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Then Jeremy raised his voice above all the others. “Nobody told me the babies’ names.”
A chorus of laughter filled the room because none of them had thought to ask.
Evan kissed the baby wrapped in pink. “This is Savannah.”
Paige resettled the baby in her arms. “And this is Keegan.”
Cammie whispered into Dane’s ear, “Welcome, Maverick generation two-point-one.”
* * *
The silence in the car as they drove felt comfortable, especially as Cammie’s scent filled the air. For the first time since she’d come back—or maybe the second, third, or fourth time—Dane acknowledged how much he’d missed her.
Their working relationship had always been exceptional. She ran his life smoothly. Even more, her brilliant ideas fueled his work. They fueled him. Thus the need for the rules. And the reason that, even as he lay only steps away from her at any of the houses or flats or condos they shared, he never actually crawled into her bed.
And he wouldn’t now. But still, this five-month ordeal had gotten under his skin. Just as that tender scene in Paige’s birthing suite had been a topsy-turvy moment. In the past, he’d offhandedly thought babies were cute and children could be adorable. But witnessing the love lighting up that room, the joy of each and every man, the sweetness of the women, Dane felt his innards slip-sliding. Seeing the pride on Evan’s face as he’d looked at his newborns and the reverence with which he’d gazed at his wife, as if she was the first woman ever to have given birth, Dane’s priorities had turned into a mishmash. His heart had flipped over in his chest at the gooey, love-swept glances among all of them in that room, knowing in his gut they would return home tonight to reaffirm their love.
He wanted what these Mavericks had. He’d mused over it at the soccer game, and at the signing dinner, he’d gazed at Susan and Bob and the clan they’d brought together. He wanted his family to experience the same phenomenon.
Cammie touched his hand. “You’re so quiet.” Her soft laughter caressed him. “Did seeing the new babies scare you to death?”
Dane couldn’t laugh. He could only answer truthfully. Even if he held back the genuine depth of his feeling. “I have to admit I was a little jealous.”
Her touch vanished like a phantom into the night. “Jealous? But you haven’t had a serious relationship since I’ve known you.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I’ve just never found the right woman.”
He’d dated, but they’d been more like flings than relationships. No woman had erased the memory of that one night with Cammie. Was that what he was searching for? A woman who could make him forget how amazing that night had been? A woman who could surpass it?
“I like them as a family,” he tried to explain. “They’re a powerful force because they’ve created such a cohesive unit.”
“But so have you. With Ava and Troy and Clay and Gabby.”
He shook his head slowly, barreling down the highway toward Pebble Beach, toward the home he shared with her. He had only one answer to offer. “We don’t have anyone like Susan and Bob Spencer. We never had an example of how it should be between a couple who totally love each other. Who want to raise a family together.” Parents who didn’t leave and who didn’t feel their children’s love was a burden.
She sat silently for a long moment, as if she had to recall the scene in the hospital room—Susan, Bob, the love, the tears, the joy. “I get it. It’s like me and Uncle Lochlan. We were so close, and I loved him so much. But I still miss my parents. I miss my mom even more now that I’m grown up.”
Dane no longer missed his parents. But he missed what he’d never had—parents like Susan and Bob.
Then she added breathlessly, “That’s why you wanted this merger. It’s more than just the business ventures. Even more than the respect you have for them. It’s Susan and Bob and the family they’ve created.”
He couldn’t quite admit that to her. Not now. He was still too raw with the emotions that swamped him as he’d watched that special family in that joyous room with those beautiful and much-wanted new babies.
He told Cammie the first lie he ever had. “I’m really not sure. I need to think about it more.”
That part, at least, was true. He had to sit with these feelings.
And with the new feelings Cammie’s return had brought up in him.
* * *
The weekly family barbecue was held at Sebastian Montgomery’s Hayward Hills estate. Charlie Ballard’s fabulous metalwork was all over the property—burbling fountains, wind spinners, a magnificent blue crane standing in a pond, sculptures of woodland animals, mythical creatures, and ancient beasts, some large and in-your-face, some small and barely visible unless you looked carefully.
