“Cage?”
“Yes?”
“Will you cut us down a Christmas tree. We need one right over there in that corner.”
I loved that she had said us. “Of course. I’ll do it today.”
“Thank you. I’ll make you cookies,” she replied.
I moved my hands up to cup her br**sts. “I like cookies, but I can think of a few parts of your body I’d rather eat,” I replied.
Eva shivered against me. “Okay. It’s a deal.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
EVA
Cage had to work extra hard to catch up on the work he didn’t get done the past two days. Between me begging him for sex and him happily obliging and our picking a tree and decorating it, he’d had very little free time.
Jeremy was coming back today. He’d texted Cage last night to tell him that he’d be here late, but he’d be here. Cage had mentioned we needed to hire someone else and let Jeremy go. I agreed. He shouldn’t have to continue working here. Not if he wanted to do other things.
It was just after nine when Jeremy’s truck came rolling over the hill and across the field. He was a good man. Daddy was right about that. I loved him and I wanted him to find happiness. I wanted him to fall in love with a girl who couldn’t imagine life without him. It would happen. I knew it would.
He wasn’t Josh, but he looked just like him, and Josh had been beautiful. Jeremy was just as special. His truck stopped, and he stepped out then headed toward where I stood under the magnolia tree beside the porch.
“From the smile on your face, I think I stayed gone long enough for you two to fix things,” he said as he put his hat on his head.
“Yes. Thank you. For everything. Thank you.”
Jeremy grinned and then turned his head to spit out that nasty tobacco I wish he’d stop dipping. “You’re welcome. For everything,” he replied. “I figure Cage York ain’t gonna let you get too far out of his reach again. I hope you get everything in life you want, Eva. You deserve it.”
“You too, Jeremy. You too.”
He straightened his hat and looked out at the barn. “I’d hug you, but I gotta go work with your man today, and he’s watching me right now like he might need to come up here and beat my ass at any second.”
I glanced back and, sure enough ,Cage was standing beside his truck with his hands on his hips and his hat pushed back off his forehead, a piece of straw sticking out of his mouth. He looked like a television ad for sexy cowboys. I blew him a kiss and laughed.
He shook his head and grinned before shooting Jeremy one more pointed look. Then he turned and walked over to the barn door. “Don’t see a ring on your finger. Thought I’d see one of those when I got back.”
I glanced down at my hand. I hadn’t expected Cage to purpose to me. “Why would you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because you’re pregnant with his baby,” Jeremy shot back.
Cage wasn’t like that. He hadn’t grown up thinking the way Jeremy and I had been taught. I wanted to believe one day Cage would ask me to marry him, but after the way I’d treated him and hadn’t trusted him, I doubted he would be trusting me with something that big for a while. I was okay with that. I understood.
“I just took another man’s ring off a few days ago, Jer. I don’t think he’s ready to stick his on there. He looks tough and he acts like a badass, but he is fragile. He expects people to leave him. He also doesn’t trust that I won’t leave him again. I have a lot of proving to do before Cage trusts me with something like forever.”
Jeremy frowned. “Really? You’re now taking the blame for all this? How the hell did that happen?”
Jeremy wouldn’t understand. No one had seen Cage with his guard completely down. I’d only seen it a few times myself. “I can’t blame him for his insecurities. His momma screwed him up emotionally. I knew that, and I didn’t stop feeling sorry for myself long enough to think about that.”
Jeremy shook his head, but he didn’t say anything else about it.
“I’m gonna help him find a replacement. Then I’m hitting the road.”
“Where are you going? I thought you didn’t want to go to school, that you wanted to stay here on the land?”
He nodded. “I did. I’ll be back. But right now I want to just ride. Go see other places. Not settle down anywhere, just find myself.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted him to be happy, but I didn’t want to be the reason he was leaving.
“Let me go help him before he decides to come get me,” he said with a wink, then headed down to the barn.
He seemed happy. This was what he wanted to do. Maybe he’d find that girl to make him complete out there on the road. Once he opened the barn door, I turned and headed back inside.
CAGE
Jeremy walked into the barn, looking pissed. “Why don’t she have a ring on her finger, York?”
I grabbed my work gloves from the bench I’d left them on earlier. “I’m working on that. Not that it’s your damn business.”
The tension went out of his shoulders and he nodded. “Oh. Good. She don’t seem to think you are. She thinks you can’t trust her or some stupid shit. I wasn’t following her. I just knew it was dumb.”
Couldn’t trust her? What the hell was the woman thinking now?
“I just need one thing from you. I need to know where her piano went.”
Jeremy grinned. “Why?”
“I just need it. Where is it?”
“I could not tell you for being an ass.”
“And I could beat your ass,” I replied.
Jeremy laughed. “Fine. It’s in my basement. Eva thinks she donated it to a kid’s center for underprivileged children. When actually, Wilson bought them a piano for that center and he had Eva’s piano moved to my basement.”
I knew she’d gotten rid of it. I had expected it to be harder to find. “Why did he do that?”
“Because he’s her daddy and he knew she would want it back one day. Just like he knew you’d be back.”
My chest tightened. Her dad hadn’t doubted me. He should’ve hated me, but he had believed in us. Even when I didn’t. Damn.
“What are you gonna do with her piano?” he asked.
“Keep it safe. I’ll let you know when I need it. Don’t tell her about this though.”
“How long is this gonna take? I was planning on hitting the road in about two weeks. I’m staying through Christmas, then I’m going to travel for a while.”
“Christmas Eve. Give me til Christmas Eve.”
The barn doors swung open and slammed against the wall. We both jumped and looked at Eva standing there with a smile on her face and red cheeks. She was breathing hard like she’d been running. I took a step toward her.
