Drink to That
Coert
Present day . . .
HE DIDN’T WANT TO DO it. He really didn’t.
But standing in the waiting room seeing Caylen at the window while Kath, Pam and Shannon performed an emergency adoption of Alice, Caylen’s ex-wife, and Pat, Mike and Daly put herculean effort into not incinerating Caylen with their eyes (and not surprisingly it was Mike who was failing at this), Coert had to do it.
So he moved from the man huddle to Caylen at the window.
It was at the last second that Caylen started and turned to Coert, telling Coert his mind was planted firm elsewhere.
Also not a surprise.
Cady’s part in the test for a match wouldn’t take very long, and if Caylen wasn’t involved, the entire adult Moreland clan probably would have just waited for Coert to bring her home.
It turned out good they’d come, however, because Alice was making clear she wanted to be involved in everything, including Caylen’s estranged sister being tested. And since Caylen and Alice did not have a good relationship, the unique “You don’t know us, but bad shit is going down, so we’re not going to smother you and we’re here if you need us” approach of the Moreland women was turning out to be a good thing.
So Alice had them keeping an eye on her and keeping her distracted, as well as her mother, who had come with her.
Cady also had them at her back when she’d met a gracious and exceptionally grateful Alice in that same waiting room twenty minutes before.
It was Caylen who was the odd man out in this and Coert didn’t know him, didn’t want to know him, and what the man could want was to be an island.
However Cady would want Coert to make sure that’s where he wanted to be.
“You hanging in there?” he asked low.
Caylen slid a glance toward Cady’s brothers before he looked at Coert. “I honestly don’t mean to be difficult but is it really necessary for all of them to be here? The test is non-invasive and takes ten minutes to perform.”
“Is them being here upsetting you or Alice?” Coert asked.
He didn’t answer. He looked to the window.
Coert already knew it wasn’t upsetting Alice, and if it had, they would have taken off.
But it was getting under Caylen’s skin.
There were a lot of things Coert could say, not many of them nice, so he took a second to make sure he had it in check before he said, “Patrick Moreland didn’t marry her to make her his wife. He married your sister to adopt her.”
Caylen’s eyes came right back to him.
Coert kept going.
“This is a bad time for you and I hope you understand that I get that. But years ago, Cady was in a really bad place and her family turned their backs on her. Patrick gave her a new family and those men and women consider her their sister. It’s healthy. It’s right. They’re loyal to her. They love her. You’re not unaware of how things have always been between you and Cady so I hope with that you get that they’re understandably protective. So they’re here. But if they’re making you uncomfortable, I’ll ask them to go order us some coffees and Cady and I’ll meet them after she’s done.”
“Adopt her?” he asked.
“Patrick and Cady’s relationship was entirely platonic. He offered to adopt her at first but she refused.”
“She was an adult,” Caylen scoffed.
“She was alone, terrified and heartbroken. She’d lost everything. Including her family,” Coert returned.
Caylen looked back out the window and Coert watched his jaw get tight.
He sighed.
Caylen spoke.
“Now I get it. Thought it was weird, they showed here. If it was me, I’d hate her. Girl that age marrying my father.”
Coert turned his own eyes out the window and crossed his arms on his chest.
He felt Caylen’s regard but didn’t look at him when Caylen asked, “Did you know that . . . the adoption thing?”
“No.”
“Is that why you dumped her?”
“That was my excuse. But no.” He looked at Cady’s brother. “I let her go because I’d put her in harm’s way, I’d lied to her and I thought she would be better off without me.”
“But she stayed married to him.”
“She stayed married to him because he got cancer and beat it back for twelve years with Cady’s help, and she couldn’t be involved in that as a family member unless she was legally tied to him.”
Caylen’s jaw got tight again as he looked back out the window.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk,” Coert suggested, losing his hold on keeping it in check.
Caylen’s attention came back to Coert and he looked genuinely confused.
“Why?” he asked.
“Not bein’ harsh but you’re still being judgmental about Cady when—”
“I’m not being judgmental about Cady. I’m being judgmental about them,” he jerked his head to indicate Cady’s family, “and you.”
Coert’s body locked.
Caylen went on.
“If they had some score to settle with my sister and were doing it by pretending to care about her, set her up for a fall, I don’t want them here.”
Astonished, Coert stared at Caylen Webster.
Caylen stared back but he did it talking.
