Epilogue
“You guys okay if I take Layla to the beach for an hour?” Charlie was cradling her daughter and bouncing her on his hip as though he was a pro and not a bachelor.
“Make sure to cover her in sunscreen,” Jonah said. “It’s in the go—diaper—bag I packed.”
“Cool. Cool.” Charlie scooped up the bag. “Do you guys need more than an hour?”
“Yes, but he gets antsy if he’s away from her for longer than that.”
Charlie laughed. “What a softie.”
“Thanks, Charlie.” Carla lowered her voice so that only Jonah could hear. “Takes one to know one.”
Charlie had Layla in her stroller and out the door before Carla turned to her man with lustful intent.
“Are you at all disturbed by the fact that he’s probably using our daughter to meet women?” Jonah’s brow creased with worry.
Carla shook her head again. She wasn’t upset—Charlie was now family. And if it gave her an hour alone with her man, she wasn’t about to complain.
“Layla will be fine with her Uncle Charlie.” Carla tried to tug Jonah down the hall into their bedroom. They had it to themselves for an hour, two, if they were lucky.
Jonah grumbled. “The last time he watched her, he gave her chocolate.”
“Babe, you have to lighten up. She’s going to get food that we don’t keep in the house eventually, and it wasn’t that much.” Carla turned to face Jonah and slid her hand beneath his T-shirt, rubbing at the skin above his jeans. “We need some alone time.”
Layla was six months old, and between a new baby and her new job hosting a travel show with Jonah, Carla didn’t have enough of her man these days. Although her mother and sister would take the baby with nothing but a phone call, Jonah didn’t like being away from her.
“I thought he was here to talk about the Fiji show.” He shook his head. “I don’t like the nanny the show sent last time.”
It might make her a sick puppy, but it made her so hot when Jonah was an overprotective papa bear. She knew that he was worried that he would be a crap father before the baby was born, but he was a natural.
She pulled him by the belt toward their bedroom. He stopped and put his hands on his hips.
“Why do you do that?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Get all worried about our daughter when you know it makes me so horny?”
Jonah huffed out a breath, and she felt the resistance drain out of him like a leaky tire. He turned on his gazillion-dollar sexy smile, and she knew she’d won. She pulled harder on his shirt and he leaned down to kiss her.
He didn’t kiss her like a concerned father; he kissed her like a caveman, claiming her. She ate it up, pressed her body against his. When she felt his erection, she knew that all of his resistance was for show.
She pulled back and pinched his nipple through his shirt. “You did that on purpose.”
“Ow. What?”
“You pretended to be worried about leaving Layla with Charlie for a minute to turn me on.”
He didn’t deny it. He ran his palms up and down her sides. “You got a problem with that?”
Carla shook her head, and pressed herself against him then. He palmed her ass, lifted her up. “We should get into the bedroom.”
“Hold on.” He pulled her closer, smelled her hair.
“Resume the kissing, please.”
Jonah did one better, throwing her over his shoulder and dragging her into the bedroom. He dropped her on the bed, and then fell to his knees between her legs. He flipped up her short sundress and divested her of her panties with one hand.
“Are you in a hurry?
He pressed her legs open and put a palm on her belly. She wasn’t back to what she had been before, but he didn’t seem to care about a belly pouch. Meeting Jonah, being with him, having his baby had torn off the mask she’d worn her whole life. It had ripped her apart and reconstituted her into someone else, someone who had more to give than she’d ever given herself credit for.
“You seemed to need to get off, princess.” He trailed kisses up her inner thighs, until she arched into the place he held her down. “I’ll always get you what you need.”
And then he did.
* * * *
Carla was a high-maintenance woman, but Jonah didn’t give a fuck. She was his, and she’d given him the best thing. At first, even after they’d decided to give this a shot, he’d been terrified of being a father. But, as soon as he saw Layla’s wrinkly little pink face, he was done worrying about how he would do.
All he cared about now were his two girls.
That’s why he did a rush job on his and Carla’s quickie. He wanted his girls together, both where he could see them. He’d make sure Carla got taken care of later, when the baby went to bed.
When Charlie got back, he had company—most of the Hernandez family. Jonah’d had a hard time getting used to constant visits from his in-laws—or future in-laws—when he’d first moved down to Miami.
He didn’t even get to hold Layla and make sure Charlie hadn’t done any permanent damage before Alana scooped her up.
Layla was the most agreeable little lady in the world. She was certainly passed around to more relatives in the next hour than any other baby. Even hard-assed Hector took a whole fifteen minutes, and that was after she tugged on his beard.
He found Carla in the kitchen. “What are they doing here, and when are they going to leave?”
“They miss us, and we’re leaving again in a few days.” She grabbed a beer from the fridge for him and winked. “Make nice.”
She sipped a glass of wine. The way the waning light hit her hair filled his heart so much that he would have pulled away from it once. “I love you.”
“I know.” She winked.
“Marry me.”
Then she choked. “We—we already have a baby together.”
“That’s why you should marry me.” He ran his fingers through her hair at the back of her neck. “We’ll do it in Fiji. Use the producers and Layla as witnesses. You don’t even have to tell anybody we did it.”
He knew Carla might be embarrassed that she hadn’t ended up with the right guy who had the right job and the perfectly conventional life she’d planned for. It surprised him when she said, “Oh, I’m telling everyone.”
“Just not your family right now. Then, they’ll never leave.”