Laura Marie - The Seal's Second Chance Baby

“But everything’s okay?” He held a bacon strip to his lips, causing her tummy to flutter. When he’d been in the hospital, she’d stared at him for hours at a time, but he’d always been asleep. Now that he was awake, it was tough not to notice even more—like the way a fraction of an inch up or down at the corners of his mouth made him look happy or sad or devilishly sexy.

“Yes.” Or was it? Face flushed from her latest assessment of her companion, she focused on squirting ketchup on her hash browns. For the moment, her twins might have been behaving, but her overactive imagination certainly wasn’t. It was high time she focused more on this wedding and less on the best man!

* * *

MARSH COULDN’T GET away from Effie and her cute-as-a-button baby fast enough. He’d paid the bill, and Effie was back on her phone, gabbing with someone about healthy school snacks, when the baby dropped her toy. In the moment, he found himself back on parental autopilot, reaching to the floor to get it, then dipping his napkin in his water to wipe the whale clean.

He returned it to Cassidy, and her smile filled him with the kind of awe and wonder he’d long ago had for his son. He never would have pegged himself for the kind of guy who liked kids, but not long into Tucker’s brief life, Marsh found himself wholly consumed with his son. What he ate, what he wore, what toys he played with. Tucker had been his world, and when he died... Well, for all practical purposes, Marsh had, too.

Effie’s crew was his first exposure to kids since Tucker’s passing, and Marsh found the experience to be all at once heady and cruel. He’d caught himself sneaking peeks at little Cassidy’s chubby pink cheeks and big blue eyes that matched her mama’s. When he bent forward to return her toy, he’d caught a trace of her baby-lotion scent, which led him right back to Tucker’s infant years, and to how much fun it had been to make boat noises while playing with his rubber fleet in the tub, then wrapping him in a big soft towel, lotioning him before adding a fresh diaper and PJs before rocking him and watching his wife, Leah, nurse before they’d tucked him into his crib.

Knowing he’d never again kiss his son good-night or play catch with him or watch him shriek at the beach while running from a crab was too much to bear.

He had to get out of there.

Away from Effie and her sweet baby girl and her talk about how relieved she was to have breathing room away from her boys when he’d have literally given anything for one more moment with his son.

In that instant, hearing Effie laugh over the fact that she was actually happy to be away from her kids filled him with irrational rage. Not with her, per se, but his particularly painful lot in life.

On autopilot, desperate for fresh air and the kind of quiet he could only find in the middle of nowhere, Marsh pushed back his chair, pressed his hat tighter on his head and left the diner and town.

Grief drove him to push his truck too fast, and back at his grandfather’s ranch, he followed the same trend while four-wheeling to the old homestead.

Only when Marsh had well and truly driven to the end of his world did he allow himself badly needed release.

He screamed at God.

Cursed fate.

He broke down and cried and wished that damned snake had finished what he’d started. Most of all, Marsh wished for a moment’s respite from the heartache stemming from being well and truly alone.

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