“And I’ve got a lot on my mind and part of it is that I’m not sure how I feel about you. You think I’m an ass for turning my back on my sister but you did the same thing. Now you think you’ve got the high ground because you two somehow found your way back to each other but you’re no different than me. You’re being protective of her because you think I’m going to treat her like trash. But I’m in the position of having no ground to stand on because I’m concerned about the same coming from you and I can’t do anything about it.”
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you behave like an actual brother,” Coert remarked.
“That’s because another part of what’s weighing on my mind is driving the entire time from my place to her thinking that Cady would close the door in my face when I came to ask her for help about something that’s life and death for my son.”
He was losing it, his voice breaking on the last three words.
He took a second to gather himself, Coert gave him that, and then he continued.
“And instead she did the exact opposite, so I’m dealing with my son being ill and it hitting me in the face how I destroyed my family, all of it, including my relationship with Cady.”
“There’s only one thing I can put at ease in your mind and that’s to tell you I love your sister. Truth, I’m not bein’ a dick when I say it’s not yours to have how we got back what we lost. But I’m making her happy and that’s really all you need to know. The rest, straight up, is up to you.”
“She dropped everything to be here. You dropped everything to be here.”
“She lost hope in you just last year. Think on that. All that went down, just last year, Caylen. That’s your sister. So think on that. But do it later. Because one thing I know, it’d cut Cady deep for her to think this is on your mind right now. She knows you have enough on your mind. So let it go for now. She doesn’t live far from you. You want to build something with your sister, I think she’s already proved that door is open.”
“I’m moving back to Denver to be near my family.”
“And that’s the first time I’ve ever seen you behave like a decent man. I don’t say that to be a dick either. I say it to encourage you to keep that shit going because right now there are a lot of people who are going to need to depend on it.”
Caylen looked back out the window.
Coert kept going.
“And her family lives in Denver, so if you’re here when we’re visiting I’m sure she’d love to see you.”
His face was hard when he turned it again to Coert. “I am her family.”
“Prove it.”
Caylen looked like Coert struck him.
“It won’t be hard, Caylen,” he told him. “All you gotta do is let her be there for you. I think you can probably manage that, don’t you?”
Something changed in his face, started crumbling, and Coert’s neck got tight.
“I have no excuses,” he whispered.
“Cady isn’t about excuses. She isn’t even about explanations. She’s about heart and soul and looking forward, not back.”
“I’m not just talking about her. I’m talking about Alice. Orson. Camilla.”
Orson, his son, twelve, very sick with leukemia. Camilla, his girl, she was ten. Neither of whom Cady had met yet.
“I’m not the man who can help you,” Coert told him honestly.
Caylen turned back to the window.
And Coert watched him, thinking it sucked that he gave a shit that Caylen Webster no longer wanted to be the island.
It also sucked what he had to say next.
“But Cady can help you.”
Coert saw the man swallow.
“And just to say, she might reject it but it wouldn’t hurt you to give it a shot, go over there and try to sit with your ex-wife.”
Caylen’s eyes slid to him briefly before he nodded, turned and made his slow way to where Alice was sitting next to her mother, with Kath, Pam and Shannon hanging close.
The mother and Cady’s sisters eyed him as he approached.
He didn’t totally go for it. He just sat next to her and patted her hand awkwardly before he put both of his in his lap and stared at the floor in front of him.
The mother looked like she wanted to rip his throat out before she hid it.
But Alice reached out to grab his hand and pulled it to the arms of the chairs they were sitting in and held on.
Coert moved back to the man huddle.
“And he’s a miracle worker,” Pat muttered under his breath, swinging his gaze from Caylen and Alice to Coert.
“Man’s coming to terms with four and a half decades of being a supreme asshole and doing it when his twelve-year-old son is in bad situation. So it tastes funny, but feel for the guy.”
“That funny taste is bile considering you’re trying hard not to puke,” Mike murmured.
“Yeah,” Coert agreed, wondering if it was in spite of himself or the fact they were seriously alike that he liked the guy so much. Then he suggested, “You men wanna go get us a table somewhere? Leave the women here. When Cady’s done, we’ll meet you for an early lunch.”
“He doesn’t want us here,” Daly surmised.
“He’s a man dealing with a lot of bad shit and the worst of it is out of his control but the rest of it is a pile of crap he built himself so he’s in a bad way, and Cady wouldn’t thank any of us for making that worse.”
