Chapter 19
DUVAL
They didn’t settle down until the wee hours of the morning. That was a bit of a quote from his mother who seemed to get a thicker Irish accent when she was excited or upset.
Sitting on Noelle’s bed, their backs against the headboard, Duval looked over at the woman and child who’d become nearly everything to him.
Noelle had her head tipped back against the wall, her eyes closed as she held Ciela in her arms, the little girl was fast asleep, finally.
Duval couldn’t see her face, but he had a feeling that her lips were parted and she was likely drooling on her mother.
When he’d held Ciela while she slept, his t-shirt had been soaked through with drool.
Strangely, he didn’t mind it all that much.
As he watched, Noelle’s hand lifted from Ciela’s lower back and settled gently on the crown of her daughter’s head.
A moment later, she sighed softly and the corners of her mouth lifted up in a smile.
“You’re still awake?”
Duval smiled at the dreamy quality of her voice. “I should ask you the same question. You should be getting some rest.”
Noelle reached out her hand and when he wrapped his hand around hers, he saw her turn her head toward him and her eyes opened to look back at him.
“I can’t get my heart back to normal,” she explained in a soft near-whisper. “And when I close my eyes, I can only do it for a few seconds before I see… I see him dying all over again.”
Duval knew that she was talking about the manager.
He’d seen the look on her face when they’d carried his body out of the garden center.
Even with the sheet over his body on the gurney, she looked haunted.
It was likely going to be some time before the thought of him didn’t fuel her nightmares.
“We should find someone for you to talk to.”
She tensed, but didn’t say no.
She did look at him and squeeze his hand gently. “Right now, I think I just need to spend time with family and let my head wrap around what happened today.”
He rubbed the pad of his thumb across the back of her hand, trying to soothe her as much as he could.
“That means you, too, McCrae.”
He wasn’t sure that he’d heard her right.
“That… what?” He felt a little scratch in his throat. “I… I didn’t mean it to sound so… harsh.”
Her smile broadened. “I think we’ve both been a little… rocked today. I wouldn’t blame you if you sounded a little off.”
He smiled at her. “I think that’s supposed to be my line.”
“Look at me,” she sighed, “being emotionally an adult, huh?”
He heard the tightness in her voice.
She was handling it well, but neither of them knew how to deal with what had happened at the garden center.
“Well, you’re better than me with that,” he blew out a breath, holding her hand a little tighter.
“While I was holding you today, after they took Tony down…” He felt bile on his tongue.
Just the thought of that man sent rage rushing through his veins.
“I realized that there was something I should have told you earlier, but I just haven’t found the right time.
“At least that’s what I told myself.”
He saw her eyes narrow and saw her exhaustion setting in.
Part of him thought he probably should wait until the morning when the sun was up.
Then he realized that was just the coward’s way out.
And after he’d come so damn close to losing Noelle today, he couldn’t be a coward.
Not about this.
Who knew if there would be a ‘tomorrow.’
Duval lifted their joined hands and kissed the tips of her fingers before he looked up into her eyes.
She was looking back at him with a kind of dreamy confusion in her gaze.
“I need you to know that I love you, Noelle. I love you. I love Cee. You’re my family, too.” He shook his head. “I don’t want you to think that there’s going to be a time where I can make it without you.”
She looked like she might be about to melt or shatter, he didn’t know which one it was.
It wasn’t a look he’d ever seen before, but one he wanted to see again and again.
“I want to be with you, ‘Elle. Day and night if you’ll let me.”
She tugged on their joined hands, and he moved over to sit beside her on the bed, shoulder pressed to shoulder.
He went, willingly.
What else could he do?
Smiling, he leaned in and pressed a kiss against her lips.
She hummed and he leaned in to deepen the kiss.
Noelle cuddled closer and he shifted to wrap an arm around her. He pulled her closer, trying to show her just how much he loved her.
He started to part her lips with the friction of his mouth against hers but stopped short.
He felt a little hand hit his cheek and then rub against the scruff on his jaw.
Duval covered her hand with his and lifted it away from his face. He pulled back and looked down at Ciela.
