“He’s right,” my mother butted in on a whisper, leaning toward us from the pew she was sitting in right behind us.
“Nellie,” Steve, sitting beside her, growled warningly.
Max ignored this and decreed, “No ATV.”
I stopped scowling at my mother, my gaze passed through Steve then Linda then Kami, all of whom were in the pew with Mom and all of whom were looking at Max and me with amusement (except Kami who rolled her eyes and mouthed, “bossy” at me) then I looked at my husband and started, “Max –”
His hand in mine pulled both to his chest so they were tucked between him and Charlie and Charlie took that opportunity to latch onto my hair.
But I only had eyes for Max mainly because he was the only thing I could see.
“Duchess, no…A… T… V.”
I glared at him and he didn’t even blink so I knew Mr. Overprotective was going to get his way. I also knew Mr. Overprotective was partly Mr. Overprotective because his first wife heartbreakingly lost a number of children before they took their first breath in this world and even though Charlie was a breeze, Max had lost enough that my easy pregnancy wasn’t going to change his perspective. He was also Mr. Overprotective because his first wife had been killed in a car accident that was beyond his control. And lastly, he was Mr. Overprotective because his second (soon-to-be) wife had been kidnapped by a mountain man stalker and then drugged and kidnapped by a mountain man gone bad and nearly shot to death in the snow.
So I gave in.
“Oh, all right,” I forced out, grabbed my son and pulled him from Max’s arms into mine.
Max’s answer to this gesture was to slide his arm along the pew, curl it around my shoulders and pull me snug and tight into his side.
The side door to the sanctuary opened and Jeff, looking handsome in his tux, and Pete, his best man, walked out to line up at the front of the church.
I felt my insides melt.
Then I felt Max’s lips at my ear. “That new dress is sweet, baby,” he whispered, my lips started curling up but they froze when he finished, “But we’ll also be talkin’ about that when we get home.”
I turned my head and Max lifted his, our eyes locked whereupon I informed him, “I’ll remind you that you were the one who wanted me to move out here before you really knew me and I shop. It’s what I do. It’s what I’ve always done. I work hard. I shop hard. And furthermore, I’m not coming to this event, of all events, in anything other than a fabulous new dress. So, you win on the ATV but no, we are not talking about this new dress when we get home.”
Though, we might be having a discussion about the new duds I’d bought Charlie. I really didn’t need the dress but Charlie really, really didn’t need any new clothes. I should never veer into the baby store but my feet always took me there. There was no way to fight it so I had long since stopped trying.
The good news was, Max didn’t know about Charlie’s new clothes yet. The bad news was, I didn’t keep anything from him so eventually I’d have to tell him.
I decided as I stared into his beautiful gray eyes that I’d tell him tomorrow.
“All right, I get the win on the ATV, you get the win on the dress,” Max allowed, I grinned then leaned in and touched my mouth to his.
I didn’t move my lips away when I whispered, “Thank you, darling.”
Then I watched as his eyes did what his eyes always did for three years every time I called him darling. They got heated and they got intense. Then his hand curled around the back of my head, he tipped it down and kissed my forehead before he let me go.
I pulled away, Charlie collapsed into my chest and snuggled close in a rare but always treasured moment of cuddly, baby affection. I wrapped my arms around my son and I took that moment as I’d taken many moments to congratulate myself for rolling the dice, taking a gamble on life and heading off for my timeout adventure in the Colorado mountains where my gamble paid off every second of every day and it did this in spades.
I looked back to the front of the church then looked to Brody as his head turned toward me and I caught his amused blue eyes to which I rolled mine to which his amusement became audible.
Then the music struck up and we all straightened and twisted in our seats to watch Becca walk down the aisle.
Then we stood and I held my son tight to me as Max’s arm around me, hand resting protective at my belly, held us both tight to his body and me and my family watched a beautiful, glowing, smiling, happy Mindy walk down the aisle.
***
Holden Maxwell walked out of his sleeping son’s bedroom carrying the spent bottle. He hit the great room where he saw his wife tucked in the big armchair, her damn cat curled in a ball in her lap.
After the wedding and after the after wedding drinks with Steve and Nellie, his mother and Kami, Brody, Cotton and Arlene, he’d driven his family home and Nina had changed out of her pretty dress into a pair of loose fitting but clingy drawstring pants and a tight camisole.
She wasn’t close to showing yet and, with Charlie, hadn’t started really showing until early in her fifth month. Even so, at the end she’d been very heavy with Charlie and Charlie had made it into this world weighing nine pounds and three ounces.
This had alarmed Max, this late development, Nina’s body’s swift change and heavy burden, a fact he didn’t share with anyone but Brody and his mother.
He didn’t know it but he had nothing to worry about. Nina didn’t slow down throughout her entire pregnancy, the labor had lasted three hours and the delivery went so smoothly the doctor said he’d never had one that easy in ten years of practice.
When he’d visited Bitsy at the detention center to tell her about his new son and how he’d come into the world, she’d told him that she reckoned life had given him enough heartache, he should have it easy for awhile.
Bitsy had no idea that life with Nina was far from easy.
But that didn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful.
She kept him on his toes, his Nina did. His wife ate life, devoured it daily with a hunger and passion that had not ceased to amaze him as their days together slid by.
It wasn’t lost on Max that life had handed him great bounty at a young age and then had taken it away only to give it back. He knew the bitter taste of loss and therefore he understood Bitsy not liking the taste of it.
And therefore, he never failed to savor the sweet taste of having Nina fill his life. He remembered the second that bitterness was swept clean from his tongue, when his now wife had informed him her sinuses hurt when she’d bravely and hilariously squared off against him in a snowstorm minutes after they met. He’d been so used to the sour taste, it came as a shock when it disappeared as he fought against laughter at the same time the sweetness invaded, so strong and foreign it made his jaws ache.
He took the bottle to the kitchen and then went to join his wife in their chair.
He’d started a fire because Nina liked fires in the evening no matter if it was summer or winter. But he knew it was a wasted effort. Just as with Charlie, in the early months of her pregnancy she slept a lot. He knew she was probably out the minute she rested her head against the high arm of the chair.
Gently, he moved her, her damn cat darting away as he did. He slid in next to her and then pulled her into him. She helped. In her sleep she curled deeply into his frame, her arm snaking around his gut, her head burrowing into his neck.