“Las Delicias,” Pat stated. “I noticed you have no Mexican food in Magdalene and not only will that be our gift to you, Cady loves it there, and once we remind you of that, it’ll guarantee at least once a year you’ll bring her back to us.”
Coert was not hungry.
He still said, “Sounds good.”
The men moved to Caylen and Alice (mostly Alice, but as Caylen was in her vicinity they couldn’t ignore that) and said a few words before they went to say goodbye to their women and took off.
Five minutes later, Cady came out.
He moved to her and grabbed her hand, walking next to her as she went to Caylen and Alice.
Alice hopped up. “How’d it go?”
Cady gave her a sweet smile and said, “We’ll know soon.” She looked to her brother. “And you have my number and we’re sticking close so whatever happens . . .”
Caylen had risen to. “Right, Cady.”
“Thank you,” Alice said.
“Of course,” Cady replied.
“No . . . I . . . no . . .” Tears filled Alice’s eyes. Then she whispered, “Thank you.”
Cady let him go to move in and give Alice a hug.
Kath moved into Coert to slide an arm around his waist.
He put one around her shoulders.
Cady let Alice go only to turn to her brother and give him a hug.
She pulled away but didn’t break away.
She said, “I’m on the other end of the phone, yes?”
He stared her in the face like he’d never seen her before for long moments before he nodded.
She gave him a visible squeeze then came back to Coert.
He took her hand and made a flash decision.
“We’re going to lunch,” he shared. “Would you all like to come?”
Cady’s fingers tightened around his.
Caylen cleared his throat and said firmly, “Alice and I need to get back to Orson. But thank you.”
Alice’s lips had parted as she looked to her ex-husband.
“Right. Then take care,” Coert replied.
“We’ll come for a visit later, if that’s okay,” Cady said.
“Yes, that’d be okay. Maybe when Camilla is out of school?” Alice suggested. “She comes every day to visit her brother. You can meet them both then.”
“I’d love that,” Cady said softly.
The women smiled at each other.
Coert (and it would also be Kath) gave them a moment before Coert opened his mouth but Kath beat him to the punch.
“Right, time to get these kids to food,” she stated, tugging on Coert’s waist. “You’re in our thoughts.”
Gratitude was expressed.
Coert moved Cady out.
Her sisters gathered close.
And Coert walked the women to his and Cady’s rental in order to get his Cady some lunch.
Coert was trying to tamp down some pretty intense anger as he drove Cady back to Pat and Kath’s that evening.
Caylen had done that to her, what she just went through. It had been Caylen who put her in the position of meeting that sick boy while he was in a hospital bed, his little sister who wore confusion and pain on her face like it had been etched there since birth. Caylen had made it so Cady had no idea what to do, what to bring, what they liked, and the circumstances were so dire it didn’t matter what gesture she made, nothing could make it better.
But Cady had spent years around kids. None of them sick and frail and hospitalized after enduring months of intense radiation and chemotherapy, or mystified with no hope of grasping how life was so unfair it’d do that to your brother. But just like she took to Janie without hesitation, sure in herself and how to be around kids (apparently of all ages), she brought them bucket loads of candy of all kinds, Rubik’s cubes, puzzle books and fun pencils and pens. Nothing that would take energy. Just a bunch of stuff that let them know she went out of her way and gave a shit.
Even so, it had been the most uncomfortable, saddest hour he’d spent in his life and he’d been a cop for twenty-three years. He’d seen people at their worst. He’d had to deliver news that would change lives forever in the cruelest ways imaginable.
But he’d never been with a family that broken, watching the woman he loved become a part of it knowing that there was a good possibility she’d never catch up on the twelve years she lost, no matter how much candy she bought or how fast she ran.
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
He glanced at her to see her staring out the side window of the car and with just a glance he knew she was not okay.
Topper: the results were in and Cady wasn’t a match.
“All right,” he murmured, squeezing her hand that he held on his thigh.
“Alice is sweet,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed, and she was, and Coert wondered how Caylen had scored that woman even if he didn’t have to wonder how he’d lost her.
“We’ll go back to see them tomorrow,” she told him. “Then dinner with your friends tomorrow night. But I think we should leave after that. They don’t need to feel like they’re entertaining and there’s no purpose for us to be here now.”
There actually was. Caylen had one person in his corner and that was Cady.
But Coert wasn’t going to suggest that.
