CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Joey and Jax insisted that Niko and Emma—on her break—join their party for dinner. Forty-eight hours had changed a lot for their little table, Emma thought. Reva and Caleb were both wearing some of the new clothes she’d delivered this morning. Joey listened as Caleb delivered a dissertation on every kid in his kindergarten class. She looked over his head at Reva. “Is there an off button?”
Reva gave a small smile, the first Emma had seen from the girl.
Emma was relieved for the distraction of extra dinner guests. It was a slow night at the brewery, and she and Nikolai would have had entirely too much time together.
Her head was still spinning from last night, from this afternoon. Everything about Niko pushed her off balance. The way he’d made her feel in bed—and then again in her office—was so intense, she needed time to adjust, to get used to it. She’d played it cool when he showed up in her office, but on the inside, adrenaline was thrumming through her veins the second she’d looked at him and remembered how it felt to have him over her, under her, in her.
Then he’d thrown her again with his “see where we end up” suggestion. She must have been temporarily insane to have agreed to something that ridiculous. They couldn’t possibly have a future together. Why waste the time?
She looked across the table at him and when his dark gaze met hers she remembered exactly why it was worth wasting the time. He was so effortlessly gorgeous, so incredibly talented, and still so interested in her. While their friendship had started as a joke, Niko never made her feel like he didn’t value the time he spent with her.
A heated debate broke out over appetizers. Joey and Caleb wanted wings while Jax and Reva were staunchly in favor of the beer-battered onion rings. “Why can’t we get both?” Joey grumbled.
“Because we’re feeding kids, and we’ll stunt their growth or give them high cholesterol if we feed them like this,” Jax argued.
“Shit.” Joey looked down at Caleb. “Sorry. Crap.”
“It’s okay. Our mom says ‘shit’ all the time.” Caleb patted her hand.
“We’re getting both appetizers,” Joey decided. “But just this once,” she added sternly.
Reva’s lips quirked again, and Emma thought that maybe miracles did happen.
She looked over at Niko and smiled when he winked at her.
“So you two, huh?” Jax grinned from the head of the table.
Emma shot Joey an accusing look.
“What?” Joey shrugged. “You didn’t swear me to secrecy. He’s kinda my husband. We have to talk about stuff.”
Emma took a deep breath. “Yes, we’re… dating.”
“How do you think the Beautification Committee’s going to handle this?” Jax asked.
“We’re not even a blip on their radar,” Emma paraphrased Elvira. “I’m sure they’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
Joey snorted. “Don’t be too quick to believe everything you hear,” she warned.
“The Beautification Committee has better things to do with their time than worry about us,” Emma argued.
“You’d think, but no,” Jax put in.
The appetizers arrived and were divvied up and the conversation turned to how life at the Pierces’ was going with two new additions.
“My commute’s a lot shorter,” Reva joked.
Niko grinned approvingly at her humor, and the girl flushed to her roots. Emma bit her lip and hid her smile. Nikolai Vulkov’s charm had quite the effect on women of all ages.
They ate and talked and laughed and the normalness of it all had Emma hiding her panic and excusing herself under the guise of brewery business. She ducked into the kitchen and checked up on Julio who was training a new cook. Her dishwasher, Shane, waved cheerily from his spotless workstation.
“I like the apron tonight, Shane,” Emma winked at him and made him laugh. She’d hired Shane through a nonprofit program that paired workers with disabilities and traumatic brain injuries with local employers. He’d been her favorite hire to date, and everyone on the staff loved him. Shane’s claim to fame was his rotating wardrobe of colorful aprons. Tonight’s was a Blue Moon original in flaming tie-dye colors.
She took the kitchen’s back stairs down a flight to the keg room. She took her time hefting each tapped keg to make sure it would last the night. Cheryl, the head bartender, ruled the keg organization with an iron fist, and Emma was pleased to see everything was in order after this week’s kegging of the new lager.
She took a moment to sit and breathe. Sitting across the table from Nikolai felt too… right. If she was going to make this “see where things go” relationship work, she had to forget about the end game and focus on the now. This was painfully new to her. She was nothing without her goals and long-term projections. At one point, she’d thought that Mason was her future, yet when she’d broken things off, she hadn’t felt overly disappointed. The fact of the matter was, she just hadn’t felt much at all besides secure when it came to Mason and their future.
There was a hell of a lot more emotions that came to mind when she was with Nikolai. Lust, need, anxiety, terror.
