Foundations: A Happy Ever After Romance (The Walsh Series Book 9) Read online

  "Lauren," Matthew murmured, nudging my inner thigh with his knee. There was a time when that nudge would've served as the first and final warning before he seated himself inside me. I knew without a doubt this nudge wasn't that kind of warning because he didn't do that anymore. "What's going on in there, sweetness?"

  Smiling, I shook my head. God, this man was too good. Too patient. Even after all these years and all this post-partum sexual deprivation, I wondered what I did to deserve him. "No, I'm not worried about going back to school." Thinking better of it, I added, "Not much."

  He studied me, his eyes narrowed. "Have I told you how much I love it when you keep things from me until the exact moment you're ready to share them and I've lost the last shreds of my sanity worrying over you?" He nudged my thigh again. Oh my god, fuck me already. "Because I do, I fucking love it."

  I ran my hands up and over his flanks to his shoulders. How did every part of him get harder while I softened? "That works well," I replied, "because I happen to enjoy it when you're crazy. Do you remember when you were crazy enough to show up at my apartment with my underwear in hand?"

  "Do I remember," he murmured, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. "That move was epic. You should've seen me, wandering through Beacon Hill while looking for your apartment, your damn underwear burning a hole in my pocket. I felt like a bona fide pervert, as if someone was going to stop me at any moment and ask if I had women's lingerie on me. But I was completely convinced it was the right thing to do."

  "Sounds confusing," I said, laughing.

  "You don't know the half of it." He looked away, his unfocused gaze falling on the door to the adjoining bathroom. It stood ajar, yesterday's towels and a questionably clean—and totally boring—bra suspended from the interior hooks. "That morning when I woke up—and you weren't there—I didn't know what to do with myself. I walked around the loft thinking I'd met the most amazing woman in the whole damn world, the one who was going to turn my life upside down, and she'd slipped through my fingers." He blinked, turning back to me. "Don't leave me again. Okay? Whatever it is that's bothering you, give it to me. Let me fix it for you. Because I need you, sweetness. I need you, Maddie needs you, my entire family needs you. You're our glue. We'll fall apart without our glue."

  I nodded, forced a smile through a surge of unbidden tears. Goddamn these hormones. They didn't quit, not even when the baby was good and born. "I'm not going anywhere," I said. "Don't worry about anything."

  Matthew reached down, brushed the tears from my cheeks. "It's what I do, Lauren. Let me do it."

  "There are a lot of things you do," I replied. "Worrying is only one of them." I ran my knuckles down the center line of his chest. Couldn't get more obvious about my bleating need for dick if I hung a sign over my head. "Since I have you here, I could use a refresher on some of your other skills, Mr. Walsh."

  He pointed up, toward the ceiling. "I ripped this house apart and rebuilt it for you. Gave you plenty of bookshelves too. Between that and the industrial-grade worrying, you've got the best of me."

  He was working at ignoring my advances. He was trying. That was so depressing. "There's more to you than stress and houses."

  I was this close to whipping off my t-shirt and asking him to take me hard and fast and remind me what it felt like when we lost ourselves in each other. This close.

  But the front door banged open downstairs and with it came a chorus of my parents, Andy, and our baby daughter, screaming her little blonde head off.

  Matthew sighed, pressed his face between my breasts with a growl, and murmured, "I'll take this one. You hit the shower."

  "Tonight we're—"

  "I heard you, Lauren," he snapped as he climbed off me. "I know. I'll handle it."

  2

  Matthew

  I tapped the stone foundation with a flathead screwdriver, looking for signs of deterioration before moving to another section. "I'm not the only one who can assess a foundation. You are also capable of doing this work," I called over my shoulder to Patrick. "Nothing especially technical here."

  "But I enjoy your sunny disposition," he replied, his attention focused on the gas and water lines running through the basement's rafters. "And you're managing this project now."

  I groaned, scowling at him. "Dammit, why?"

  Patrick circled his mechanical pencil at the empty space. "This is a great property. It's a gift. I'm certain you can see that, even in your current state of extreme sleep deprivation."