“When we get back to Kathy and Pat’s, I’ll get online and get our tickets,” she said.
“I can do that,” Coert replied.
“No, I—” she started but stopped when her phone rang. She didn’t let go of his hand as she dug it out of her purse before she muttered, “Verity,” took the call and put the phone to her ear. “Hey, honey.”
She listened for a second and Coert listened to nothing while she did, and he listened hard.
He hadn’t told her he’d visited Elijah. She’d had too much on her mind.
With life the way it was, Verity’s call could be anything.
He just hoped like hell it was going to be what it should be.
“I’m all right. Just met the kids. Too much for now but I’ll call in a couple of days. I’m not a match, honey, so I can’t be of any help. We’re going to stay another day and come home,” Cady said into the phone.
She listened again.
He felt Cady’s fingers clench his spasmodically before, “I’m sorry?”
She listened again.
Coert put on the turn signal and was preparing to execute a turn when he felt Cady’s gaze come to him.
“I . . . he’s there?” A pause, “Right now?” Another pause and then, breathy, “Oh my goodness, honey.”
That sounded good.
Coert made the turn smiling at the windshield.
Another squeeze of his fingers before she asked. “He did?” She listened and then, “No, I didn’t know.” She squeezed hard. “He didn’t tell me.”
Coert kept smiling.
“Yes,” Cady said into the phone. “Yes. It’s fabulous. I’m so happy for you. You say Walt gave him the week off?” She waited for her question to be answered and then said, “Wonderful. Yes. Of course, yes, come up that weekend. Do you want me to send you a plane ticket?” She listened, then, “All right. Okay. Have you told your mom?” Silence then, “Okay, a week seems a long time but you’ll find at the end that it isn’t, so you go be with Elijah and I’ll see him next week and you the weekend after that. We’ll have a belated birthday cake.” Pause. “Yes. Absolutely.” Pause. “Absolutely, Verity. This is marvelous. Tell Elijah, Coert and I say hi and talk to you later.” Pause. “Right. Love you too, like crazy. ’Bye.”
Out of the side of his eyes he caught her dropping her phone and then he got another clench of her fingers.
“So, apparently you had a few words with Elijah,” she remarked.
“Life’s too short,” he grunted, now fighting back his smile. “I take it Verity welcomed him with open arms?”
“They did it on the floor by her front door about two seconds after she opened it to him.”
Jesus.
“Too much information,” he muttered.
“She’s straight with me,” Cady told him.
“Still too much information,” Coert repeated.
“They used protection.”
“And now more too much information,” Coert growled, though he was glad to know Elijah was the man he knew him to be and took care of that.
Cady giggled.
Thank Christ.
He glanced at her when he felt her leaning toward him and she stayed that way when she said, “She’s very happy.”
“Good,” he said to the windshield.
“Do you know how wonderful you are?” she asked.
He bumped her hand against his thigh and answered, “You holding my hand, I got a clue.”
He felt her warmth hit him at his words.
“He’d never have done that, made that journey, if you hadn’t encouraged him to,” she declared.
“He might have gotten there.”
“No. He admires you. You two may have had a rocky start but he thinks the world of you. You talking to him about that was just the push he needed. He might have stayed stuck if it wasn’t for you.”
“I barely encouraged him to go before he was eyeing his truck, antsy to get in it and go to her, Cady,” Coert informed her. “He was looking for an excuse. I just gave him one.”
“Well, even if it was only that, which it wasn’t, I’m glad you did it.”
Since Cady was happy and Verity was happy, he was glad he did it too.
“Life,” she said softly, righting herself in her seat. “We didn’t get one match we needed today, but we got another one.”
“Yeah,” he replied.
Her fingers gave his another squeeze. “Love you, Coert.”
“Love you most.”
“Honestly, honey,” that time she leaned deep into him and kissed his jaw, finishing what she was saying when she sat back, “I think that’s impossible.”
Coert drove her back to her brother’s house thinking she was wrong.
“They opened fire?”
“They opened fire. I tackled Tod, who was, I’ll repeat, in drag, and then Tex . . . you have to come to my store and meet Tex. He’ll make a coffee for you. He’s a genius barista and a total wild man. You’ll love him. But anyway, and then Tex grabbed me and threw me at Lee. Like, threw me. Through the air. At Lee!”
The women around Malcolm Nightingale’s table all started cackling at Indy’s retelling of a pretty freaking scary story.
