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Erica’s face softened again. “Yes. I didn’t have to even fight it. Just was all ready for me.”
“There’s a love.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “As if it would be any other way. Leo knows exactly where he wants to be.”
She boosted herself up on his massive forearm and hissed out a breath as she slowly settled on the mattress. “They make these things for tall people.”
“Instead of little feisty women.” Jake pulled the blankets back. “There you are.” He tucked them around her and settled just behind her on the bed. “We’ll never get him back from your mother.”
Erica snuggled into him. “Probably not.”
I quietly shuffled my way around the crowd of onlookers trying to get a look at the baby. The voices were a hum of pure happiness and awe. The guys from the firehouse weren’t quite sure what to do with a baby, but they were happy to crowd around my mother. And Bonnie was more than happy to preen as she showed off her grandbaby.
I spotted Jared out in the hallway. I looked back at my sister to see if she needed me. I knew she didn’t, but it was my job to make sure. I was the baby of the family, but this was a big day. One full of bright gold bubbles of happiness.
And I wasn’t really sad. Okay, maybe a little sad. Childbirth might never be a part of my life.
That was just the way it was.
I caught Erica’s gaze just before I slipped through the door. She gave me a little finger wave and blew me a kiss. I did the same and closed the door behind me.
I spotted a nurse shaking her head as she came charging down the hall. “That is more than the allowed visitors.”
Jared grabbed my hand and we both escaped down the hall. “I should stop in and see my dad.”
He shook his head. “He escaped to the back of the building. Adam smuggled in a Cuban cigar.”
“Why, Sheriff, you allowed smoking laws to be broken?”
Brooks shrugged. “I’m off-duty.”
“Well, well, a new Sheriff Brooks is in town.”
“I already broke with protocol by bringing you in my cruiser and using the lights and sirens. What’s a little stogie off the property lines?”
I shoved down all the twisted emotions that had been barreling through me for the last four hours. My best friend looked happy. His shoulders were usually so stiff with the weight of the town on them. But this Jared had crinkles near his eyes as he stared down at me.
I needed to take this minute—maybe an hour—and just love him.
While I still could.
“Luna told me I could pick up the baby at seven. They were introducing her to the very old version of Rudolph and maybe the Grinch.”
“Sounds like a party.”
I stepped closer to him. “Think you can play hooky for a while longer?”
He curled his hand around my hip. “What did you have in mind?”
“Take me home and find out.”
Twenty-Three
It took us a few minutes to get out of the birthing center. We were able to sneak by the waiting room, but the next wave of Ramos family members caught us as we were getting on the elevator.
Bee was interrogated for details and dutifully explained how perfect and beautiful Leo Enrique Mills was. Naturally, a bit of the Ramos family lineage got thrown in there with the very Anglo-Saxon name of Mills.
And of course there was talk of a bet as to how long the baby took to be born. I tried to block out the details.
Like Bee’s cousins, I winced at the talk of stitches and drugs—or lack thereof.
