Chuckling, Elijah looked over at where the baby was still screaming her head off. “I think she’ll get over it once she realizes what awesome parents she’s got.”
I had to give him that. “Elijah,” I whisper hissed as something horrible dawned on me. “Parker’s had his hand up my vagina.”
Elijah’s head shot up as he glared at Freddie, whose shoulders were shaking as he laughed, obviously having heard what I’d said.
“Did you miss the part where she told you she’d seen your brother’s penis, man? I’d be more pissed about that.”
Turning back to me, he growled, “Which one?”
Smiling as innocently as I could, I shrugged. “One of the five, but it was an accident and happened a long time ago.”
Before he could say anything back, the nurse called him over to the table our baby was on.
Throwing an arm over my eyes, I tried to go into hiding from Parker, who was watching me with amusement. “I’m never going to be able to look at you again.”
“Ah, you’ve seen one vagina, you’ve seen them all,” he replied, trying to put my mind at ease and failing.
Still. “I’ll tell Ari you said that.”I had planned to have the baby and go home from the second I’d started thinking about my birthing plan. I’d like to blame that on the fact that I hadn’t experienced childbirth by that point, so I was talking out of my arse.
Now that I was ‘woke’ to it, there was no way in hell I was leaving until they said I could. It felt like a bomb had exploded down south, sure, but I was more concerned with knowing that my daughter was okay before I tried to go it alone without any medical experts to hand.
I’d just spent the last ten minutes taking photos of everything. Her feet, her toes, her hands, her fingernails, her belly, her nose, her mouth… I wanted pictures of all of it. I’d even taken one of her hand on mine, and one of it on Elijah’s so that we never forgot how small she’d been at one stage in her life.
“What are we calling her?” I said quietly so that I didn’t wake her up.
“Charing, as in the station in London?” he asked with a wink, but I kind of liked it.
Then I remembered a name I’d put on my list months ago because I loved the author, and it was Mum’s middle name but had vetoed thinking it was outdated.
Now that I knew what she looked like properly, it suited her.
“What about Bronte?”
He looked up to make sure I was serious and then back down at her. “I like it.”
Picking her up, he held her close to his chest. “Hi, Bronte, I’m your daddy. Do you recognize my voice?”
He said it softly, and in the sweetest tone I’d ever heard him use, but still, she opened her eyes, glared at him, and started screaming her head off. As she took in a deep lungful of oxygen, she released another wail that was interrupted by the loudest burp I’d ever heard come out of a baby.
“Definitely doesn’t take after me, then,” I snickered.
Sitting down next to me, he cuddled me into his side with the arm that wasn’t holding Bronte. “She’s as beautiful and precious as her mum is, and you’re both mine.”
Laughter, love, and now life. I had it all.
“It’s just a shame she’s not going to get to meet all of her uncles, isn’t it, Bronte.”
I should probably send a text to them and warn them.
Still, we had a bigger problem.
“Elijah?” I called, loving how hesitant he was to take his eyes off Bronte.
“Mmm?”
“We have a bigger problem,” I sighed. “My nan’s arriving at Orlando airport in the morning. She’s going to be pissed she missed this.”
Judging by the worried look on his face, having already witnessed the formidable tornado that was Phyllis Hastings, I’d taken his mind off his brothers demise.
Or, so I thought.
“Tell me which brother it was, and we’ll send him to pick her up.”