These women included Malcolm’s wife, Kitty Sue, his daughter, Ally, his daughters-in-law, Indy and Roxie, and Tom’s girlfriend, Lana.
The men, Coert noted, were not cackling. They weren’t even smiling. What the women found a hilarious memory the men did not look at the same way.
Coert was right there with them and he hadn’t even lived through the night of gunfire at a gay bar.
Coert caught Malc’s eyes, and when he did Malc shook his head.
“I see Indy hasn’t changed,” Coert noted.
“A week ago officers were called to her location for disturbing the peace at a Starbucks,” Malcolm returned.
“That wasn’t me,” Indy declared. “That was Tex too.” Indy looked to Cady. “He doesn’t like Starbucks.”
“Why not?” Cady asked.
“Because he’s Tex and you won’t understand that’s actually a thorough answer until you meet him,” Indy replied.
“You didn’t have to egg him on,” Lee put in. Lee was Indy’s husband and Malcolm’s middle child, now very much a grown man and not just because he was old enough to have a wife.
“I didn’t egg him on,” Indy retorted. “Daisy did.”
“You egged him on,” Lee muttered.
“You weren’t even there,” she snapped.
Lee raised his brows. “Have I known you since birth?”
“Yes,” Indy bit out.
“Have I been covering your ass since you were about six?”
“Yes,” Indy hissed this admission.
Coert heard Cady stifle a giggle.
“You egged him on,” Lee concluded.
Indy rolled her eyes at Ally.
She’d egged the unknown Tex on.
Ally sat in the curve of her husband Ren’s arm and did it smiling.
Totally egged him on.
“I wish you wouldn’t curse in front of Callum,” Kitty Sue entered the conversation.
“Mom, my son is six months old. He doesn’t know the word ‘ass’ from the word ‘hello,’” Lee stated with a smile aimed at his mother. “Give it a rest. When it’s time to teach him to curse properly, I’ll be all over that.”
At that, the men chuckled but the women did not.
“Lord, save me,” Kitty Sue called to the ceiling.
This made Coert look to Cady to see her bouncing Lee and Indy’s son, Callum, in her lap.
He was fascinated by the diamond at her throat.
With Cady’s neck bowed and her lips to his dark-furred head, she was just fascinated by Callum.
“What Lee’s trying to say is, you got two grown boys so maybe you should give it up with the cursing, Mom,” Hank, Malc’s oldest, waded in.
“You could stand to clean up your language too,” Kitty Sue retorted.
Hank sighed.
Roxie, Hank’s very pregnant wife, laughed.
Coert tore his eyes from Cady with a baby bouncing in her lap and caught Tom’s gaze on them when he did.
Tom bobbed his head in a contented nod.
Coert dropped his arm from the back of Cady’s chair to wrap it around her shoulders.
When he did, she fell to her side and her shoulder hit him.
And when she did that, Callum lost interest in Cady’s diamond, looked to Coert, and launched himself that way.
When he thought he wouldn’t get what he wanted, probably because Cady’s hold tightened on him, he latched onto Coert’s sweater and grunted to pull himself into Coert’s arms.
Coert accepted him readily, even if the second he did Callum started punching him in the jaw.
“Totally having a little boy,” Cady whispered in his ear.
He looked down at her before he bent to her and kissed her forehead.
Callum punched Cady in the jaw.
Her eyes got pretend big, she captured his hand and pulled it to her mouth, forcing his fingers open with her lips and blowing a raspberry in his palm.
Callum arched his back as he screeched out a giggle then patted Cady’s lips for her to do it again.
Cady did it again.
And Coert decided that night was a good night to get her pregnant.
Or at least start trying.
“So?”
Coert looked toward the man who asked the one-word question to see Malc and Tom had gravitated to his side.
It was just after dinner. The women had formed a huddle. The younger men had formed a huddle. And now Tom and Malc were forming their own huddle with Coert.
“She’s not a match,” Coert responded in a guess at the question.
“Shit,” Malc whispered.
“But Cady’s brother told us today that they found a compatible, unrelated donor in the National Marrow Donor Program so there’s hope,” Coert went on.
“This why you’re leaving tomorrow?” Tom deduced.
Coert nodded.
“Right . . . and so?” Malc pressed.
“So . . . what?” Coert asked.
“Felt my son get tense when you and Cady had Callum, probably thought you two were conspiring to kidnap his boy. Is that where this is going?”