“Low’s in labor!” she squealed. “We gotta go. Hurry!” She waved at me and turned to run back to the house.
Low was in labor. Holy shit.
“I got things here. Get her to the hospital before she blows a gasket,” Jeremy said from behind me.
I managed to nod and followed behind Eva as she ran toward the house. Low was about to me a mother. I had known this was going to happen, but at the moment it was surreal.
My phone vibrated in my pocket and I pulled it out to see Preston’s name on the screen.
“Hello.”
“Marcus just took Low to the hospital. Her water broke.”
“When’s the baby due? Is it early?” I asked, thinking it was probably dumb to be asking Preston Drake something like this.
“Her due date was Monday. So she’s right on time.”
He knew. Surprise.
“We’re on our way.”
Preston paused. “We?” he asked.
“Eva and me,” I replied, realizing he didn’t know we were back together.
“Congrats, man. I didn’t know you’d worked things out.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you in a few,” I replied before ending the call and shoving my phone into my pocket. Eva was standing at the passenger side of her Jeep.
“Hurry!” she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
I jogged the rest of the way, but I didn’t go to the driver’s side and get in. Instead I went to Eva and picked her up then covered her mouth with mine. She melted into me like she always did, and I enjoyed knowing I had my always back.
She broke the kiss first. “As much as I like your kisses, ’cause I do—they’re really hot—I want to get to the hospital. Your best friend is about to have a baby. We need to be there for that.”
I pressed one more kiss to her mouth before putting her down and then patting her on the bottom. “Let’s hope the new Hardy looks like its momma and not its daddy,” I said, then opened her door and helped her inside.
Chapter Twenty-Four
EVA
The waiting room at the hospital was packed. It also would appear that we had all decided to use this as a party location. There was cake that Trisha and her daughter Daisy had made. Trisha was married to Rock, one of Marcus’s oldest friends. When you looked at him, he was scary, with his bulging muscles and bald head. Then when his little girl, Daisy climbed up in his lap, he morphed into a teddy bear with tattoos.
Amanda had shown up with fried pickles from Live Bay and at some point someone, and I think it was Cage, had ordered pizza. Soda’s littered the tables, and we had all managed to take over the small area.
If anyone else was having a baby today, their relatives weren’t hanging out here with us. But then again, there was no room. Preston had his younger brother in a headlock while his younger sister, Daisy, pulled on his long hair.
“Look, Daddy! I got him! I got him!” Daisy said, smiling over at Rock. To anyone else this would be a normal family activity, but to a pregnant woman who knew the story behind that scene, I was having a hard time keeping my tears back.
Not too long ago those kids had lived in a house with a druggy for a mom, and Preston was doing everything he could to take care of them. After their mother died from a drug overdose, Preston had faced losing all three of them to the system. Rock and Trisha had stepped in and asked to adopt the kids.
I watched Rock’s face as Daisy called him Daddy, and the emotion in his eyes had me blinking back tears.
“The first time she called him Daddy he went into our room and cried for about thirty minutes. I’d honestly never seen him cry, and we’ve been together since we were teenagers,” Trisha said as she took a seat beside me. I hadn’t meant for anyone to notice me getting emotional.
“Y’all look so happy,” I said, wiping the one tear that had threatened to get loose.
Trisha glanced over at the boys as they now both had Preston in some form of a wrestling hold. “We are. I’m beyond blessed. Brent hasn’t called us mom and dad yet, but the other two have. I think he’s coming around though.”
“Manda! Manda! Come see! I’m curling Preston’s hair,” Daisy called out, and Amanda moved from her seat beside her mother, who she had been talking to and over to Daisy.
“She’s learned to say her r’s very well.”
Trisha nodded. “It was cute, but she’s so proud of herself now. I try not to miss it.”
“Oh, snap,” Trisha muttered, looking over at the door.
I turned to see what she was staring at.
“What does she think she’s doing?” Trisha said as she stood up to go intervene. I was glad because someone needed to. Low’s sister had just walked into the waiting room with her daughter on her hip. Normally this would be an expected thing. However, considering that Low’s sister, Tawny, was the woman who had broken up Marcus’s parents marriage, this was bad. Marcus’s mom had been invited. His father hadn’t been. I glanced over at his mother, and Amanda had taken a protective stance in front of their mother.
It still amazed me that Low and Marcus had found a way to get over this.
“Oh, hell,” Preston said loud enough for everyone to hear him. The entire waiting room turned to look at her.
No one had expected to see her today.
“Y’all can stop with your staring at me. She’s my sister. I can come see her kid if I want to,” Tawny said with an annoyed tone.
Cage walked back up behind her. Larissa, Low’s niece, threw her hands up and squealed, “Cay!” Cage had been a big part of Larissa’s life once. He’d been the only man in her life who never went away. Because he was taking care of Low, he was also helping Low take care of her niece while her sister ignored her.
Cage winked at Larissa and reached out to take her in his one free hand. “Hey, gorgeous,” he said to the little girl, then lifted his eyes to meet Low’s sister. “Tawny,” he acknowledged her. But you could tell by the way his jaw tensed that he didn’t like her. “Probably not the best place for you to wait on the baby. If Larissa wants to stay with me, I’ll watch her and I’m sure Manda will too. But you need to go wait elsewhere. Today isn’t about you.”
The redhead looked like she’d been slapped. If I didn’t know how evil she was, I’d think she was breathtakingly beautiful. To a stranger she probably was. “So you’re willing to keep Larissa, but you’re kicking me out, Cage York? You’re just white trash pretending too. With your pretty little”—she paused when she looked at me, and I watched as she took in my stomach—“pregnant girlfriend,” she finished. Then she let out a hard laugh. “You knocked her up. Perfect. I bet her family is real proud of her now.”