Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (31 page)

“Working so hard is how she ended up pregnant,
if I recall correctly,” Tuck joked. Addie had asked questions about where her
brother had come from, and we had tried to answer them accurately, but not
exactly in graphic terms. Mom, Dad, and Tuck had found out about the
explanation, and it had become a family joke
—
with comments about my “work ethic” and Cade’s
“hard labor” flying right over my daughter’s head.

Tuck went to work emptying the basket; it was
early in the growing season yet, so I’d been busy clearing out the pantries for
the bounty to come. There was a beet salad, some chicken salad, fresh bread
that I’d baked off that morning, some cheese and hard-boiled eggs, and a few
other odds and ends from the pantry
—
even some hand-pies with the leftover
strawberry-rhubarb filling mom and I had put away the year before.

All the while, Tuck and Cade were chatting
about the problem they’d been working on when I’d arrived. I shook my head,
smiling to myself. Everything seemed to have come together right about the time
that Tuck and Cade had discussed
—
and gone through with
—
jointly investing in the farm. It had made it
possible for Dad to buy up a little more land to expand the fields, which would
mean that Cade and I could get half of the property one day, and Tuck would get
the other half. Of course, my brother and my lover were going to work the lands
together, but splitting up the farm meant that everyone had a little bit of
space.

But as I watched two of the most important men
in my life chatting like old friends, I couldn’t help feeling amused. “You
know, Cade, we should probably just go ahead and go to the justice of the
peace,” I said, cutting into their conversation as I nibbled on some bread with
chicken salad.

“What? I thought you wanted a big wedding,” he
said, frowning in confusion. I grinned.

“Well you and Tuck are already acting like
brothers, so we’re practically married already,” I pointed out. “We just need
the paperwork done.” We’d talked a few times about a wedding, especially once
I’d gotten pregnant with our future son months before. Cade had wanted to plan
the wedding as soon as possible, mindful of my reputation, but I’d already had
one child out of wedlock. Having another with the man I loved
—
the man who was staying by my side
—
wasn’t going to damage my reputation.

When I’d insisted that I was not going to walk
down the aisle with a big, pregnant belly straining at the front of my wedding dress,
Cade had backed off of the idea. At that, I was starting to think that I wanted
as simple a ceremony as possible, maybe not even at the church.

“We’re going to have a proper wedding, as soon
as that guy is out of your belly and you’re recovered,” Cade said, nodding at
me. I smiled.

“Fine, fine,” I said. “We have to do that
paperwork, too.” I didn’t say what paperwork in particular, but Cade and Tuck
both knew. Cade had decided to formally adopt Addie, and we’d agreed amongst
all of us that she didn’t need to know that there had ever been another father
in her life other than him.

That reminded me of Titan. The last I’d heard
about him in town, he’d moved to the west coast, somewhere in Oregon, chasing
after yet another woman after the last one dumped him.

I hadn’t heard from him in person in more than
a year. He had tried to get in touch once more, insisting that he really
did
want to have a part in Addie’s life,
but I had stood firm, and I’d talked to his parents about the fact that I
wanted them to encourage Titan not to try again. He wasn’t interested in his
own daughter as anything other than a bargaining chip with me. I’d had his
parents mail him the paperwork to renounce any parental rights to Addie, and
I’d gotten them back about two months later.

From then on, I’d considered Titan out of my
life permanently, and out of my daughter’s life, too.

“So how’s the planning going on the new
house?” Tuck sat back on the blanket, sipping his iced tea. Cade looked proud
at the question.

“It’s coming along really well,” he replied.
Since Cade had worked in construction for so many years before coming to work
for my dad, he knew more than enough people to help him build us a new house.
It was going to be on the other end of the property, the new addition Dad had
bought a year and a half before, the part that I was slated to inherit with
Cade.

We had agreed that we wanted our own place
—
a real place, not just a guest house,
somewhere we could raise Addie and her coming little brother. Cade had been meeting
with friends for weeks, explaining what he needed. Since he had a stake in the
farm’s profits instead of taking a regular salary, and I had my own stake as
well, we’d gone in on the cost of it together and we could afford to get
exactly what we wanted.

“They think it’s going to be done by the time
harvest is here,” I told my brother. “The architect did the design at a
discount as a favor for Cade, and the foreman is giving us a good rate on the
building.”

It was hard for me to believe, but by the time
that harvest came, I was going to have a new life, a new baby, and a new house.
On top of it all, I was going to have a man who loved me to share it all with.
Even a few years before, when I’d first met Cade, I never would have imagined
that my life could change in such a short time; I hadn’t even thought that I
would be in a serious relationship before my daughter was in school.

I had seen a lot of good things come out of
the ground at the farm, but this year’s harvest was going to be a particularly
good one.

The
End

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TRY
– THE COMPLETE SERIES

By
Nella Tyler

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Nella Tyler

PART 1

Chapter One - Mackenzie

Fifteen minutes after work ended for the
day, I made my way to my favorite bench, not far from the children’s physical
therapy center where I worked. It was cold outside, of course, but I’d been
stuck in the stuffy, heated office for long enough that it was a nice change,
especially with a hot drink in my hands to keep them from freezing in my
gloves. I sat down and took a sip of the thick, sweet hot chocolate, looking
into Amundsen Park. It was late enough—and dark enough—that the park itself was
mostly deserted, but the quiet was nice.

