Page 86 of Mating of Convenience
“You don’t see a tattoo studio opening in Oceanport every day.”
“Yeah.” Raph reached out with his hand to stroke the fine hair that had begun growing on John’s head. The baby squealed and made to grab for his fingers. “You’ll be a good boy today, won’t you?” my mate cooed at him.
“Of course he will be,” I answered in John’s place. “Now go. We’ll be fine. “I gave my husband a kiss. I never thought I’d have to shoo him out of the house, but there we were. Honestly I’d always known Raph would be a great parent just from watching him interact with his siblings, but I hadn’t expected him to develop separation anxiety. I was pretty surehewas surprised too.
Finally, though, he shook himself out of it, made me promiseagainthat I would call him with any news, hugged our baby close one more time, and then he went on his way. I watched him go with a bemused smile.
“Wave daddy goodbye,” I told John, gently moving his little fist up and down. He seemed to find this funny and laughed, which made me laugh too. Little John was a happy baby for the most part. We were lucky in that regard, but I wasn’t going to let myself be fooled. Our son had inherited Raph’s green eyes—which I loved—but even more than that, I could see my mate’s fierce spirit in his gaze whenever he did get upset.
I predicted some terrifying temper tantrums in our future.
Nothing I couldn’t deal with, though.
My dad was already warning me of ‘the terrible twos’ and how bad I had been at that age and my neighbors all gave me funny looks when I told them I was going to be the one staying home with the baby, but really, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. I knew I could do it. I had two younger siblings who hadn’t been born until I was already a teenager. I knew what babies were like.
Ilovedbabies.
And I especially loved my son.
So what if I was an alpha?
Shouldn’t I get to be happy whatever way I wanted? Raph and I agreed we were going to do whatever was best for our family, even if our model of living was unconventional. So for the time being, I was going to be our child’s primary caretaker.
Which didn’t mean that I couldn’t visit my mate at work.
When lunch time rolled around, I packed some sandwiches for my mate, fed the baby and finally strapped him in the car seat only about forty minutes later than I’d planned.
I hadn’t told Raph that we were coming, so when I entered the studio, he was deep in conversation with a potential client. Or that was what I first thought. On closer look, the person he was talking to was his little brother Kevin. Both of their heads snapped up when I walked in and the bells above the door chimed.
“Oh, Nate! Johnny!” Raph tore himself away from his brother to greet both me and the baby with a kiss. “How have you been doing? Is everything alright? Did you bring me lunch?” He took the paper bag. “That was thoughtful of you!”
While he talked, Kevin slunk out of the studio behind me.
But I wasn’t going to be distracted. “You’re not about to tattoo your baby brother, are you?” I asked Raph as soon as Kevin was gone.
“No, I was trying to sell him some of Granny’s underwear,” Raph said and then he took John from me. “Did you miss Daddy? Daddy missed you!”
Our son responded by babbling something that sounded almost like agreement, but which was muffled when Daddy gave him another kiss.
“Seriously, Raph,” I tried. “You know you can’t tattoo—”
“I know I can’t,” he cut me off. “And I wouldn’t. He’s not eighteen yet and he doesn’t have parental consent. I was just showing him some designs.” Raphael let his gaze roam the studio and my eyes followed his. I wasn’t the tattoo enthusiast he was, but even I thought that the place had turned out very nicely. One of the walls displayed the run-off-the-mill designs you could get basically anywhere, but all of the rest of the space was dedicated to my mate’s own creations and they were all fantastic.
I could see how a teenager interested in getting some ink of his own would get excited just being here.
And I could totally see a teenage John getting excited too.
“What are you thinking about?” Raph asked. “You got that faraway look in your eyes just now.”
“You said you weren’t tattooing your brother because he lacks parental consent.”
“So?”
“You know in our son’s case, parental consent means—”
“Both parents consent. I know. Sheesh, turtle. Don’t worry.”
“So he’s not getting ink for his sixteenth birthday?”
