I'd met her briefly the night before—she'd been upstairs with Hallie Mae's mother during the dinner, because Hallie Mae and Noah had been clear about that from the beginning: hands on, present, no outsourcing the early days to anyone but family, and even then, only when the parents chose it.
Hallie Mae looked up when we passed. Her expression was the expression of a woman who was tired in the deep, cellular way of new mothers and was also, underneath that, more settled than she'd ever been in her life.
"Morning," she said, quiet enough not to disturb the baby.
"Morning," I said. "How is she?"
"Perfect," Hallie Mae said. The word arrived without hesitation, without the hedge of new-parent uncertainty. Just—perfect. The verdict of a woman who'd looked at this child andfound nothing to argue with. "Jamie Lynn had her first good night. Four hours straight."
Jamie Lynn. Named for her father—Jamie, who hadn't lived to see his daughter find Noah, who hadn't lived to see any of this. The name was a door held open for someone who couldn't walk through it anymore, the way the best names were.
Grant stopped. Looked at the baby the way he looked at Valentine—with the careful, genuine attention of a man who understood that certain things deserved to be looked at properly. Something moved through his face. Something that had nothing to do with tactics or operators or twelve years of being careful with what he showed.
"She's something," he said.
Hallie Mae smiled. The smile of a woman holding her father's name against her chest in a garden she'd built with her own hands. "She really is."
We moved on, down the path toward the harbor, and I looked back once—at Hallie Mae moving between the raised beds with the watering can, the baby in the sling rising and falling with her breath, the garden growing around them both in its slightly chaotic, abundantly loved way.
The first of them.
Jamie Lynn Dane.
The new generation, taking root.
Wow.
It was quiet. The morning quiet of a place that was resting.
After a while, we came around a curve in the path where the land jutted slightly toward the water—a small promontory, hidden from the main house by a stand of live oaks, the branches overhead turning the light green and gold and dappled. A wooden bench had been placed there at some point, facing the harbor.
We stopped.
Looked at each other.
"This is a good spot," I said.
"It is," he agreed.
"Very private."
"Very."
I stepped toward him and his hands found my hips before I'd completed the step—both of them, firm and warm, pulling me in with the easy authority of a man who'd stopped asking permission for things that were already his.
"You know," I said, my hands on his chest, "we're developing a pattern."
"What pattern?”
"Sneaking away from things to have sex in inappropriate locations."
Something moved in his eyes. The warmth that lived behind the control. "The rodeo storage room was inappropriate."
"Like teenagers," I said.
"Teenagers don't know what they're doing," he said. "This is better."
He kissed me before I could answer, which was probably the point.