  "It's getting better."

  It sounded like a whine. It was a whine. I was whining about being tired and I was tired because my kid didn't sleep at night. I was whining over my precious little girl and her difficulty in making sense of the outside world and that made me an asshole.

  An asshole who didn't notice his wife struggling until she was crying into her pillows.

  An asshole who watched her cry but couldn't think of anything beyond stripping her down and owning her luscious body.

  The kind of asshole who seriously considered fucking his wife until she talked about her problems. And then fucking her some more to solve them.

  An asshole who then yelled at his wife over making date night plans because he throbbed for her like a bad habit.

  Such a goddamn asshole.

  "It's better," I added. "It's improved in the past few weeks. I think we're on the upswing."

  I sounded more confident than I felt. A sliver of me believed I'd be walking the halls with Madeleine on my shoulder until she was nine. Maybe longer. That sliver wanted to rage against the injustice of newborn sleep schedules.

  The rest of me wanted nothing more than my wife all to myself. I couldn't look at her without a wall of emotion coming down on top of me. Love wasn't even the word for it anymore. God, no. I was a hundred miles past love. What I had for this woman lived in my bones and blood. I'd sooner bleed myself dry than fall out of love with her. I wanted to get lost in her, surrender to her, consume her from the inside out.

  But I was losing my mind without her. That was how it felt—like we were separated. Between her parents, visitors, and Madeleine, someone was always betweenus, always stealing my wife away from me.

  Yeah, I lumped the baby in with that lot. She was the sweetest thing in the entire world and my heart still caught in my throat when she reached for me but I envied the attention she demanded from Lauren. I adored our little girl. I treasured the place she'd claimed in our life. I had no regrets. I also wanted my wife back.

  "Is that, uh, is that normal?" he asked. "Shannon's kids never had trouble sleeping."

  "Of course not," I replied. "They're Shannon's kids."

  "Fair point," he said. "Have you asked Nick's opinion?"

  I rolled my eyes with a scoff. Nick Acevedo heard from me morning, noon, and night. I hadn't managed to go a single day since Madeleine's arrival without consulting the good doctor. "He's billing me now."

  "As he should," Patrick replied. "It looks good down here. Let's go upstairs and work out a budget."

  I followed him up the stairs, muttering, "Still not convinced I want to deal with this place."

  "You do. It's an easy project that won't take much handholding and you'll get it done in four, maybe six weeks. You can manage this half asleep," Patrick said as he stepped into the kitchen. He pointed at the cabinets and appliances. "Everything must go."

  "Everything," I agreed. "I told you, things are looking up. She got five full hours last night. It's the longest she's slept so far. That's something."

  Patrick shook his head, his eyes wide and unblinking. "I can't imagine how that's anything but I'll take your word for it." He tucked his pencil behind his ear, leaned against the countertop. "How do you—you know—how do you handle that? Marriage-wise."

  "Oh, you're asking if I'm having sex?" I asked, a sharp, manic laugh in my words. "No. No, not at all."

  My older brother blinked at me. Blinked again. "What?"

  I leaned against the opposite countertop. "Not since bef
ore Maddie was born."

  "Not even"—he motioned toward me in what I assumed to be a gesture suggestive of all the interactions on the periphery of sex—"some"—another vague hand movement—"or a little?"

  "No," I said with a brisk shake of my head. "I don't know what that was supposed to imply but no, I'm not having any of it."

  He folded his arms over his chest. He had the balls to look mortified. Now, this guy was the asshole. "Is that normal? How long is it supposed to be?"

  I scratched my chin as I considered this. "The doctor told Lauren to wait six weeks before, you know, anything. That just didn't seem like the right amount of time to me."

  I'd experienced powerlessness before. Growing up under my father's roof guaranteed it. Yet that was nothing compared to standing by while my wife suffered and screamed through hours of slow, hard labor and one futile round of pushing after another where she literally broke herself while I watched. I'd been powerless—useless. I couldn't forget the silent tears rolling down her cheeks or the sweat-dampened hair clinging to her forehead or the doctors and nurses speaking in hushed, urgent tones before announcing it was time to go, time for the operating room, time to get the baby out.

