was snapped closed, I rolled the dirty diaper up and put it in the diaper pail that was beside the change table. Yeah, not taking any chances of Colt’s big brother getting ahold of that.

  I picked the crying baby and the sleep sack back up and left the office only to discover everyone in the living room and Rhett holding out his arms.

  “You sure?” I asked as I carefully
placed Colt into his waiting arms.

  “I am. He’s so tiny compared to Ash,” Rhett said as he put the nipple in Colt’s mouth, effectively quieting our son.

  “Ah, that’s always a wonderful sound,” Isaac joked.

  “You both look tired. Do you need some help with Mack? I’m sure Aunt Cammie and Uncle Sam would take him for a little while,” Logan said. I had to agree with him. They would. They’d already said as much. But I also had to agree with Isaac. His parents weren’t young anymore, and the last time they’d watched Mack, they looked incredibly tired when they brought him home.

  “Morgan will be back on Monday. And we’re okay, we just need to get our sleep schedules figured out. We’re lucky that we even have Morgan, so we’re determined to make it through the weekend and await her arrival on Monday morning.”

  “Morg! Dada, Morg!”

  “Yeah, bud. She’ll be here on Monday. You excited to play with Morgan again?” Isaac asked as he picked up Mack and sat with him on his lap.

  Rhett and Logan were sitting on the couch, Isaac was in the chair with Mack, and I sat on the ottoman in front of them. I reached over and grabbed Mack’s foot and gave it a gentle tickle, causing him to giggle, a sound I’d never get tired of hearing. I didn’t want to get him too wound up, though, because it was almost lunchtime, and after lunchtime, blessedly, was nap time.

  “What do you want to eat for lunch, Mack?” Isaac asked, looking at our son.

  “Eggs! Toast!”

  Logan chuckled, but I had to agree. It seemed at this age, Mack knew one volume and it was loud.

  “Okay, buddy. I think I can handle that. How about some fruit and yogurt with it?” Isaac gave Mack a hug but pulled away when his overly enthusiastic nod caused him to bang Isaac’s chin with his head. They both seemed okay, but as always, I worried.

  I watched as Isaac got up and walked into the kitchen with Mack to fix his lunch.

  “You two want toast and eggs for lunch?” I asked as I looked at our two guests.

  “No, thank you though. We’re actually on a lunch date before we go see Dr. Lane. We’ll swing back by the house and pick up Scarlett before we head over to eat and see the doctor,” Rhett told me.

  I nodded in understanding. He’d been through hell, and he’d done remarkably well for everything he’d gone through. The love that Logan had for his husband was one of the reasons Rhett had recovered as much as he had; I was sure of it.

  When Colt let out a loud burp, we all smiled. It was amazing that something so loud could come from such a tiny human.

  “Do you want something to drink or anything like that?”

  “No, we’re good. We wanted to stop in for a few minutes and meet Colt. James and Taylor arrived back in Wyoming yesterday and are enjoying their grandpa time with our two for the afternoon. Otherwise, we’d have been here sooner.”

  “It’s not a big deal. We’ve actually enjoyed the quiet. Simon and Sean stopped by yesterday, but Graham and Ty have been busy but said they’d swing by tomorrow after Colt’s checkup.”

  “Do you see Dr. Rockwell? I can’t remember who Mack’s pediatrician is.”

  “We have a follow-up with her, yes. Mack has seen her, but his normal pediatrician is Dr. Williams. We think she’s about to retire though.”

  I heard Isaac in the kitchen, and the longing on my face must have been evident because Rhett reached for the sleep sack on the end table. Once he and Logan had carefully put it back on Colt, Rhett got up and placed Colt back in his bassinet.

  “We really should go. We’ll stop by and stay longer in a week or two. We know how crazy the first few weeks are, but I wanted to drop in and meet the little guy. He’s a cutie,” Rhett said as he walked back toward his husband.

  Isaac joined us as we walked the pair out the door, and we waved goodbye before closing ourselves inside.

  “You want eggs too?”

  “Actually, that doesn’t sound bad. But I’ll make them. You fixed Mack’s lunch. Have a seat and I’ll fix ours,” I told my husband before I leaned down and gave him a quick kiss. When we pulled apart, I saw Mack was spooning scrambled eggs into his mouth, and I had to smile. Thank goodness for scrambled eggs and toast and the fact that our son ate just about anything.

  Isaac — 10

  Oh my god, what had we been thinking? Why would we think that giving Morgan the week off was a good idea? Wait, that was our alarm. That meant it was six in the morning. Shit. I jumped up out of bed at the same time Jacob did. We stared at each other from across the bed, panicking. But when I peeked into the bassinet, Colt appeared to simply be sleeping.

