Seth said, “Okay,” before adding, “Can we have a cookie now?”
Addie laughed. “Yes.”
Mack continued to stare at them.
“I’ll take them inside for their snack and come back out so we can talk, okay?”
“Take your time, I, ah…need a moment.”
Addie herded the boys through the back door into the kitchen.
Molly already had milk and cookies set out on the dining room table. She smiled at Addie. “They look like him.”
“Yes, they do.”
“But they look like you too.”
She was also aware of the issues that might cause.
Molly swung Teddy into the first chair and Seth right next to him.
“Did it go okay? Telling him?” Molly asked.
“We’ll see.” Addie smoothed down Seth’s cowlick. “Will you keep the boys inside and entertained while Mack and I talk? I don’t know how long it’ll take.”
“Of course.”
On a whim, Addie opened the bottle of cider he’d given her and brought it outside.
Mack hadn’t moved. Except he’d balled his hands into fists by his sides and his shoulders shook.
Goodness. Was he so angry that he was shaking from it?
Leaving the bottle on the porch, she approached him warily. “Jonas?” slipped out of her mouth before her head enacted the name change.
He leaped to his feet and enveloped her in his arms before she could take another breath.
The first thing that registered: he wasn’t vibrating with anger. He was crying. Sobbing. He just kept whispering, “Oh god, oh god, oh god,” over and over—a man in serious pain.
“Oh, honey,” she whispered, wiping his wet cheeks. “It’s okay,” she assured him between kisses. “I love you. So much.” She nuzzled his jaw where his beard started. “We’ll work this out. I promise.” More soft smooches on the corners of his eyes. “Please don’t be mad at me. Please.”
That caught his attention. He angled back to blink those blue, blue eyes at her. Eyes the same color their sons had inherited. “What? Why would I be mad at you?”
“You’re not?”
He expelled a long breath. “No. But I’d like to know how it happened.”
“Oh, the usual way,” she teased him. “When two people love each other—”
His impromptu swat on the butt was surprisingly firm.
And utterly delightful.
She danced out of his reach. “Sit. I’m grabbing the cider to celebrate you finding out that you’re a father.”
“Christ. That’s just…” He shook his head.
Addie returned to find him sitting in the grass.
He swept her right onto his lap and took the first swig from the bottle. “Tell me all of it. Don’t leave nothin’ out.”
“I didn’t realize I was pregnant until after I’d returned from Deadwood to deal with Madam Marie’s final requests. Three long weeks with what I figured out was morning sickness as I crisscrossed the area with my Pinkerton bodyguard to deposit my earnings and my inheritance in various bank accounts. I returned to Labelle, fully intent on telling you the news, when I learned about Zeke and Silas. I had no idea what you’d done until I went out to speak to ‘Jonas’ and it wasn’t you.”
“Did my brother think it was odd that you’d come callin’?”
“Yes, but my poker face is even better than his.” She waited for Mack to tell her whether he’d said anything to his brother about Jonas’s relationship with Ruby before he’d left, but he didn’t, so she kept talking. “I knew Big Jim would crack down on my business after you were gone, so I sold my half of the stake in the boardinghouse and moved to Denver. A pregnant widow was merely sad in a bigger town, not suspicious. I had a difficult pregnancy. The doctor suspected twins once I shared that the baby’s father was a twin, not to mention my mother was a twin.”
“No kiddin’. I didn’t know that.”
“I’d forgotten that until I detailed my family history for the medical record. The boys were born at the Babies Summer Hospital—”
“Whoa, wait. Summer hospital? You said they were born in March.”
“They were. The Babies Summer Hospital was started by a female physician who took an interest in babies with health problems. Seth was smaller and sicklier than Teddy. I had to hire a fulltime nanny and the first year of their lives is a bit of a blur.”
“I hate that you did this all by yourself, darlin’.”
“I know. I also understood that the boys had to be well enough—and old enough—to travel when we set out to find you.”
“You wouldn’t have found me at all that first year, bein’s I was chasin’ outlaws and then trainin’ for