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“Do you want to be?” Again, he had to ask her what she meant. “Will you marry me? I’m jumping the gun here a little, but I don’t want this to end. We don’t have to be romantically or sexually involved or anything. Just like you said, two old people marrying so that they have each other.”
“You don’t love me.” She shook her head and smiled at him. “I don’t love you either. I like you. A great deal, but no, I don’t love you. Not to say that I someday might fall in love with you, but that’s not what we have now.” She agreed with him.
“Sure. I’ll marry you.” He laid his head back on the chair he was reclining in. “So long as you know that when I do fall in love with you, Toby, it will be the forever kind of love. When I fall in love with you, too, I want us to be able to do what we’re doing now, and nothing changes.”
“I can agree to that. How about children? I know that at that point, we’ll need to have sex. But for now, I was just wondering if children would be in our picture.” He looked over at her before closing his eyes again. “I guess we don’t have to have sex. I mean, adoption isn’t out of the question. But just curious.”
“I’d like some children. However, it’s not my choice as to if we have them. I fully believe that it’s your body and your decision to have them. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy seeing you heavy with our child, but that’s a long way off, don’t you think?” She told him how old she was. “I’m thirty, so I think we have a bit of time, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. To be honest with you, before I asked you to marry me, I was going to see if you’d father a child with me. I want a baby of my own. Two or three, as a matter of fact. Little versions of you and me.” When she laughed, he turned to her again. “I guess what I’m saying is that while I’d like to have you as my husband, I do. I would like to have some children right away.”
Standing up, he put out his hand to her. If she took it, he was going to take her to the bedroom of her choice to make love to her in. He didn’t know her schedule if she was ready to have a child or not, but he was willing to keep trying until they hit on the right time. She looked at his hand and then up at him.
“Would you mind calling your sister-in-law and having her file a marriage certificate for us? With your legal name? If we conceive today, I want to be able to tell our child that he or she was made while we were married. I know that it doesn’t usually work out that way, getting knocked up on the first try, but I would like it.” He asked her if she wanted him to sign anything, like a prenup. “You have money too, correct?”
“I do. Not as much as I think you do, but I have a few million.” She nodded and then asked him if he wanted her to sign a prenup. “No. Like I suggested, you have a great deal more money than I do. It seems nuts to have you sign something that says you get what I willingly donate to this family. I’m assuming that you and I would be a family after this.”
“Yes.” She took his hand into her much smaller one and smiled up at him. “You don’t act like you think that I’m insane. I mean, I proposed to you, offered you my body for procreation with only knowing each other for about a week. That’s not nuts to you?”
“No. I don’t…I didn’t say this before, Toby, but I could easily fall in love with you. Hell, I’ve never been in love before, so I could very well be on the edge of it now. There is so much about you that I look forward to every day. Seeing you, talking to you. Even just being in the same room with you is enough for me to be around you. Adding children and romance just seems to me, anyway, like the icing on the cake. I believe that we’ll be good for each other. Don’t you?” She nodded and laid her head on his chest when she stood up. It was then that he realized what the bell sounding was. “Toby, your phone is ringing.”
Toby had told him there were only three people who had the house phone number. The pizza place they ordered from, her attorney, and the nursing home. He had a feeling that it was the nursing home.
Going into the living room, then the great hall where she was standing, he took her hand when she put it out for him. As she talked to the person on the other end, he knew it was just as he thought. The home was calling about her grandfather. If that old man took today to die, he was going to be sorely disappointed in him. When she hung up the old-fashioned phone, she laid her head on his chest again. Holding her, he waited to see what he had to do to slay her dragons for her.
“That was the nursing home where my grandda is. He wants to see me. Now. I don’t want to go. I’m terrified he’s going to tell me he’s finally had enough and that he is going to die. If he does that, today of all days, I’m going to beat him silly.” Sebastian told her that he’d been thinking the same thing. Toby looked up at him. “Call your family. Tell them what we want, and we’ll tell grandda that he is going to miss so much if he decides that he’d rather be dead than a great-grandfather. The old poop.”
While he spoke to Caleb, telling him what he needed, he watched Toby stomp up the stairs to the second floor. Caleb was laughing so hard about something that he had to tell him to calm down twice before he could tell him the information that was needed to file their marriage certificate.