She was still fast asleep based on the slow, deep breaths she was taking. He held her hand gently and turned it over to look at her palm.
Her hands were scraped up with bits of dried blood across her skin. Before he realized it, a word fell from his lips.
“Shit.”
Startled, he looked up and met Noelle’s gaze.
“Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” She was giggling, silently, but her movements shook Ciela a little and the little girl shifted against her mother’s chest.
Noelle lifted her free hand and rubbed it gently against her daughter’s back.
“Sorry for the slip of the tongue right then.”
She looked up at him with an element of surprise and her cheeks heated in a blush. She laughed more and Ciela woke, lifting her head from her mother’s chest. “Sorry, baby.”
Ciela murmured a soft sound, but she was likely as exhausted as they were and laid her head back down and fell back asleep.
“It’s hard to imagine that I’d fall in love and end up with a whole family like this.”
* * *
NOELLE
Noelle looked up at him with what she felt was her whole heart in her eyes.
“Both of us?” The question fell from her lips before she thought about it.
She felt the welcome weight of Ciela against her chest as she dragged in a breath, wondering how to take it back.
“Of course, both of you.” McCrae smiled at her and the whole world settled into place. “When I said you’re my family, it’s the whole thing. I just wonder if you want to be a part of my crazy family.”
“I love your family!” she whispered in a rush.
The words had escaped her again and she shook her head, feeling like she’d put her foot in it, but when she focused her gaze on his face, he didn’t look upset.
He was smiling.
On any given day, McCrae King was handsome, devastatingly so.
But at that moment, exhausted, with his face rough with unshaved scruff, he was gorgeous. Her heart ached and her body?
Well, her body reacted like it always did when she was close to him.
She wished that they were alone, but it was likely the only thing that saved her that they weren’t.
Otherwise, she might have crawled over and…
“What are you thinking?”
She pressed her lips together tightly, trying to tell him what she felt without dissolving into a puddle of nerves.
He smiled. “I think I know what’s in your head. It’s in mine, too.”
She saw the heat in his gaze and knew that he did understand.
“Maybe later, when your mom wakes up, I’ll take you into the shower and show you what I’ve got in my head.”
She let out a slow, shaking exhale. “I love you, McCrae.”
She saw the surprise in his eyes.
Likely, it was the sudden admission, but it wasn’t all that surprising to her.
“I’ve felt it for a while,” she explained.
“I just haven’t… haven’t had the courage to tell you.
I felt like… like we might be too much for you.
All of us. I can feel that you don’t like to be smothered with love and your family, your mom and your sister, there’s so much love there.
I feel you pulling away at times, trying to put some distance between you. ”
When she finished speaking, he was quiet.
Almost introspective.
And she worried that she’d misjudged him or hurt his feelings proving that she wasn’t all that good with people, living ones.
Her mother loved her no matter what.
Her baby? Of course Ciela loved her, Ciela’s heart was as big and wide as Texas and then some.
Ciela’s dad had been so easy-going, they worked because he accepted her like he did everyone around him, on face value and she’d appreciated that, loved him for it.
McCrae was different.
He was particular about so many things.
He wasn’t someone who just accepted things the way they were.
“McCrae,” she began softly, “I’m so-”
“You’re right.”
He smiled at her.
“My mom, and my sister are like two peas in a pod. They’re both so… loving,” he frowned a little. “But they’re both a little… pushy with it. I love them, I doubt anyone would be able to avoid it, but they… overwhelm me. My dad was more like me. Strong. Standoffish.
“But he loved my mom like crazy. He’d deal with anything and everything she threw his way.
I guess I’m like him in that way… but with you.
You drive me crazy…” He shook his head. “Thinking of you- Seeing you in that garden center with that… that man, I wanted to murder him,” his voice was a rough scratch of sound, “I wanted to tear him apart to get to you.”
“I’m glad you didn’t have to, McCrae. I wouldn’t want you to have that on your conscience.”
He smiled at her and she saw a level of darkness in his gaze that she’d never seen before.
“It wouldn’t have bothered me,” he shook his head, “I could have taken him down and never thought about it again, unless it was to remember what I would do for you… for Cee. Make no mistake, ‘Elle. I’d kill for you and your daughter. I’d die for you, too. Can you… can you be okay with that?”
