Mine (39 page)

He growls an exasperated sound and wipes his eyes again, like he hates crying. Then he grabs my face and kisses the back of my ear, his voice thicker than I’ve ever heard it. “I fucking love you to pieces. To pieces. Thank you for this baby. Thank you for loving me. I can’t wait to make you my wife.”

I’M IN A private room by the time I get to see Nora again. She comes in looking flushed and happy, followed by Pete, who looks almost as flushed as she does. Maybe even more so. While Pete slaps Remington’s back and congratulates the new dad, Nora makes a beeline straight for me.

“Brooke, I saw him! I saw him through the window! He’s the tiniest baby there is!”

“I know, Nora, he’s so very little!” My voice quivers with emotion as I talk about him. “He’s not supposed to even be here yet, but the doctors are amazed by how well he’s developed for his age.”

She settles down at the corner of my bed and reaches for my hand, her eyes sparkling with happiness. We hold stares for a moment, and though I don’t want to wipe that smile from her face, I have to ask the question nagging at the back of my mind.

“Nora, what were you doing with Scorpion?” I wince as I try to sit up straighter, then I reach under the bed and adjust my position a little better. “Why didn’t you tell us he was blackmailing you so that we could help?”

A flush spreads from her chin up to her forehead, and she buries her face in her hands again. “It’s just so embarrassing.”

Remington signals from the door that he’s going out with Pete, and I lock gazes with my big lion, his hair disheveled, in the sweatpants and hoodie he just changed into, and I realize we have a
baby together
, and my chest swells so powerfully, I feel like I’m going to float like a cloud.

He whispers softly, his gaze shining with a mate’s pride, “We’ll be outside.”

“I’m sorry I caused you so much trouble,” Nora tells him.

He holds the door open and shakes his head, with one dimple peeking out. “No trouble at all.”

When the door shuts behind him, all I can hear is my sister’s soft sobs in the room, and my own voice as I reach out to pat the back of her head and gently ask her, “Did he hurt you?”

She grabs a tissue from inside her small purse and pats the corners of her eyes. “No. He was a mess. He said he missed me. He wanted me back and would do anything to keep me. It’s probably why he was fighting so fucking bad,” she says. “I’m
glad
he lost. I just hate that it still hurts me.”

“Oh, Nora.”

“When you came home, I couldn’t even think straight. You’re so . . . protected. Having his baby! He’s so in love with you. While I was in
hell
! Benny said he would spread the video around if I didn’t come back. He wanted to hurt you again. He wanted to have a way to make Remington lose. I didn’t want to be with him, but I was afraid he would blackmail you guys with that video about me! So I did. He offered me . . . drugs. . . . I wanted them. I really did, but I knew if I took them I’d never come home. My plan was to stay with him”—she pats her cheeks as her tears keep streaming, even though her voice is steady and strong—“until the season ended, and then he wouldn’t need me to hurt you two anymore. I figured I’d find a way to get the video back and run away from him.”

“Nora . . .” I open my arms, and she leans over and rests her head on my shoulder. “We need to move forward now,” I whisper. The words come out almost like a plea, because I have a baby now. A baby. He will need me, like my partner does, and I need Nora to be strong on her own. Remy has protected her for me, but I appoint it as my duty to protect my son and my guy just as fiercely—and this includes from my own family.

She curls out her pinky, like we used to pinky promise when we were young. Laughing, we hook them together. “Just don’t tell Mom and Dad. They’re desperate to see their grandchild and are flying over as we speak,” she tells me.

“Nobody has to know about the video. But they must have been thrilled to hear your voice on the phone.”

With new, curious excitement, she signals at the door. “So what are you guys going to call the little thing?”

I grin at her, ear to ear, and whisper, “I have no idea, so I hope the dad does.”

HIS NAME IS Racer.

Racer Dumas Tate.

Because he was racing to the finish line, before we even set up camp.

The nurses say he’s a big boy, for a preemie, even though Remy and I think he’s so tiny.

God, he is perfection. Ten tiny fingers. Ten tiny toes. Pink little mouth. Little button nose.

