“We do,” I reply and nod.
“That reminds me.” Angel starts to laugh. “I told Hammer the other day that with all the babies being born recently, that the club should hire its own pediatrician.”
“Probably would save us a bunch of time and money if we had a member who was trained in baby medical stuff,” I can’t help but laugh too. Doc will help with stuffy noses and small boo-boos, but unless it’s an emergency, he prefers to be hands off medically for the little ones. I can’t blame him really. He didn’t join the club to be a baby doctor.
Once the doctor gives Hayes the all clear, he passes out stickers to Ace and Taren, then heads off to his next patients. Angel and I get the boys bundled back up in their shoes and coats, buckle the younger two into the stroller, and we make your way out through the maze of hallways back to the lobby. After Angel stops at the receptionist desk to make the next round of appointments, everyone is loaded up so we can make out way home. It has been a fun few hours, but I’m ready to see my little man and snuggle with him while I wait for my phone to ring.
I really hope it’s good news.
CHAPTER TWO
WHISKEY
Something is going on with my wife and I don’t like it. I don’t like it one fucking bit.
“Alright, buddy.” I slowly lay Krew down in his crib. His eyes are fighting sleep, but the tiredness is quickly winning. “Time for you to go to bed so I can get your momma to tell me what’s wrong.”
Krew reaches his little arm out, grabs hold of his stuffed monkey, then hugs it tight to his chest. Once he has his favorite stuffy, and I turn the white noise machine on, it doesn’t take him long to be out for the night. Now that he is down to one nap during the day, he goes to sleep much easier at night than he didwhen he was a newborn. Man oh man, those were some rough months. My boy had his schedule all flipped around and upside down and wanted to sleep all day, but be up all night. Duchess and I struggled for so long to get him on a different routine, but once he turned one, it was like a switch flipped. Now he sleeps all the way through the night with no issues.
I pull the door shut and go in search of my Duchess.
She has been acting very strange today and I can’t think of a reason why. As far as I know, everything has been going the status quo recently, so I’m clueless as to what’s going on. The club is running smoother than it has been in over a year, our home life is better than ever, and all our businesses are booming, including her bakery.
When Duchess got pregnant with Krew, she cut back her hours at the bakery, hiring a few extra people to help out. I found it quite hilarious that it took bringing on four more people, two full-time and two part-time, to do what she used to do herself, but that also shows you how hard my woman works. She still loves what she does, so she goes to the bakery for a few hours a couple days a week, instead of sixty plus hours a week, and always comes home with a smile on her face.
Duchess built The Cake Butcher from the ground up with very little help in the beginning. She opened the doors when she was only nineteen years old and people come from miles around to buy her cakes and cupcakes. She is a superstar in the kitchen and I am the luckiest man on this planet that she chose to be my Old Lady. While I wish she could stay home all day so I could see her whenever I want, neither of our schedules would allow that, and I would never keep my wife away from doing what she loves. And when she brings me home the new flavors she is testing, or the unsellable scraps that she calls her ‘oopsies’ . . . I will never turn down her baking.
Usually Duchess follows me down the hall and crawls into bed while I put Krew down, but tonight she isn’t there when I check our bedroom and bathroom. I head back out to the main living area, and find her curled up on the couch. She’s staring at the television like she is in a trance. If she wasn’t blinking, I would wonder if she was sleeping with her eyes open.
A floorboard creaks as I take a step closer and her whole body jerks as she comes back to Earth.
“Holy crap, Whiskey,” she whispers as she clutches her chest while taking a few deep breaths. “You scared me.”
“Are you okay?” I question as I drop onto the cushion next to her before pulling her sideways into my lap.
“Yup,” she replies with a yawn as she rests her head on my shoulder.
She has also been very secretive today. Since she got home from running errands with her sister, she hasn’t been her normal bubbly, outgoing self. She was also texting a lot. Every time I looked at her while I was cooking dinner, she had her nose buried in the screen and her thumbs were tapping away.
When I went to put the pan of lasagna on the table, I saw a missed call notification on her phone from the clinic, but when I asked her about it, she wouldn’t meet my eyes and said it was probably just an automated reminder for Krew’s upcoming checkup. I knew instantly that she was lying to me because I know for a fact that his appointment isn’t until next month. I saved the date for that in the calendar on my phone when she scheduled it after his last appointment.
“You sure?” Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, I wrap my arms around her a squeeze her tight. “You seem distracted today.”
She shrugs. “Everything’s a-okay. It’s the beginning of a new month and we just rotated a bunch of flavors at the bakery, and Valentine’s is coming up quick, so my mind has been running amillion miles an hour to make sure I get everything done that needs to be done.”
“That’s what you have Angie and Lynn for, babe.” Those two have been with her since day one and stepped up to help a ton since she cut back her hours.
“I know. But you also know how horrible I am at letting things go, just like you are.” Duchess sits up and kisses my cheek as she links her hands around my neck. “I may not be there every day anymore, but the bakery will always be my first baby. I will never not worry about it being a success.”
“And that’s part of why I love you,” I whisper as I nuzzle my face into her neck and start dropping kisses on her soft skin. “That and how wet your pussy gets when you come for me.”
Deciding that enough is enough with the half-ass answers that are getting me nowhere, I switch gears and take the rest of our evening in a direction that will be much more fun for the both of us. I grab hold of her tight, one arm around her back and the other under her knees, and scoop Duchess up as I stand.
“Put me down. I’m too heavy for this,” she laughs out a bogus complaint, kicking her feet as I carry her to our room.
“No. You. Are. Not.” I alternate nipping at her earlobe and neck between every word. I gently kick the door shut with my foot, not bothering to turn the overhead light on, and toss her onto the bed. Crawling up over her, I crowd her until she’s flat on her back. Meeting her nose to nose, I look down into the prettiest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. “You will never be too heavy for me, Duchess. You got that?”
I lower myself to rest my weight on my forearms so my chest presses lightly on hers. Duchess lets out a deep moan and lifts her chin as she reclines her head back even more. Not able to resist any more, I bury my face back into the temptation. This time I burrow a little deeper and trace my tongue from her neck down to her collarbone. The wide neck of the over large, looseshirt she is wearing, an old one of mine, allows me the room to push it off her shoulder with my nose as I lick every free inch of skin I can.
