The emotion had been here since the Benedicts arrived, frantic. It had filled the room when the Drs. Jessop had worked together to bring this tiny new life into the world. And she realized, as she assisted the doctors, she finally understood what Shirley had been saying, all these years. It had always been a mystery to Jillian how any of this—this ménage lifestyle—could possibly work in the long run. Now she had the answer, a simple answer she wouldn’t have believed if she hadn’t discovered it for herself.
Love.
Love made it all work, and love made it all worthwhile.
Beside her, she felt Matt shift his attention to Robert. “I’ll follow the transport van and wait for you so that you can have a ride back home, Dr. Robert.” And then he grinned.
Robert smiled even as he said, “What, you’re not going to call me ‘Doc Junior’ anymore?”
Jillian grinned. She’d heard how the cousins had begun to tease her two lovers the moment they hit town.
Matt shook his head in the negative. “Not after today, man. Thank you. Seriously.”
Jillian heard the strain in the deputy’s voice. When she looked up, she saw the sheen of unshed tears.
None of the men in this town seemed to shy away from showing real, honest emotion. Wasn’t that something?
Robert seemed to understand that, like Kate, Matt needed to express gratitude. “You’re welcome. And thanks for the ride. I do appreciate it.” Robert looked over at the new dads. “I need to be in the back of the van with the girls. There’ll be room for only one of you. Sorry.”
“No sweat,” Alex said. “I’ll be following Matt, driving the Jag so we have our car there.”
Matt rocked back on his heels. “We’ll have to ask Aunt Anna how often over the years the firstborn has been a girl. I don’t think it’s happened very much at all.”
Josh shrugged. “We didn’t want to know the baby’s gender ahead of time, and we couldn’t be happier that our first baby is a girl. She’s as beautiful as her mama.” Josh bent over and kissed Penelope.
Matt said, “Of course you’re delighted, and you’re absolutely right. She’s a beauty, and likely to grow up to be just as much of a stunner as her mom. I’m just waiting for that time, fifteen, sixteen years from now, when she discovers boys or—more likely—they all discover
her
.”
“That’s not going to be a problem,” Alex said that without taking his eyes off his daughter. In the corner, David snickered, and beside the stretcher, Robert seemed to be fighting his own smile.
Jillian had never had any siblings of her own, but she certainly recognized sibling teasing sibling when she heard it.
“So,” Matt said, “what? You’ve already got a mission statement, a spreadsheet, and action plan for when the boys start hitting on her?”
“Nope,” Josh said. “None of the above.”
“Don’t need them,” Alex said.
“Just need our shotguns,” Josh said.
“Exactly,” Alex agreed. “She won’t be allowed to date until she’s thirty, anyway.”
Matt chuckled. “Yeah, good luck with that plan. Geeks.”
“Don’t you worry, sweetheart.” Bernice kissed her new granddaughter’s brow. “The women of Lusty stick together. I know how to handle my boys, and I’ll make sure you do, too.”
“Ooh, shot down by a pro,” David said. Then he made the “shoot” and “crash and burn” hand signs and sound effects, and Jillian laughed with everyone else.
Not long after, the medical transport service van arrived. Jillian gave the drivers credit. They took one look at the assembled masses in the waiting room and politely pushed their wheeled stretcher into exam room one. Jillian helped Bernice and the doctors get Penelope settled on the gurney. The new fathers tucked little Ellie in beside her mom, and then the paramedics moved the patients slowly through the crowd out toward their van. The amassed throng of Benedicts, Kendalls, and Jessops, along with the Parkers, and myriad other cousins, made way for the procession. Jillian heard oohs and aahs as mom and baby passed, as well as softly murmured words of congratulations. She recognized many of the people there, and knew in time, she’d know them all.
She thought Robert was holding up well, too, considering how many times his back got slapped as he followed the stretcher.
