“Oh, hello pretty girl,” Dr. Bates said. “Ian, do you want to cut the cord?”
He wasn’t getting anywhere near that. He didn’t even like the symbolism. “I’ll pass.”
He needed to stay with Charlie. He needed to make sure she was all right.
“You are lucky, Charlotte,” the nurse said. “Any longer and you would have been giving birth to two toddlers. The first twin is five and a half pounds. She’s perfect.”
“Go and see her,” Charlie said.
“I’m fine. I can wait until the other one is out.”
“That could take a while,” the nurse said. She was holding a tiny bundle in her arms that looked absolutely nothing like a toddler. Toddlers were resilient, if Carys was any indication. The kid could bump all day and not really come to any harm. But whatever was in that little pink blanket, that was a fragile thing.
He was far more used to killing than nurturing.
“Show her to your wife,” the nurse urged.
Ian shook his head. “Charlie should hold her.”
Dr. Bates looked up from between his wife’s splayed legs. Yeah, it was that kind of a day. “No. I think this one is close. Charlotte needs to push again.”
Charlie nodded. “I can feel it. This one isn’t going to wait. Let me see her, Ian.”
Deep breath. He could do this. It was just one tiny baby that had recently been expelled from his wife’s body. He could handle one small female. Hell, he was the Dom of Doms. He was the ultimate authority figure.
The nurse placed the little bundle in his arms and Ian looked down.
The baby looked up. Not the baby. His baby. His daughter. She had Charlie’s eyes and the sweetest little cap of strawberry blonde hair. There wasn’t much of it, but it was there. She had a little bow mouth and a tiny little nose. And a totally misshapen head.
“She looks like an alien.” An alien version of a baby Charlie. A gorgeous baby girl with a cone for a head.
“If you don’t show me that baby right now, Ian Taggart, I am going to pull your balls off,” Charlie growled.
He knew when to obey. Even the baby’s eyes had popped open, as though she knew the sound of her mother in a killing rage. “I think this is the one who tried to take out crazy eyes. I’m naming this one.”
He lowered his daughter down and watched in wonder as Charlie’s eyes softened and she reached to touch her daughter for the first time.
And then her body seemed to seize. “Oh, here comes your sister.”
He cradled baby number one in his right arm and held Charlie’s hand with his left. He kept switching his gaze between his girls. The baby in his arms was yawning as though the whole event had really been tiring but no big deal.
Her sister was born three minutes later, and ten minutes after that he found himself following his daughters down to the nursery. He stood outside, watching through the glass as the pediatrician began checking the babies over. Baby number one was wrapped in her pink blanket and number two was in yellow. It was a good thing because he couldn’t tell them apart by looking at them. He wouldn’t let them out of his sight and explained in no uncertain terms that his daughters wouldn’t be left there overnight. Charlie had been very specific about it. She was keeping them in the room with her unless they needed to be checked out, and then Ian would be watching. At the time, he’d thought she was being unreasonable. She was surely going to need sleep. He’d been planning on quietly letting the girls go to the nursery.
Never. Not even once was he letting those babies out of his sight. They were his.
This was what Sean had meant. When they’d put baby number two in his arms and he lowered them both down to Charlie, he’d finally understood. He’d protected Sean, but Sean hadn’t been his.
These two small things were his and Charlie’s. They were proof beyond all doubt that they loved each other. Those girls were immortality, a way for his love for his wife to always live on. In that one moment, he understood what it meant. His love for his wife could be selfish. He wanted things from her. Love. Affection. Sex. Submission.
He wanted nothing from these girls except the right to love them, the right to protect and teach them.
Loving Charlie had made him a man, but these girls made him a father, and that was so much more.
“Look at that,” Sean said, coming to stand beside him. The rest had gone with promises to come by in the morning, but his brothers had stayed. Oh, Case and Theo had both fallen asleep in the waiting room, but they were here.
Ian and Sean watched the babies through the glass as the pediatrician checked them out. Kenzie, daughter number two, was lying peacefully while his firstborn had already kicked out of her swaddling and was currently giving the doctor hell. Baby girl didn’t like the eyedrops. She didn’t like the shot. She didn’t like being poked and prodded, and now the whole hospital knew it.