“Her birthday is the day after we get back,” Coert shared. “She’s demanded no presents, which sucks because I was going to give her the ring I bought her when I bought her that diamond she’s wearing at her neck. So I’m giving her a ring the day after. But she’s moving in in a couple of weeks and we’re going to start trying as soon as possible. Cady isn’t entirely in on those plans yet, but we’ll talk tonight and she’ll be in on them before she goes to sleep.”
“Simpatico,” Tom muttered.
“We always were,” Coert returned.
“She’s a great gal, Coert,” Malc said. “Figured she was with all you said about her, but it’s nice to finally be able to get to know her.”
“Yeah,” Coert replied, though the circumstances sucked for why they were in Denver, it had been a great night and that was one of the reasons it was.
“Is there a way to tell you how fuckin’ happy I am this is where it’s all ending?” Tom asked.
“No, since I’m living that and there’s no way to describe how happy I am that we got what we lost back,” Coert answered.
Tom nodded.
Malc clapped him on the shoulder.
“This division of genders thing is boring,” Ally called out. “Next thing you know, you men are going to be thinking we’re going to sashay into the kitchen and the miracle of clean dishes will be performed.”
“That’s my girl,” Malc murmured, looking at his daughter with amused eyes.
“God doesn’t send angels down to do the dishes?” Hank teased his sister.
“I’ll remind you I took Luke down our last sparring match,” Ally threatened her brother.
“You did that because Ava walked in, ready for their date night wearing a new dress,” Lee returned.
“He shouldn’t have let his guard down,” Ally shot back.
“It was a nice dress,” Lee muttered, his eyes crinkling.
“How nice was this dress, Lee?” Indy asked, her eyes narrowed.
“Very nice, baby,” Lee replied, his eyes still crinkled, but he saved it when he finished, “But obviously, not as nice as any of yours.”
“Luke’s one of Lee’s badasses,” Ally explained to Cady, and incidentally, Coert, referring to the team of private investigators at Lee’s firm. “And distracted or not, a takedown is a takedown.”
“Agreed,” Kitty Sue said firmly.
“You all kind of scare me,” Cady admitted and smiled. “But in a good way.”
“Trust me, you aren’t the first person to feel that,” Roxie told her.
“I love it. It keeps things exciting,” Lana put in.
“And that’s my girl,” Tom muttered appreciatively.
Cady turned her smile to Roxie and Lana and then it went to Kitty Sue. “I don’t mind helping with dishes.”
“Malc and I’ll do them after you all leave. I want to see pictures of this lighthouse. I can’t imagine living in a lighthouse,” Kitty Sue said.
“Do you have a laptop?” Cady asked. “There are tons of tourist shots online.”
“Let’s go to Malc’s office.”
The women trooped out after Indy deposited her son in his father’s arms.
The young men joined the older and it was Malcolm who went in to take his grandson from his son’s arms.
“We share a soft spot for redheads,” Lee stated, gaze on Coert, this telling him something Coert had figured out since Indy was tall and curvy to Cady’s short and curvy, but they shared the same hair color. “Just hope yours doesn’t have her own code on police band.”
Coert chuckled. “I’m the sheriff of my county and Cady’s recently lost a loved one she inherited a load from. She dropped a load of that on renovating the town’s lighthouse, which she made her home, and then opened it for tours two days a month, and I’m not talking just the grounds. She lets strangers inside. Dozens of them. Two days a month. Which means some of those pictures your mom’s gonna be looking at are online photos of the interior of my woman’s house, because she allows freaking pictures. So fortunately she doesn’t have her own code but she’s her own brand of nut.”
“You allowed that?” Malc asked with not a small amount of surprise.
“You try allowing anything with Cady. If she wants to do it, she does it,” Coert replied.
Or she talked him into being all right with it.
Or at least pretending he was all right with it but instead he found a way to put up with it.
“I feel that pain,” Ren muttered, Ally’s husband, who might be a crime boss’s nephew but as Malcolm told it, was personally legit, and such a good-looking guy, Coert could even call that he was handsome.
“Me too,” Hank said.
“It’s in the blood. Kitty Sue and her best friend Katie made Indy and Ally look like amateurs,” Malcolm told them.
Lee raised his bottle of beer between all of them, tipping the bottom out. “Here’s to lives that’ll never be boring.”
The rest of the men lifted their bottles and clinked the butts.