  “Is he?” Jacob asked, the worry evident in his voice.

  I intently watched our son, and when I saw his chest moving up and down, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and shook my head. I heard Jacob do the same.

  “What the hell? When did we feed him last?” Jacob asked as he rounded the bed to peer in at our son with me.

  “Umm, I think one? Wasn’t it one?” I really wasn’t too sure at the moment. The days had all started blurring together, and the only way I knew it was Monday was because the alarm had gone off. It was set to only go off Monday through Friday.

  “He is breathing, right?” Jacob asked as he started to reach for our infant son. Just as he picked him up, Colt started squirming and I watched as his blue eyes opened. “He’s soaked. Like, completely. He’ll need a sponge bath.”

  “Well, I guess we know diapers have a limit of four hours and they can’t make it five,” I joked, but it was probably a good thing that a sponge bath was already planned for this morning. Colt had his five-day checkup, and we were already planning on washing him up as best as we could. His cord had started to come loose, and until it fell off completely and healed, it was sponge baths only for our little guy.

  “Which do you want? The bath or cleanup and preparing the bottle?” I asked Jacob, who threw me a panicked look.

  “You’re not serious, right? You want me to give him a bath? Seriously?”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty easy. You strip him down and wipe him off with a warm, slightly soapy washcloth. Then you wipe him down with a non-soapy one. Dry him off, powder him, and then dress him. It’s not that difficult.”

  “Okay, I can do it. I’ll do the bath,” Jacob said with a determined nod as he walked toward our bathroom. I went with him, and after relieving my bladder, I watched a wet Colton on the changing pad we’d put on our bathroom counter.

  “Can you grab a pair of his washcloths for me?” I asked as I stripped Colt out of his wet sleep sack and onesie.

  Jacob came back from relieving his own bladder with the washcloths in hand and wet them in the sink with warm water.

  “Do you need help, or do you have it?”

  “I’ve got it. I thought it would be so much more difficult, but I can handle this. Can you go get his bottle?”

  “Of course. Then I’ll change the bassinet.” I gave Jacob’s bare shoulder a quick kiss before I left the bathroom and headed downstairs to warm a bottle. Both dogs joined me as I stopped at Mack’s room and peeked in at him. He was still sound asleep and probably would be for another hour or so. I pulled his door almost completely closed before I went down the stairs. I let the dogs out to do their morning business before going to the kitchen to warm up a bottle.

  Never did I think I’d have more kids, but I was happy I hadn’t gotten around to getting rid of most of the things I’d purchased for Mack. Bottle warmers were lifesavers in the middle of the night. After the bottle was in the warmer and it was turned on, I double-checked the coffee maker. Once I saw it had fresh ground coffee in the basket, I pushed the button on it and then glanced at the dry-erase board on the fridge. If the time on the board was correct, it was indeed one in the morning when we’d last fed Colt. That was certainly something to bring up at his appointment today. He was way too young to be going five hours between feedings, right?

  Once the light went off on the bottle warmer, I longingly looked at
the coffee maker, but I left it to finish brewing and took the bottle out of the warmer. After testing it for temperature, I headed back upstairs.

  “Perfect timing,” Jacob said as I entered our room.

  “Yeah?” I asked as I watched him expertly rub baby lotion onto Colt’s tender skin. “He okay?”

  “I think so. His skin looks dry in places, and I washed him good, but I wanted to be sure to moisturize him after lying in pee for who knows how long.”

  I nodded before setting the bottle down on Jacob’s nightstand. Once I had the bassinet stripped, I took the messy sheets and went to the bathroom to retrieve the equally messy clothes as well as the changing pad cover, the washcloths, and the towel. I figured since I was obviously starting a load of Colt’s things, I walked around the bedroom and gathered up the used receiving blankets and the other dirty sleepers and onesies before I headed downstairs to start the wash.

  We’d thrown stuff into a basket on top of the washer, and it was probably time to do a load of baby things, so why not?

  After I’d hit Start on the washer, I opened the back door and let the dogs back in. They were both panting, having most likely run around in the sunrise, expending some energy they’d built up over the last few hours.

  After I fed both of them their breakfast, I went back to the coffee maker and poured two mugs of the brew that Jacob and I seemed to be living on lately. I added creamer to mine and a couple of ice cubes to each mug before I carried them back up the stairs to my waiting husband. I found him in the bedroom, propped up against the headboard, feeding Colt. That was a sight I’d never get tired of seeing.

  “You are a saint, you know that?” Jacob asked. He carefully propped Colt up on his legs, and I handed him the mug of coffee he was eager for.

  “I don’t know about that, really, but the coffee is good, and I know you need it as much as I do.” I sat on the edge of the bed beside Jacob and watched as Colt drank his bottle.