  No, six weeks wasn't enough to heal. It didn't matter how much I wanted Lauren, how much I sensed myself caving without her. She needed more time and I needed to deal with that. And I would, regardless of whether it was incrementally killing me.

  Patrick held up a hand. "I do not need the gory details. I get more than enough of them from Shannon."

  "It's good you two are close like that."

  "Shut up," he murmured. "Isn't this kid—what?—three months old now? That's a lot longer than six weeks, Matthew. I'm no expert but when I saw Lauren last weekend, she seemed—"

  "Watch yourself," I warned.

  I didn't expect Patrick to step out of line but I couldn't help myself anymore. I wanted to protect my wife and daughter from everything. Every fucking thing. The Commodore and I didn't agree on much but I understood him now. I understood it all, loud and clear. His priorities were my priorities. I wanted to build a stone fortress and lock my girls inside it, and I was capable of wanting that without diminishing any of their strength. I couldn't fathom a woman stronger than Lauren but that didn't mean she had to rely on herself all the time. I could be strong for her.

  Hell, it was the only thing I could handle for her. Pregnancy, childbirth, nursing—I watched it all from the sidelines. And now, when we couldn't find more than five waking minutes together, something was troubling her and I couldn't solve that either. Here I was, useless all over again.

  "Sturdy," he said eventually. "She seems sturdy. She didn't look like she was falling apart. She looked like she could handle some—"

  "I said watch yourself," I interrupted. I scrubbed my hands over my face. Goddamn, I was the one falling apart here. "She's just now feeling better after the"—I cupped my hands in front of my chest because this conversation would only improve with more crude gesturing—"the breastfeeding thing. The infection."

  "Andy told me about that. How does that happen?"

  I shook my head. "I don't know, dude. Milk ducts and clogs and—I don't know. But it was terrible and I legitimately thought she was dying."

  "What did Nick say about that?"

  I paced the length of the kitchen, opening cabinets and glancing under the sink. "He said she wasn't dying. Told me to buy some cabbage."

  "Okay," Patrick said slowly. "But that's improved? It's not—they're not—still infected, right?"

  "Right," I said. "She had to stop breastfeeding for a few weeks. It was painful and she wasn't producing enough"—another crude gesture because why stop now?—"and Maddie went through a growth spurt at the same time so we had to supplement. The baby wasn't thrilled about those changes."

  "Yeah, I'm sure she had a lot to say," Patrick remarked. "I'm no expert but it sounds like you're afraid of having sex with your wife."

  "I am not afraid of having sex with my wife," I snapped.

  "I'd be afraid," he said with a shrug. "If Andy went through all that giving birth and then the breastfeeding thing and a baby who wouldn't sleep on top of it all, yeah, I'd think twice before returning to the scene of the crime." Another shrug. "Then I'd probably get over it."

  "Oh, yeah?" I asked. "You'd get over it? You'd just tuck that shit away and throw her on the bed?"

  He ran his hand over the back of his neck. "I'd get a vasectomy first. Then, after an appropriate amount of recovery time, I'd throw her on the bed."

  I didn't say it but the thought had crossed my mind. Often. At least once a day since bringing Maddie home from the hospital. I didn't mention it to Lauren because we barely had time to discuss anything outside of the baby's sleeping, eating, and diapering requirements. I wish someone had told me my life would one day revolve around the frequency and form of my child's poop. I wish I'd known. I wouldn't have done anything differently but I would've been prepared for this new, poop-filled chapter in my life.

  Aside from those issues, I didn't want to open the conversation about having another baby. My mother-in-law kept talking about the next one as if that kid was already on the way. Every time she brought it up, I was certain Lauren was going to shoot fire from her eyes.