She took her hand from his and reached up, cupping it against the back of his neck. Noelle pulled him closer until they were forehead to forehead.
“I understand it. I don’t want to say that I’m okay with it,” she drew in a breath and let it out again, “but I am. If someone had hurt Ciela, the way they hurt Aracely, I doubt I could let them go. And I’d put myself between her and any danger. Car? Bullet? I’d gladly step in front of her.”
She loosened her hold on him and leaned back until she looked him in the eye.
“I’d do the same for you. When I say I love you, McCrae. It’s the same kind of love. All the way in love.” She smiled as a strange weight lifted off of her shoulders. “I want you around us just as much as you want to be with us.”
“Yeah?”
It sounded strange coming from him.
A lighter tone.
A younger tone.
“There is one question we’d need to answer though.”
He frowned a little, mostly a pinch between his brows. “What’s that?”
She rubbed her lips together, nervous, but also excited. “Are we going to live here? Or at your place?”
She saw him relax, his shoulders sagging in relief.
It was a little unnerving for her, being able to have that kind of effect on someone like McCrae. He was such a force of nature.
“I’m happy to live wherever as long as it’s with you and Cee.”
He leaned in and pressed a kiss on the crown of Ciela’s head. “Wherever she’s happiest.”
“I can’t help loving you,” she murmured softly. “You’re too good to us.”
She knew her words had an effect on him. She saw the changes in his expression, felt the warmth of his skin.
Then she saw the spark of something in his gaze.
When he spoke, it was barely a whisper. “I thought it was the S-E-X.”
The remains of her anxiety fled at that moment and she rocked with laughter, stirring Ciela in her arms.
“Mama?”
Noelle winced at her daughter’s voice.
“Sorry, baby. Did I wake you?”
Ciela sat up, blinking at her. “Mmm hmm.”
“Sorry, sweetie.” McCrae reached over and gently wiped at the corners of Ciela’s eyes. “I made Mama laugh.”
Ciela turned to look at him. “You stayed.”
Noelle heard the soft wonder in her daughter’s voice. “Yeah, baby. McCrae stayed tonight.”
Ciela sighed softly. “I wish he would stay forever.”
Noelle looked over her daughter’s head at McCrae. “Sounds like a good plan.”
Her daughter tried to turn, and she loosened her hold so Ciela could crawl into McCrae’s embrace.
“Wanna go to my bed,” Ciela wrapped her arms around his neck. “Talking too loud.”
McCrae got up from the bed, scooting across the sheets at first. When he stood up, he wrapped both arms around Ciela, and she wrapped her legs around his torso. “You sure, CeeCee?”
She sighed and nodded her head. “You can bother mama and I can sleep.”
McCrae looked like he was barely holding it together as he walked toward the bedroom door.
Noelle turned, putting her feet on the ground to follow them to Ciela’s room.
As McCrae opened the door, Ciela lifted her head and pointed at her.
“Mama, stay.”
Noelle sat back, a little startled at her daughter’s words.
“Mama will stay,” McCrae assured the little girl. “When I come back, I’ll… bother her.”
He might have used innocuous words, but the meaning in his eyes and the mischievous tone of voice made his meaning clear.
“I’ll be here,” she told him, “looking forward to that.”
And she meant it.
* * *
DUVAL
Noelle was barely asleep when the morning sunlight fell over her back.
Duval traced his fingertips down her back, ending at the edge of the sheet that she’d pulled up before she’d fallen asleep.
It was a crazy day and thanks to West, they had a day off.
It would give them time to talk and figure out where they would go from here, but this?
In bed beside the woman he loved, her child in the next room, sleeping soundly.
He never imagined that he’d be here. Loving and loved.
He meant what he’d told her earlier.
He’d kill for her. He’d put himself between her and danger. He’d do everything to protect her and their family.
He chuckled and Noelle shifted in the bed beside him.
Duval peeled back the sheet and slipped under it to hold Noelle in his arms and he smiled.
Who would have thought, McCrae King, family man?
Now, he’d do whatever it takes to keep them safe.
Anything.
And everything.