They brought them to their lips.
“Malc!” They heard shouted from down the hall and all the men looked that way. “We are soooooo vacationing in Maine this summer!”
“When’s your wedding?” Malcolm asked.
Coert turned back to him.
“Sometime this summer,” Coert winged it.
The skin around Malcolm’s eyes crinkled. “Then Maine in summertime it is.”
“I’m feeling the need to give my sister a heart attack. I’m gonna go clear the table,” Hank announced. “Do I got any help?”
“I’m in,” Lee said.
“Yeah,” Ren muttered.
They took off.
Coert, Malcolm and Tom watched them go.
“Finally, you’re at the good part,” Malcolm said quietly, and again Coert turned to him to see Callum had snuggled in to his granddad and was getting sleepy. “You get the fun of makin’ ’em. Then you get the fun of watchin’ ’em grow up and find the one they love. And then you get this.” His hand on Callum’s diapered bottom lifted the baby half an inch. “So it’s been shit for you for a while. But that’s over. And it’s all good from here.”
“That, I’ll drink to too,” Tom said, raising his beer, bottom out.
Coert would drink to that too.
So he and Tom and Malcolm butted beers again.
And then like old times but without the stress, tension and tragedy, instead with kids, grandkids and promise all around, they slugged some back.
Coert was not a big fan of watching Cady slide his cock totally out of her mouth.
Though he did like that she did it to use that mouth to work her way up his stomach and chest.
And he very much liked it when her lips hit his and he felt her adjust to straddle his hips.
But she didn’t kiss him.
He put hands to her hips, sliding one in and up her spine and sliding one in the other way to hit a different target.
Both hands arrested when the fog of goodness that was Cady giving him head drifted away and he processed the look in her eyes.
“No condom,” she whispered.
Coert felt his lips curl up.
Oh yeah.
Simpatico.
But his lips also asked, “You sure?”
“I’m sure,” she said softly. “You sure?”
He felt a different kind of burn hit his gut as he took hold of her, lifted his head to give her a kiss, rolled her while he was doing it, got her to her back and slid inside.
Every time.
Christ.
Every single time.
Heaven.
Once he was planted, he murmured, “I’m sure.”
That was when Cady’s lips curled up.
He hitched a knee and thrust deep, driving a gasp between Cady’s lips and feeling that gasp drive up his balls through his cock.
“She’s a girl, she’s Grace,” he said against her mouth.
“Okay, honey.”
“It’s a boy, he’s Dean,” he told her.
Her fingers clutched his hair, her legs clutched his thighs, her hips lifted to take each of his strokes and her arm around his back held tight.
“Whatever you want. You get to name them.”
He moved inside her faster, and since she was being so agreeable, he declared, “And the ring I’m giving you on your birthday isn’t a birthday present. It’s an engagement present.”
That got another gasp and not only because on his last word he went in hard.
“Ho . . . kay,” she forced out between two thrusts.
“Yeah?” he pushed in more ways than one.
“Whatever you want,” she breathed, trying to take his mouth in a kiss.
He withheld, remarking, “Setting a precedent here to get what I want,” he slid in and started grinding, “when I’m giving you what you want.”
Her nails dug into his back and his hips flexed into hers in response.
“Stop being annoying,” she warned.
“You love it when I’m annoying,” he replied.
“Which is also annoying,” she told him.
He smiled.
He felt the smile fade as he watched her heated eyes get hotter but nothing could burn away the love that shone from there.
“Grace,” he whispered.
She pressed her lips to his and whispered back, “Dean.”
He slanted his head and slid his tongue inside.
Minutes later, Cady tightened all around him and moaned down his throat.
Minutes after that, Coert buried himself deep and groaned down hers.
Dean wasn’t made that night.
He was made two nights later in Cady’s bed at the lighthouse.
On her birthday.
When it happened, Cady wore a diamond at her neck.
And one on her left finger.
Other than that, she and Coert wore nothing at all.
Two weeks after that, Coert and Janie moved Cady into their house.
Precisely, Coert, Jake, Mickey and Junior moved Cady into their house.
This was because Cady was dressed as a fairy godmother and Janie was dressed as a mermaid, while Josie was dressed as a film star, Amy was dressed as Snow White, Alyssa was dressed (it could only be described) as a slutty Greek goddess, and even Midnight had Supergirl’s cape on.
So they were no help at all.