He’s needed the incubator for four weeks now, but apparently he’s almost ready to go home. He doesn’t need a tube to be fed anymore, and he now weighs eight healthy pounds, which impresses everyone who can’t believe he was a preemie. Then, of course, they see the father and understand why this preemie is kind of big and healthy.

Remington spends the day training for next season while I hang around the hospital, determined to feed him my own breast milk so he’ll get all the nutrients and immune system benefits he needs. I’d also read about a “kangaroo method” where the nurses set the baby against the mother’s bare skin to strengthen and mature all of his systems. I love reading about all the scientific evidence of what skin-to-skin contact can do.

So once a day, the nurses bring Racer out to me, where I open my shirt and feel our naked little baby on my bare skin. Sometimes Remy is here, and he spreads out behind me, so he’s my kangaroo, and then I’m the baby’s kangaroo—as the method is called. But no. Remy doesn’t feel like a kangaroo behind me; he’s too primal for that. He nuzzles my collarbone and peers down at our baby while I feel him on my skin, and it’s exactly today, as we are doing this, when Racer finally opens his eyes to look up at us. And they are blue, an achingly familiar pristine blue, and I fall in love for the second time in my life.

WE’VE BEEN DISCHARGED from the hospital, and the three of us are in Seattle, playing house at last.

Today is the fortieth day after labor, and tonight Remington and I will finally be able to have sex. Except he’s determined that the first time he takes me again . . . I be completely his. So, at noon, we’re off to city hall.

God, I am. Dying. To have my way with my baby’s sexy daddy.

“He’s asleep,” I whisper, from the chair in the living room where I sat to feed Racer this morning.

Remington is still in his pajama bottoms and bare-chested, and he comes over with such a proud, protective gleam in his eye, I die at the look on his face.

“Come smell him,” I whisper with a big, besotted smile.

He comes and takes a big whiff from the top of Racer’s head.

“He smells good, right?” I say.

“As good as you,” Remington gruffly whispers, and as I smell the baby, he scents
me.

We laugh, and he slides his hands under my body to scoop me up and tells me, “Hang on to him.”

I do. He lifts me up while I hold the baby and carries us to the bed. “Diane is so excited about him—they all are. Is she here yet?” I ask.

“She’s on her way,” he says.

I nod eagerly.

Our iPod speakers are playing “Kiss Me” by Ed Sheeran. The song seems familiar somehow, but the familiarity of it really hits me as I set Racer down on the small cradle on my side of the bed, and Remington wraps me in his arms and starts kissing me. I want to do the girl thing and complain about my stomach. It’s still not completely flat, but he likes it, he kisses it. I want to complain with all these hormones in me, but I feel precious, treasured, and so lucky, I don’t even have words to say how much I wish this for the people I love. I know what it means to Remington to have a family now. He never lamented not having one. But now that he has one, I know he sees the difference. I know he
sees
what he was missing. Now he has a family to take care of, and one that takes care of him.

The knock on the door breaks us apart, and when Remy opens it, Diane steps in, beaming as she sees me in Remington’s red robe and him in his pajama bottoms. “I thought you two would be ready already!”

He kisses me roughly and excitedly, his eyes burning with a sheen of fire. “Go get ready. I can’t
wait
. To make you Mine.”

“I’m
yours
already!”

He scrubs his thumb down my lip. “I’ll be making you Mine your whole life.”

Running into the bathroom where I’d set my clothes out, I slip into them with fast, eager hands.

I can’t really leave Racer for more than a couple of hours, and our appointment is at twelve, so I didn’t want to torture myself with complicated attire. So I choose a plain but pretty white skirt and lacy white top to wear. Remington told me he’ll give me a big church wedding later, that he just can’t wait to make me his. I told him I don’t care about that, I just want the
man
!

The butterflies he gives me flutter full force as I pull my hair back in a bun that looks careless but pretty; then I try to perk up my face a little bit by pinching my cheeks so that nobody can tell Racer wakes me up so often at night.

When I walk out, my guy is already in the living room. Every single hormone in my body threatens to crash in on me and give me the weepy baby blues when I look at Remy in his black suit. Tall and broad-shouldered, he’s perfectly sculpted, his spiky hair all mussed as always, his blue eyes twinkling with love and excitement, and his dimples . . . he is all man, all boy, and all mine.

