Page 66 of Duke's Baby Deal
Jedrick let the bottle fall away onto the couch and squawked to be picked up and burped. I shoved myself backwards so I could sit upright and set him on my lap, patting and thumping until he let out a burp. He laughed at the noise and looked up at me.
“Yes, you’re a gross little critter aren’t you? I bet you’re planning a present for me at the other end too.”
Like clockwork, his face screwed up, and the sounds of butt grenades going off in his diaper made me shake my head and laugh at him.That’s my boy. Right on time.
I carried him over so I could scoop up my diaper bag and laid out my supplies, all the while trying to keep my sneaky little pup from escaping. He was good at that, and I shuddered to think what he’d be like when he was walking.
Smelly bum changed, I grabbed Isolde and performed a quick switch-out of dirty diaper for clean, then left them playing with their squeakies while I wet a cloth to clean them up, and brought the bottles over to the sink so I could wash them once the pups went down for their nap. It was a nice day. Maybe I’d take them to the park to crawl around in different grass for a while. I was going stir crazy anyway, even with visits from Bax and Jason and Rosie.
So I dressed them in nice outfits, some of the new stuff, picking out gifts from packmembers so that they could see them being used, restocked the diaper bag and threw it over my shoulder, and headed out with the twins.
I found Jason beside the playground, lounging in the shade of a cherry tree. He waved and I walked over to join him. Seb was chewing on something that I thought was the piece of ice wrapped in cloth that Jason had been talking about before. I’d have to keep that in mind. Mine hadn’t started yet, but Isolde had been drooling more than usual the past couple of days, so it couldn’t be far off. Macy was playing with cups of sand in the nearby sandbox.
“Going crazy stuck in the house?” Jason asked me.
“You know it.” I let the twins down onto his blanket and dropped my bag beside his. “I’m hoping they’ll tire themselves out and then I can get some work done around the house. My mother keeps coming over to clean and I’m getting twitchy.”
“Tell her no.”
“Because it’ll hurt her and I’ll feel guilty and Dad will be mad.”
“She’s a big girl.”
I shrugged. I only had a month left before we moved outside walls. I could put up with it for that long, then I had four wonderful years at least before I had her hovering over me again. It was annoying though, and I sometimes felt like she thought I was still twelve, the way she went on. “I feel like I should be working this summer, since I won’t be around in the winter, but Becca keeps telling me to go home and enjoy my babies.”
“She’s right. You’ll be back to work soon enough.” He jumped to his feet and strode over to the sandbox to take something from Macy and toss it away. “Pebble,” he said as he sat down again. “I’m going to miss this time with them once it’s over. It felt strange not to be in the gardens every day.”
“They looked good the last time I went for a walk that way.” I grabbed for Jedrick as he made a break for freedom, handing him a wooden baton with spinning rings on it. Another one of Duke’s projects. I was beginning to wonder when he slept.
“Yeah, they’re doing pretty well. Not as good as last year, but we haven’t had the weather we had then either.”
I glanced sideways at him while Isolde hung from my fingers, bouncing in place like there was music only she could hear, and debating asking him if he really could control the weather and make the plants grow faster and healthier.I’dnever seen any sign of True Omega powers, but I had to admit, he did have a touch with the gardens. And who was to say that that touch wasn’t True Omega working for the pack, so we had more food, and fresher, and a new way to bring human money into the pack once he got his business up and running. But I suspected that even if he was having some sort of ‘magical’ effect on the gardens, he wouldn’t admit it. He tried hard to ignore that True Omega stuff. “How’s Seb doing?”
He grinned and glanced over at his little boy. A stray beam of sunlight lit the bright red hair on the baby’s head like it was on fire. “He’s doing well. Starting to let go of the furniture and try to take a step. Doesn’t always go so well, but he’s determined. A lot of his Papa in him.”
“Another redhead,” I commented.
“Just how I like them. I think I have a type.” Jason grinned rakishly at me. “How are you two doing?”
“We’re fine. Duke’s starting to work on beds for the twins in what little spare time he has. We’re not sure if we’re going to be staying here during summers or staying in the city.” I’d be just as happy staying in the city, to be honest. At least, I thought so. Duke was being kind of quiet about that idea. “And he’s started a kitchen table for us.”
“Nice. Well, we’ll miss you two around here in the summer, though I can see why you might need to stay there.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a tiny hat to plop on Seb’s head. “There. If that sun’s going to stay on you, you have to be covered. Just in case you got Papa’s hair, and my skin.” He watched the baby chewing on his ice cube for a moment, then turned back to me. “Actually, I was kind of asking how things werebetweenyou and Duke. But you don’t have to say if you don’t want to.”
Oh. “I, uh, well. I mean, I do what I can, what he’ll let me.” My face lit up, brighter than Seb’s hair. “It makes him uncomfortable because, you know, I don’t…” Oh fuck, I couldn’t, just couldn’t talk about this.
“Yeah, I know. I heard all the stories growing up. The girls filled me in totally on how I’d be a slave to the man who mated me. Not that I’d have any interest in anyone other than Mac anyway. But I thought it might have worn off a little, since he wasn’t around. Bax said it was about six months after Patrick died when he realized he wasinterestedin Abel.”
I shook my head. “Nothing.” Which was a depressing thought. “Bax and I talked about it, about a month after, but I don’t know if it’ll work for me. I mean, Justin’s still alive.” I let Isolde sit down and dug into the bag for another toy, this one a plastic rattle that had been passed down to me from a cousin on the other side of my family from Mac. She grabbed it and immediately stuck it in her mouth.
Jason looked down and picked at a blade of grass lying on the blanket in front of him. “Yeah.”
“I told him that he could leave me if it didn’t fix itself,” I blurted out. “I don’t know what else to do about it. He lets me touch him—” My tongue tripped over itself for a moment, then I made myself slow down. “I want to want him. Holland told me that if I wanted to want Duke, I would have to think at least a little bit about Justin, but I can’t. I just can’t. He doesn’t deserve that.”
Jason reached out to me. “Hey, it’s okay. You’ll have a heat in November. Maybe that will change things. Don’t give up on this, Bram. We’ll find a way through it.”
We. He’d said we. I stared at him in astonishment. He did think of me as part of the sub-pack. The omega pack. I nearly laughed, but I wanted to cry, too. I wished I could blame it on pregnancy hormones, but yeah, I was just a weeper. “I thought you guys all thought I was a kid.”
He smiled. “Bax and I aren’t that much older than you.”
