Chapter 33 Daisy
Daisy
Ididn’t think I could love Max any more than I did the day he surprised me with Lucy’s Narnia nursery and the handmade crib. But every time I saw him gently lower our daughter into it so as not to wake her, I managed to love him even more.
Maybe it was my new perpetual state of exhaustion, but the last six weeks since we’d brought Lucy home from the hospital had been the happiest of my life.
We came home to the house Max had bought for us. The house that had been fingerprinted with my things. Lucy’s things. Transformed every day by the new memories we were carving into its fabric. And for the first time, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
“I don’t know how you always manage to get her down without waking her,” I whispered when Max came back over to me, where I stood watching him from the door.
“I have a magic touch,” he teased and pulled me into his embrace, adding low, “I have one for you too.”
I hummed as his head lowered, and he kissed me slow and sweet—a stolen second in days that sometimes devolved into chaos. Somehow, he always managed to steal a second or several for me. For us. To hold me. To rub my back. To play with my hair. To massage my feet.
Laughter floated upstairs from the kitchen, and Max groaned as he pulled away. “Can I kick them out?”
“Absolutely not.” I chuckled and took his hand, leading us to the stairs.
Max’s family—in any and all combinations—had been at our house in some capacity almost every day since we brought Lucy home. To bring food. Gifts. Clean. Do laundry. Hold the baby so I could take a power nap.
They always said it took a village, and I’d never been more grateful to have one. There was no world where I’d let Max kick them out—even if it was for a delicious reason.
Max grumbled all the way downstairs, where we joined his family—and our belated Thanksgiving celebration.
I’d given birth the week before the holiday—discharged only days before.
Without even asking, Ailene and Gigi came to visit us at the house and informed us that the big Kinkade-Hamilton Thanksgiving would be postponed and joined with Christmas.
So we planned a Christmas brunch followed by a turkey dinner.
As I walked into the kitchen where everyone was gathered, I couldn’t help but think how I’d gone from basically no family to…all this. A house brimming with people and stuffed full of love, and my heart had never been fuller.
Back downstairs, we joined the jovial crowd, my phone with the video monitor app always in my hand and Max always by my side.
“Daisy, come open your presents.” Frankie swooped her arm through mine. “Max, you’re going to have to let her out of arm’s reach for a few minutes.”
“A few minutes. I’m timing you,” he said as she led me toward the tree Jamie and Kit had put up two weeks ago when we’d taken Lucy to her doctor’s appointment.
Within moments, my hands were filled with food and presents.
Lou shoved a blueberry muffin in one hand, and her twin made me open a present with the other.
New pajamas—matching ones for me, Max, and Lucy.
A gift certificate for a massage. Gift cards for restaurants.
Several of them. And then at least two dozen outfits for Lucy…
on top of all the hand-me-downs they’d already dropped off.
In return, I doled out all the presents Max and I had ordered while we’d been up in the middle of the night with Lucy. I’d rock the baby, and he’d throw out present ideas for his family.
“Harper’s Christmas gift arrives right after the holiday,” Frankie teased when I set a large box in Harper’s lap, the contents a large fuzzy blanket that she told me she’d been eyeing.
The cottage she lived in on the Hamilton farm never got warm enough in the winter, or so she said.
“Blaze Stevens and daughter. Residents of Stonebar Harbor.”
“Not funny and not my present,” Harper returned, and to her credit, her voice came out practically emotionless.
“So you aren’t pining for him anymore?”
“It was a high school crush, Frankie,” Harper groaned. “I’m sure you had plenty of those and that Chandler wouldn’t appreciate it if I started teasing you about them.”
I watched as Frankie opened her mouth to reply, but then snapped it shut as her eyes narrowed.
“Are you…dating someone?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper.
Harper’s eyes bulged like she’d been caught, and I waited for her answer too. She hadn’t said anything to me about a boyfriend, but to be fair, every single moment since Lucy had been born, I’d been selfishly focused on my sweet baby, and so had all my conversations with my sister-in-law.
Before Harper had a chance to answer, she turned and looked above me just as a warm voice rumbled over my shoulder.
“Don’t forget my gift,” Max rumbled, joined on either side by his dad and Ailene, who was holding Lucy.
“She’s up?” I gaped and reached for my phone, panicked that I hadn’t heard the video monitor.
A moment later, Max held my phone in front of me.
“I took over Lucy-cam watch so you could have a few minutes.”
Every time I thought I couldn’t love him more, he did something that dared me to try.
“For you, Daze.” He handed me a small, elegantly wrapped box.
“Max…” We’d agreed not to get each other anything, which wasn’t to say I didn’t have a present for him, but it was the kind of present that was private.
“Open it, my little wife,” he encouraged, kissing the side of my head.
I peeled open the paper as he sat next to me on the couch.
The box was plain, with no markings. A maroon cloth that suggested whatever was inside was expensive.
I lifted the lid, peeled back the tissue paper, and found an elegant glass bottle nestled into the packing.
It wasn’t until I lifted it out that I realized everyone was watching me.
“Max…” My finger roamed over the label, the edges hand-painted with a string of peonies that wove around the edge, framing the scraggly, cursive word in the center.
Daze.
There was no level of exhaustion that would’ve made me question what this was.
It was my perfume. Bottled in hand-blown glass from Nox, the label painted by Kit.
After Lucy’s birth, my perfume-making continued, but at a slower pace, and Max seemed hesitant to talk about incorporating it as a permanent offer from MaineStems. I thought it was because he worried I was taking on too much, but now I knew the real reason.
Because he was making one more of my dreams a reality.
“It’s official now,” he murmured. “Daze, eau de perfume, will be coming to MaineStems as soon as you’re ready.”
“Max…” I tried to blink back tears, but it was impossible. They rolled down my cheeks as he pulled me to him, a hum of excitement buzzing through his family.
“I love you.”
I felt him smile against my cheek. “I love you too, my little wife.”
“I can’t believe you did this.” My voice wobbled. “You didn’t have to…”
“Oh, he did, dear.” I looked over my shoulder at Gigi, who wore the biggest smile on her face.
At my confusion, she motioned for me to hand her the perfume, and when I did, she stared at it, lovingly running her fingers over the front.
“Don’t you recognize it, dear?” She turned the bottle to me, but even with another close look, I didn’t understand what she was talking about.
When I looked to her to explain, she poked Max. “Tell her.”
My eyes met my husband’s.
“This,” he paused and ran his thumb over the label. “Gigi gave it to me…the day I met you.”
My mouth dropped open, and my eyes snapped to the handwriting.
How had I not recognized the handwriting?
Even if I had, it wouldn’t have crossed my mind that this was Max’s label from his grandmother.
While mine had said peony, Max had been given a label that said Daze…
four years ago. For this moment. For me.
“You were always meant to be mine,” he said softly and passed the perfume bottle around for everyone to smell so he could take Lucy from his aunt and steal another moment for us. “The first bottle of the first batch of Daze perfume.”
“I love you,” I murmured, staring at the two of them.
My daughter and my husband.
My daughter and her father.
“I love you too, my little wife.”
I could almost forget we were surrounded by his entire family until we kissed, and the crowd broke out in cheers.
Later that night, after his family had left and we’d sung Lucy to sleep with Christmas carols, I led Max to our bedroom and let him open his present.
With love and wild hunger in his gaze, he unwrapped my pajamas from my body like a gentleman. And when he saw the black lace lingerie I had on underneath, he shed his gentleman and made love to me like the man who was made for me. My king of flowers.
The king of my heart.