  We'd had all these ideas about moving to a big house outside the city and filling it with kids and dogs. Those ideas sounded crazy now. Straight up crazy. We rarely slept at the same time because we'd carved the night into shifts. We didn't have time to talk—really talk—without her parents or my family in earshot. And I was terrified I'd break her, hurt her, push for something she couldn't bear. After everything she'd been through, it seemed inevitable.

  I needed her time, her attention, her warm body beside me. I needed her. If filling our house with kids meant forfeiting any of that, I didn't know how I'd ever make anything but a selfish choice. Perhaps our love was limitless but our time was not. And I wasn't sure I could watch Lauren tear herself apart all over again.

  "I can't believe you've survived this long," Patrick said. "On all counts. No sleep, no sex. I don't understand how you're functioning."

  I barked out a laugh. "I'm not. Isn't that why you're lobbing me this softball project?"

  "I'm giving you this property because we don't know what else to do about it and you need something that won't demand a ton of time," he replied. "Not sure if you remember but you knocked out so many projects before the baby arrived, you cleared your schedule straight through to November. That's why we've only sent structural reviews your way since you came back to the office a couple of weeks ago."

  I glanced from side to side. "I don't need to be here right now?"

  "I'm not saying that at all. I want this property off the books," he replied. "But if you want to take it slow and nap in your office this month, you have the flexibility to do that."

  I stared down at the grimy linoleum tiles. Once upon a time, they'd been white. Age and time and wear had turned them gray, black at the seams. "Good to know."

  "You also need to get that kid to sleep right fucking now."

  "Don't I know it," I replied with a laugh.

  "Why is it so difficult? You just"—he swept his arm to the side—"put the kid in the crib. Right? Then she falls asleep. It's not that complicated, Matthew."

  I gave him a tolerant grin. One of these days, I'd stand in another drafty Dutch colonial and tell him to put his tiny baby in the crib. Simple as could be. With any luck, that baby would make a habit of spitting up on him and only him. "Believe me, man. It's easier said than done. Your time will come and then you'll know how it is."

  He shot me a scowl. "We'll see about that."

  "Come on," I cried. "Andy's at my house right now, dressing Maddie in costumes and arranging her with cute pumpkin props. You're gonna be right there with me, tired and miserable and then feeling like an ass for being miserable because your kid is the most amazing thing in the world. And you're going to be afraid of breaking your wife
after she broke herself to give you a baby. You're going to be there any day now."

  Patrick stepped into the adjoining dining room. "That's a conversation I'll have with my wife, but thank you for your input."

  "Yeah, you say that but all I hear is 'You're right, Matthew. You're always right,'" I called after him. "Try it. Say, 'You're right.' See how that feels." I crossed the kitchen into the dining room, and found Patrick staring at the light fixture. "You know I'm right."

  "You're not right," he mumbled. "Go home. Get reacquainted with your wife. But do everyone a favor and pull out this time."

  I waved him off. "As enticing as that sounds, I'm not letting you set the budget without me. Not if I'm managing this property."

  Patrick rocked back on his heels with a sigh. "I can do this without you."

  "I know you can. I told you that ten minutes ago. But since you dragged me out here on a Saturday morning and then announced I was running this show, I'd like to participate in the budgeting process," I replied. "And I need your advice on something."

  He headed into the living room, shaking his head as he went. "It's not difficult. When the time comes, you just…pull out. Seriously, Matthew. You'll get the hang of it. I do it all the time."

  "Really? That's it?" I asked, the sarcasm thick in my words. "That's not the advice I need, asshole. Lauren's parents are looking after Madeleine tonight. We're going out. Alone."

  He turned, hitting me with a skeptical glance. "You're asking for sex advice?"

  "Oh my god," I hissed. "No, Patrick. I need you to recommend a restaurant. For fuck's sake."

  He flattened his hand on the wall, leaning there for a second as he stared at the battered hardwood floors. "Oh. All right. That makes better sense. What do you have in mind?"

  I shoved my hands into my pockets. "Not sure. Nice atmosphere, good food, quiet enough that we don't have to yell to hear each other. Fancy but comfortable."

  "Got it." He tipped his head to the side, nodded. "Are you ready? You're going to want to write this down."