If she was going to enjoy this, she needed to let go of the what-ifs temporarily. Eventually, Niko would move back to the city and pick up his life where he left off, if the photos today were any indication. And she not only needed to be okay with that. She needed to enjoy the time they had together.
Pep talk completed, Emma took a rallying breath and stood, straightening her skirt, and marched back upstairs. She handled a few voids on the POS, gave a birthday discount, and busted Sunny and Rupert’s make-out session in the supply closet before returning to the table.
Niko eyed her speculatively as she approached, and she winked. She could do this. She could be fun. Temporarily.
She took her seat and a flush-faced Rupert scampered over. “I have your soup in the kitchen,” he told Emma. “I didn’t want it to get cold.”
“Thanks, Rupert,” Emma said.
“I’ll go grab it for you, and sorry about… you know… in the closet.” All eyes were on him, and Emma bit back a sigh.
“Soup, Rupert.”
“Yep. Cool. Okay.” He hustled off.
“You’re such a mean boss,” Joey snickered in appreciation.
“Me? I’m sure Reva here could tell us stories about your dictatorship in the stables,” Emma shot back with a grin.
“I plead the fifth,” Reva said, studying her sandwich as the table erupted into laughter.
--------
They dined and drank and laughed. The kids provided an unexpected level of entertainment to Niko. He didn’t usually run in circles that involved kids of any age. The fact that many of the models he worked with were closer to Reva’s age than his own was enough to make him feel a mild sense of shock. The comparison was interesting. In some ways, world-weary models of eighteen or twenty had miles more life experience than Reva. And in other ways, Reva’s maturity outclassed many of the women in their mid- to late-twenties that he’d photographed.
Blue Moon was proving to be quite the learning experience.
“I’ve got to go take a lap,” Emma announced.
“Make sure no one’s burning down the kitchen,” Jax agreed.
“More like make sure no one’s making out in the supply closet,” Emma said with a head jerk in Rupert’s direction.
She rose, and Niko stood with her. He followed her a few steps away from the table. “Do you need any help in the closet?” Niko whispered.
“Not right now, but maybe after hours,” she said with a slow grin that had his blood pooling south.
“Looking at you and not being able to touch you is driving me insane.”
“I knew you were a masochist,” she teased. She glanced around them and gave a little “what the hell” shrug. When she moved in and rose up on her tiptoes, he was too surprised by the kiss she placed on his cheek to respond. He watched her leave, the chiffon pleats of her black skirt swirling around her spectacular thighs.
“Hey, Romeo, you want the last wing?” Joey called from the table.
“All yours,” he said, returning to his seat.
He liked Joey and her smart mouth, liked watching her with Jax when they put down the boxing gloves and played nice when they thought no one else was watching. More, he liked the rest of the family. It really was something that was lacking in his life. He had no solid circle of friends, no strong family ties that kept him rooted. Until now, he’d preferred casual acquaintances that could be called upon on the rare occasions that he was in the city and not working. Summer had been, and still was, his best friend. And he’d done nothing to replace her since she’d moved.
He thought of the wedding, the joining of families, the interconnectedness they shared as naturally as if they’d all grown up together. It made him think about his own father and how distant he’d allowed that relationship to become.
When his own father had found his second wife, he hadn’t felt an ounce of the joy that the Pierces felt when Phoebe married Franklin. In fact, he hadn’t even been officially invited to the wedding. It was a courthouse deal, and he’d been on a shoot in Paris. His father said he didn’t want Niko to feel obligated. He remembered feeling relieved when he found that his presence hadn’t been necessary.
In some ways, he’d expected his father to always remain faithful to the memory of his mother. But he was beginning to understand that life inevitably carried on and though new beginnings explored undiscovered paths, the past didn’t have to be forgotten.
He was wondering if perhaps he should reestablish a stronger relationship with his father and stepmother when a man with shaggy blond hair peeking out from under a ball cap ambled up to the table.
“Colby,” Jax greeted him cheerfully. “I didn’t know you were here. Pull up a chair.”
“Love to, but I think you guys are gonna want to head to the barn,” he said, taking his hat off and swiping a hand through his hair.
“Why…” Jax began the question, but Joey’s comprehension was faster.
She stood up so fast she knocked her chair over backwards. The other diners quieted and turned to stare. “Calypso?” she whispered.
“We’re havin’ a baby,” Colby nodded.
