Anything but Minor - Kate Stewart Page 0,88

there in two weeks.

Kristina: Finally!

Alice: I have to go chase your future daughter-in-law down, but are you going to tell me about the date?

Kristina: I went home with my panties in my purse.

Alice: That good?

Kristina: I think he found me.

Alice: You will tell me everything. Two weeks! ☺

Another text came through in a matter of seconds.

Andy: We just landed. See you in a few.

“Clover,” I begged as she ignored me. Clover pretty much always ignored me because, well, she was two, extremely busy, and had no time for anything other than her own agenda.

“You can’t finds me, Mommy!” I heard her taunt from the exact same closet I’d just found her in. For a brief moment, I was scared for her future. I laughed as she cracked the door slightly so that the light clicked on. She wasn’t a fan of the dark, and I was surprised she’d lasted as long as she had. I looked down at my waiting baby girl as my chest squeezed.

The minute I discovered she was coming, I knew I’d have my clover. Rafe’s and my relationship weren’t exactly cut from the cloth of the norm, and our love was limitless. We fit, we complemented each other by being different, and that was a rarity, and our Clover was proof. Rafe had completely lost it when I told him he was going to be a father. He was reduced to tears in a very public display, and in that moment, I knew I could never love him more. He’d been a doting husband and gone above and beyond to make a very uncomfortable pregnancy easier on me.

Of all the long conversations Rafe and I’d had through our relationship, neither of us had really touched on children. I knew I wanted a baby eventually, and I was sure with Rafe and his love of kids he would, too. It was the weirdest part of our union in that it was just simply...a given. But neither of us knew how badly we craved a family until the day we found out.

It was the best day of our lives.

Clover came into the world, lungs full of protest and covered in jaundice. Rafe held our light yellow baby and started his campaign of favorite parent by declaring to her that I’d peed on her.

It was also the best day of our lives.

And the days kept coming.

Days like that day when I scoured our expansive one-story ranch home for our little girl and was hell bent on making it the best for my husband, who had trusted me with the rest of his days. I was more determined than ever to keep what he’d so generously given.

So on that day, I gathered our little girl, determined to follow my flight plan with a quick stop and then onto California to surprise him.

“Naw naw Duc!” Clover squealed as she saw Dutch standing at the door next to Andy. Dutch reached out and gripped her great-granddaughter tightly to her as a single, happy tear slid down her face. Andy smiled over at her as he winked and pulled me into a hug. “Good job, doll.”

“It was all you, Andy,” I said as we beamed back at Dutch and Clover.

We knew it was a big step for her. It was the first time she’d managed a trip to Denver and her first real trip anywhere since Rafe’s grandfather died. Rafe had confessed to me shortly after our engagement that Dutch was his estranged father’s mother, and that she, too, had sided with Rafe after her son had betrayed him. In a way, she’d lost her son and then shortly after lost her husband. She’d always been an introvert and uncomfortable with attention, so Rafe and Andy had protected her from the intrusive media by treating her as his biggest fan, which she remained to this day. But Dutch’s love for her great-granddaughter was unmatched and seemed something like a new beginning for her. She’d managed to take leaps and bounds since her arrival. I never faulted Rafe for not coming clean about Dutch. He protected those he loved and trusted without fail, and I had to earn my way into that circle. It seemed Dutch’s invitation for me to join her at each game had been a part of that push. She’d seen something in me for a reason she never explained, and I was forever grateful.

I knew months after our marriage and after several trips home that loyalty, the kind Rafe was