David stayed behind at the clinic, of course, because they didn’t want to leave the place unattended during hours. Soon, family members began to trickle out, most of them planning to gather at
Lusty Appetites
in a couple of hours, to celebrate. The clinic was slated to close in a half an hour, at three thirty.
“Come over when you can,” Kelsey said. “I think we should start another family tradition with an ‘impromptu’ birthday party, even if I
am
a waitress short at the moment.” Then Kelsey’s eyes widened. “Oh, shoot, I wonder if Isabelle called Michelle and told her about the baby?”
Jillian quickly made the connection. Isabelle Parker was Michelle’s mother and the head pharmacist at the drugstore—which just happened to be across the street from the restaurant.
“Called her? Why, isn’t she in town? Where is she?” David asked.
“Oh my gosh, you don’t know? Man, the gossip mill has really been falling down on the job lately.”
Jillian gaped as Kelsey filled them in, not only about Michelle’s romance, but Joe Grant being shot. David asked Kelsey which hospital, and then said, “I know someone on staff in the ICU, there. I’ll give him a call and get a full update on Joe’s condition.”
“Henry called a little while ago. He flew Peter and Michelle to Dallas in the helicopter last night. The men are on their way back now. Henry said Joe’s awake, alert, and asked Michelle to marry him.” Kelsey grinned. “She said yes, of course. Well, I better get back. There’s going to be a flood at the restaurant, and I need go and prepare for that.”
The silence, once they were alone, seemed almost surreal. David came over and wrapped his arms around her.
Jillian snuggled into his embrace with a deep, appreciative sigh.
“There wasn’t time earlier to tell you, baby, but you did one hell of a job today. You anticipated our every move, making sure we had what we needed when we needed it. We couldn’t have helped to bring little Ellie into the world without you.”
“I’m glad I could be a help. It was pretty exciting, and I was pumped. But at the moment, I’m a little whipped.”
“Me, too.”
“I can see why you became an ob-gyn. That was incredible.” She lifted her head from his chest, got up on her tiptoes, and kissed him.
“Go make your phone call. I’ll just tidy up room one, and then I’m going to make some coffee.”
“Coffee, yes. That sounds like a plan.”
They’d stayed and kept the clinic open, but no one, apparently, needed a doctor. They’d had only two appointments scheduled for that afternoon, and Jillian had quickly rebooked them for another day as the doctors had prepped Penelope for her emergency C-section.
“Robbie just texted. They’re on their way back. He should be home in less than an hour.”
“The hospital is keeping Penelope and Ellie for a day or two?”
“At least three—not only because of the surgery, of course, but also because of the less than completely ideal conditions under which it was performed.”
Jillian almost asked David about Robert, about what he sensed that was different in him, but she didn’t. As they headed back to the house, she thought that the two of them were engaging in the most inane, albeit polite, conversation ever.
“Huh. We have a visitor.” David raised one eyebrow and shot her a quick glance. “Anyone you know?”
Jillian shook her head. And then she remembered a telephone conversation she’d listened through the day before.
“Would that be Daisy?”
“Christ, I forgot all about her. Of course it would be.”
Jillian studied the young woman who rose to her feet from her perch on the porch steps as they exited the car. The woman had short amber hair, a pixie face, with arms and legs that looked…poetic. Daisy Kendrick looked as ethereal as a summer breeze.
She smiled when she saw them, but Jillian sensed something infinitely sad in her smile.
“Master Robert?”
“No, I’m David. You’re Daisy, right?”
The young woman nodded. “Yes, Sir. Daisy Kendrick. Master Jordan said you’d be expecting me.”
“We were. I apologize, it’s been a hectic day. Robert will be here shortly. We had an emergency at the clinic, and he had to accompany our patient to the hospital. This is Jillian.”
Daisy nodded her greeting, but her eyes returned almost immediately to David. “I can wait out here, if you would rather, Master David?”
“Of course not,” Jillian said. “Come inside.” She didn’t get offended when the young woman looked to David for confirmation of the invitation. She had a sense that Daisy Kendrick was strung just about as tight as she’d seen anyone, ever.