“I tell you what, Sebastian. You want to make the old man happy? There is a little guy at the hospital right now that has been abandoned. He’s four months old. I have his name right here.” He told Toby what was going on, and she seemed excited. He put it on speakerphone for her to hear, too. “His name is Kelly Tucker Garnett. His parents tried to raise him on their own, two kids themselves, and couldn’t do it. Before they did something really stupid—it doesn’t say what here, her mother told her to take him to the hospital or fire station and turn him in. He’s in good health and cute as a button. Or so I heard.”
The squeal that Toby made had him telling Caleb they would go and see him. After telling him that he’d call for them to make sure they didn’t have any trouble with leaving with him, too, Sebastian didn’t even bother telling him that he wasn’t that far ahead yet. Toby was nearly dragging him out of the house and to the car.
Chapter 3
Tucker watched the doorway. Toby was sure taking her time in coming to see him, he thought. But then, he’d told her not to come back anymore, and she might well not show up. It hadn’t occurred to him until just then that this might happen. Things had to be taken care of, and he wanted it done so that he could rest in peace. Like, he thought, that was going to be an option for him. Nothing was ever cut and dry anymore. There was forever some shits that wanted things to go his way. People. He hated them all.
Nightmares no longer plagued him nowadays. Thankfully. He’d get one now and then, just a little bit of the day that his beloved Hester had been taken from him along with their son and his family. Wiping at the tears that usually accompanied any thoughts that he had about that day, Tucker put his hankie away and looked out the window.
A woman and a man were headed this way with a child. Who would bring a kid to this place, he wondered. Nothing here but dying old people who have been abandoned by their families. They must want to get in good with someone with money. He supposed if they were bringing in a kid, they’d not technically abandoned anyone, but it was a sad and depressing place. Even the ones that used to be lively around here were nothing, but skin stretched over bones, sitting in chairs until it was time for the next rotation.
“Bed, chair, dining room, chair, dining room, chair then bed. Nothing to do but sit on my ass all day and think.” The woman next to him asked him who he was talking to. “Nobody. Go away.”
He hated too how rude he’d become over the last ten years or so. The first…he had to think how long he’d been in here, and it occurred to him that it had been over twenty years of his sitting around on his ass and not dying like he wanted to. Next month, his son and daughter-in-law would have been celebrating their thirtieth anniversary if they’d been alive. He and his missus would have been celebrating their fiftieth the following month. It hurt him again how much he’d missed with them all. All because some kid had come into the house when he’d not been—
“You must be Mr. Hayden. May I call you Tucker?” He asked him who he was. Not even hiding the fact that he was irritated and pissed off. “The nurse up front told us that you were a bit nasty…well, she said moody, but that was right nasty of you. My name is Sebastian Gerald. I’m here with your—”
“If you’re selling something, I don’t have a pot to piss in. Even if I did, I’d not be dipping into it to give you a nickel. Go away and bother someone else. Actually, just go away. Nobody here wants you hanging around with them.” He tried to turn his back on the man, but he held his wheelchair so it wouldn’t move. “What do you think you’re doing? Let me go. I’m going to report you.”
“Good. You’re a nasty sort of fella, aren’t you? I’m here with Toby. You remember her, don’t you? The nice person in the family?” That gave him pause. “We were married today, and since you called to have her come here, we thought that this would be a good time to tell you.”
“You aren’t married to nobody, kid. She’s hopefully smart enough not to take you on so that you drain her dry, either. And I said to leave me alone.” Sebastian told him to look in the doorway. As much as he didn’t want to look, the man turned him so that he had no choice in the matter. The woman with a large bag of something was smiling in his direction. Her face shocked him to his core. “She could be my Hester’s twin. My god, how did I miss that?”
“You told her not to come back because you were hurting too much and wanted to die. She was a kid, you asshole. And needed her grandda.” He was jerked around again to face the man. “You hurt her, old man, and I will not hesitate to put you in that grave you so want to be in. She’s having a good day today, and don’t you dare fuck this up.”
He found himself impressed with the man. Angry, too, but impressed that he had no trouble threatening him to protect Toby. As soon as his chair was released again, he turned to watch Toby coming across the room. She laid her bundle in his arms, and he couldn’t help but stare at her.
“Hello, grandda. Play any chess lately?” That was all it took for him to feel all of the last twenty years weigh down on his heart. She was beautiful. Tall, like her dad, and just as beautiful as her momma had been and his Hester. “Don’t cry, Grandda. Please? I brought you something.”