I took another sip of my drink and thought
about Thanksgiving; it had seemed to come so much faster than usual this year,
and I’d been taken by surprise when the office announced the closure.
Nobody—least of all kids—wanted to do physical therapy on Thanksgiving, and
very few people wanted to do it the day after. The holidays were a little
different; with vacation happening and parents trying to get their shopping
done, they were more than happy to schedule as many sessions as their insurance
would allow. All day at work I had been debating whether or not to put myself
on the on-call list for overtime during the week of Christmas; I had a few days
to make up my mind still, but I didn’t know how I felt.

I sighed, snuggling deeper into my coat,
trying to convince myself to get up and start for home. I had a ton of shopping
to do—and of course, with Thanksgiving being over, and the first full week of
the holiday season starting, it was going to be a madhouse anywhere I wanted to
go. I was tired just thinking about it, especially after a long day of working
with kids who were almost frantic between one school holiday and another. I
grinned to myself as I drank down some more hot chocolate, remembering little
Ruby-Lee; she had made a lot of progress since I had started working with her
three months before, and she had wanted to show off the fact that she could
actually walk a straight line finally—by trying to run along a balance beam set
on the floor until she’d nearly twisted her ankle.

Helen, who’d come in with unbearable
sciatic nerve pain, was starting to make progress too. It made my heart ache to
have to tell her that she wasn’t likely to ever be able to continue her ballet
instruction—at least, not enough for her to become a professional danger—but
she was slowly coming to terms with the idea on her own. The twelve-year-old
girl had given me a look while we went through the back stretches at the
beginning of her session and said, “They’re doing
The Nutcracker
starting this week. I’m already too old to play half
of the parts and too young to play the rest of them.” I had given her a quick
hug and told her that there were a lot of things she could still do; the fault
in her spinal alignment that caused her sciatica wasn’t something that could really
be cured—but at least she could get back into dance for fun if she kept moving
along at the rate she had been.

My phone vibrated in my pocket,
interrupting my thoughts, and I cringed as I slipped my glove off to answer it.
I really—really—wanted a pair of smartphone gloves, but they were so expensive
that I hadn’t bought myself a pair yet.
Add
it to your Christmas list,
I told myself as I slipped my phone out of my
pocket and tapped the accept icon, without even really looking to see who it
was calling me. I set my cup of hot chocolate down and balanced my phone on my
shoulder while I put my glove back on; it was way too cold to leave it off for
longer than a few seconds.

“Hello?”

“Hey Mackie-sweetie!” My mom’s voice
filled my ear and I smiled. “It’s officially the holiday season, and you know
what that means.”

“You’re asking everyone to turn in their
lists by tomorrow or risk having no Christmas presents?”

My mom laughed on the other end of the
line.

“That is one thing,” she agreed. “The
other is that I need to know whether I can expect you here for the holidays.” I
frowned, worrying at my bottom lip for a moment. I definitely wanted to see my
family for Christmas—and there would be a big New Year’s party to go to as
well—but I knew that if I spent as much time with them as possible over the
holidays, I’d have to avoid a bunch of questions about my love life…or more
accurately, my lack of a love life.

“I’m definitely planning on being there
for Christmas,” I said quickly. The office would be closed on Christmas day;
there wouldn’t be any reason for anyone to be there anyway. “And I’m hoping
that nothing will come up on New Year’s Eve that would mean I have to come in.
But in-between I’m not sure.”

“It was such a shame last year that you had
to leave during the week,” Mom said.

“Well we had a lot of people in,” I
pointed out. “Everyone was pulling overtime.” It wasn’t exactly true; I’d
signed up and along with everyone else who had signed up, I’d gotten called in.
It had been a bit of a relief; being around my family was nice, but the fact
that my cousin—three years younger than me— just had a baby and then had been
planning to get married in another three months, meant that the entire time I
was home everything became speculation about me being a bridesmaid yet again. I
had lost track of how many times I was asked
 
when it would be time for me to don a white dress of my own. “I’ll try
to make sure I can stay for the whole holiday,” I said.

The office didn’t entirely close between
Christmas and New Year’s, but we tried to schedule as few sessions as possible.
Of course, physical therapy required a lot of consistency, which is something
we explained to all of our young patients’ parents, but even people in the
medical field like to be with their families during the holidays if they can.

“You know, if you have a guest you’d like
to bring, we’ll welcome them too—and of course they can stay even if you have
to step into work for a few hours,” Mom suggested. I tried not to sigh at the
obvious undercurrent to her comment.

“If I have a guest, I’ll make sure to let
you know so that you’ll have enough food for five guests to come with me,” I
joked, brushing aside the question she hadn’t quite asked.

“We’ll make sure to have your favorite
cookies,” Mom continued on, and I let her sweep me along in conversation for a
while, listening to her plans for the different dishes she would serve for
Christmas. “I was thinking that maybe this year we could to a
feast of the seven fishes
theme,” Mom
told me.

“That sounds like fun—but probably pretty
expensive if everyone’s going to be there. What about the kids?”