She wondered if David noticed it, too.
David gestured for them to precede him into the house. When he closed the door behind him, he met Jillian’s gaze for just a moment, and then turned to Daisy.
“Would you like some sweet tea?”
“Thank you, Sir. I could go get it if you just tell me where it is?”
“Please relax, Miss Daisy. We don’t live the lifestyle twenty-four seven here. But if you feel you need to be of service, perhaps you could give Jillian a crash course on what life, as a submissive, is like.” Then he turned to Jillian, and kissed her sweetly. “You can go out on the back patio, baby. I’ll bring the tea out in a while.”
Jillian still had a dozen questions. Here was a golden opportunity to have some of them answered.
“Wonderful idea. We need lots of ice, please, David. It’s hot out this afternoon, even in the shade.
“Of course it is,” David said. “This is Texas, after all.”
The front door closed behind them, and the sound of the lock being shot echoed in the quiet house.
“Alone at last.”
Jillian smiled at Robert, completely agreeing with his sentiment and the bit of frustration behind it. There he stood by the door he’d just locked looking more mouthwateringly handsome than any man had a right to look—and seriously in need of a hug.
“Don’t you know that delayed gratification is good for the soul?” David asked. He wasn’t doing a very good job of suppressing his amusement.
Jillian hoped these two men never lost their wonderful senses of humor, or the habit of ribbing each other.
“Normally I agree with that,” Robert said. “But I needed so much for us to be just the three of us together, and I needed it right after little Ellie made her debut.”
Jillian followed her instincts and walked over to him. He opened his arms, enclosing her within them. She laid her head on his chest.
“It’s been an incredible day, start to finish.” She took a moment to listen to his heart beat. Strong and steady, she knew it was a sound she would take the opportunity to listen to, just like this, every chance she got for the rest of her life.
He rubbed his hands up and down her back, and when she looked up at him, he loosened his hold of her.
“Something happened today, didn’t it? I mean aside from the fact that you delivered Penelope’s baby, and met and counseled Daisy and then flew her out and got her settled in that so-called cabin, and then endured a hundred backslaps when we stopped in to the party at the restaurant. Above all of that, something else happened today, didn’t it?”
Robert raised one eyebrow and gave her that look he had, the one she’d secretly dubbed his Dom look, and said, “I had a bit of a personal epiphany—and I don’t think I was the only one, was I?”
Jillian shook her head in the negative. He wasn’t the only one to have had his eyes opened today.
“I thought so,” David said. “I caught both moments. That’s why I was grinning like a fool when Matt was standing in the doorway.”
Jillian didn’t want Robert to pull the standard, “ladies first” line on her, and she knew one surefire way to make him talk first. “You first, Sir. Please.”
A special kind of pleasure lit his eyes whenever she called Robert “Sir.” She made a note for future reference.
“All right. I think I need to tell you the entire story, however. And I’d like to do it someplace more comfortable than the front entrance hallway.”
Jillian stretched up and kissed his lips lightly. She reached out her right hand, and David took it. When he stepped closer, she kissed him, too. Then she grinned. “I know just the place.”
Less than ten minutes later, Jillian sighed as she settled back in the hot tub. She closed her eyes for a moment and simply focused on letting all her muscles relax.
“I think we’ve created a water nymph.”
She smiled at Robert’s words, and her smile widened as David chuckled. She let her hands and legs float on the water and was delighted when her lovers each took one of her hands.
“I make no apologies. This feels
wonderful,
especially after such a busy, busy day.” She sighed and then said, “Okay, spill it. Sir.”
Robert kissed her hand. Then he said, “I’ve always had the sense that, being the oldest, I was somehow responsible, beginning when I was a kid, for my siblings, and my cousins. As I got older, I extended that. No one made me feel that way, it was just…me. I wanted to be in charge, and often was in charge, not for the power trip, but to ensure that everyone had what they needed. That everyone was following the right path, and was okay, and taken care of, and safe.”