Joey whooped in victory. “Get your asses moving! We’re not missing this!” She dragged Reva out of her chair while Jax grabbed Caleb and threw the boy over his shoulder.
“You coming?” Jax asked Niko.
“Let me get my camera. You’re going to want some baby pictures,” he predicted.
They hustled toward the brewery’s front door where Niko promised to call Emma and let her know what was going on. When Jax and Joey’s entourage headed toward the stables, Niko peeled off to the house.
He burst through the kitchen door to the surprise of Summer and Carter who were stirring something on the stove.
“Geez, where’s the fire, Niko?” Summer said, patting a hand over her heart.
“Can’t talk! We’re having a baby!”
He ran for the stairs.
“Holy shit! Calypso?” Carter yelled after him.
“Grabbing my camera!”
Niko snatched his camera bag off the desk and thundered back downstairs. He heard a cry from the twins’ room and grimaced. “Sorry sorry sorry,” he said, running through the kitchen.
“I got this,” Summer said, pushing Carter after him. “Go see your baby horse!”
They hustled off the porch when she opened the screen door behind them. “And don’t think for a second I’m not going to ask you where you spent the night last night, Niko!”
Niko and Carter jogged along the dusty path connecting farm and stables. The night was alive with crickets and fireflies. “So you and Emma, huh?” Carter said conversationally.
“Yeah. It’s pretty new,” Niko said, realizing he’d never had this conversation before. How had he made it to thirty without ever telling a friend he was seeing a woman?
Carter pumped his fist in the air. “Yes!”
“I didn’t realize you were so invested in my love life,” Niko said wryly.
“I am when my wife bet Gia two nights of babysitting that you and Emma would hook up.”
“That’s what a unit is?”
“Two glorious twin-free evenings,” Carter grinned. “Beckett’s gonna freak. This almost makes up for the beard.”
--------
Three hours later, Niko watched as Calypso’s foal struggled to his feet and took his first toddling steps. He had the coloring of his father, Apollo, the dark, arrogant stallion, and a white star on his nose that exactly matched his mother’s.
Joey knelt quietly in the doorway of the stall. Jax stood behind her, resting his hands on her shoulders. Niko snapped a shot of them, catching the reverence and excitement that passed between them. Reva rested her chin on her hands as she peered over the front wall of the box stall, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
After making sure all was well with baby and mother, Carter had headed home to catch some sleep so he could check on the horses early.
“Well, we’ve got our baby, Jojo. What do you think?” Jax asked, stroking a hand through his wife’s hair.
“I think he’s pretty fucking awesome,” Joey said softly. Catching herself too late, she looked over her shoulder. “Shit. Sorry. Pretty freaking awesome.”
Reva gave a soft laugh. “It’s okay. Cale’s asleep.”
Niko snapped the six-year-old curled up on a bale of hay wrapped in an old quilt, sound asleep.
Calypso leaned down to gently nose her foal, and the baby’s tail twitched as if in recognition.
Instant family was fascinating to Niko.
“Is the baby here?” Emma appeared in the corridor now wearing serviceable flats and a hopeful expression.
Niko beckoned her closer, and she joined him next to Reva.
“Oh! How precious! Boy or girl?” Emma asked.
“Boy,” Joey said without taking her eyes off of the foal.
“He’s perfect,” Emma sighed. “What’s his name?”
“Thunder?” Joey threw out.
“Right because we want to name the founding member of our breeding program after every kid’s pony ever.”
“Fine, smartass. You suggest something.”
“Green Light?” Jax suggested.
Joey shook her head. “Too Hollywood.”
They all took turns throwing out and rejecting suggestions. “The Dark Knight?”
“George.”
“Octavius.”
“Clippy?” A sleepy Caleb roused himself to offer the suggestion. “We can’t call him Cloppy ‘cause we already got one of those.”
“Eclipse,” Reva offered.
The stables were quiet as everyone mulled it over. Joey nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Eclipse. I like it.”
“Nice job, kid,” Jax said, ruffling Reva’s hair. “You just named a horse.”
Caleb yawned and settled back down on the hay bale.
Joey rose and stepped into Jax’s arms. “It looks like we’ve got ourselves a good start, Jackson Pierce.” She kissed him hard on the mouth before releasing him. “I’m going to make some coffee, and we need to get Caleb to bed or he’ll miss another day of school this week.”
She was grinning when she floated past.