Before I know I’m crying, he comes over and he wipes my tears with his thumbs, laughing softly at me for being so emotional. Then he licks the corners of my eyes, sweeps me off my feet, and carries me out of our apartment.

The entire gang crowds city hall, everyone except Diane and our precious Racer, who we’re not supposed to expose too much until he gets stronger.

There’s Melanie, Riley, Coach Lupe. Coach even holds up a five-by-eight picture of a smiling Diane, telling us, “She wanted to be in both places at once, so I offered to bring her picture while she takes care of the future champion!”

My parents laugh by his side. My mother has tears in her eyes, and my father is beaming with pride. Pete and Nora stand by them, holding hands, since they’re trying to make a relationship work now that we will be in Seattle for a couple of months during the off-season. And Jo. She’s here, too, with that pert little grin and that army stance.

The excitement I feel bubbles in my chest and burns inside me as Remington and I walk up to where we will sign, my hand linked to his—to this tanned, callused, huge hand that I will never let go of.

And then we’re officially signing, getting married. He takes my hand in both of his, his blue eyes twinkling and liquid and entirely proprietary as he slips a ring on my finger.

The ring is platinum. “The white diamond is you,” he says in a terse whisper, lifting my hand up to my line of vision. And to the right of the central white diamond is a blue diamond, and to its left, a black diamond.

“You’re the other two,” I say, and the depth of my feelings nearly choke me as I frame his hard jaw between my small hands and kiss the hell out of him. “I love you.”

Then I take his big hand and slip the platinum band I got him, engraved smoothly on the inside,
TO MY REAL, YOUR BROOKE DUMAS.

“MR. and MRS. RIPTIDE!!!” the gang calls when we’re done.

We laugh and Remington lifts me up from the ground, flings me up in the air and catches me. “Now you’re Mine,” he claims happily then squeezes me close and his laugh turns into a smoldering gaze. Running his eyes admiringly over my face, he holds the back of my neck, leans down, and gives me the softest, gentlest, most lingering kiss he’s ever given me in his life.

“We got you a gift, Brooke.” Pete and Riley hold out a box as they come over. “It’s from the team, including our new member, Jo.” I wave at Jo at the end of the aisle and then tear open the gift.

A flash of red appears, and I pull out a shiny red robe identical to Remy’s boxing robe. But this one reads
RIPTIDE’S GIRL.

Smiling delightedly, I hug them, but not for long, because I hear a growl and am pulled into bigger, stronger, more possessive arms.

Forty days of pent-up sexual desire ride with us on the way home. Primitive sexual energy swirls between us like a growing tornado, feeding on our emotions. On our happiness, our love. Our need. When we enter our apartment, Racer is sound asleep in his cradle, which Diane seems to have pulled out to the living room. She sets down a magazine when we come in and, with a happy squeal, embraces Remington so tight, he chuckles in surprise. Then she wraps her warm arms around me.

“I hope you both know I will treat this baby like a grandson,” she tells us.

“Diane,” I say with emotion, completely moved by her words, “thank you.”

Remington smiles at her, his dimples all gorgeous, and Diane hugs him one last time before she leaves. Remy pulls off his black tie and tosses it aside. Flicking open the top button of his snowy white shirt, he pulls me into his arms and takes my mouth, mating his tongue to mine as he lifts me to a sleek wood console by the entry.

“I need to kiss”—he slides his hands all over my curves—“my beautiful wife.”

Shudders of happiness and love course through all my body as I slide my hands into his spiky hair and devour his lips as fiercely as he does mine. Racer wakes up, on the clock, with a sudden wail, and we both tear free and turn to the noise. Before I can push off the console, Remington sets me down and kisses the back of my ear, his voice terse: “Feed him so you can feed me next.”

“I have a good idea of what you want, so okay.”

“Okay?” he calls as he ambles into the kitchen, and I lift Racer from his cradle.

“More than okay!” I shout. “Bring the cradle when you come to the bedroom.”

Quickly, I sit at the edge of the bed and I jerk my top off, pull my bra down, and press our protesting little baby up to my breast, checking the clock to alternate between breasts.