Perfect Contradiction (16 page)

“You can say it now,” Beth whispered from her coveted spot on the edge of the bed. She was holding the baby, not even looking at me.

I rolled my eyes. I knew this was coming. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

Beth glanced up from the bundle in her arms and raised a brow before quickly looking back at the baby. “Don’t play coy, Jennifer Collins. You know exactly what I mean,” she answered back.

Mrs. Wright, the only other person in the room at the moment, snorted. “Better tell her what she wants to hear, Jen,” she said. “She ain’t gonna let you rest until she hears it.”

I harrumphed as well as I could while wearing a hospital gown and reclining back in a bed. “Fine,” I said finally. “You were right,” I answered.

Beth grinned, but she still didn’t look at me. She was mesmerized by the little one in her arms. We all were. Mrs. Wright had to threaten Hunter and the rest of the Wright guys out with things only a momma could threaten them with to make them go get some food and for Hunter to get a shower before coming back to the hospital.

“That’s right,” Beth cooed at the baby. “Your Auntie Beth knew all along you were a little princess.”

I shared a glance and a small smile with Mrs. Wright. And Beth had been right, of course. Exactly six hours and twenty-two minutes after we made it to the hospital, little
Elizabeth Grace Wright
was born, weighing in at seven pounds and eleven ounces. Named Elizabeth for Beth, of course. And Grace for my mother, Evelyn Grace Collins. She was all of twenty inches long and the most beautiful baby in the entire universe. And she’d been told as much a hundred times in the past twenty-four hours since she’d made her debut into the world.

“When will they let you go home?” Mrs. Wright asked.

“As long as everything looks good with the baby and me, it looks like we’ll be discharged tomorrow morning,” I answered. And it wouldn’t come a moment too soon. I was ready to get out of the hospital and get back to the comfort of my own home. I’d never been a fan of hospitals… too many bad memories.

“You guys did good, Jen,” Beth murmured, holding a hand out to me.

I smiled and grasped her hand in mine. “Thank you, Beth,” I whispered, fighting the tears. There’d been enough of those the past few days.

“We should go and let Jen and the baby get some rest,” Mrs. Wright suggested.

Beth sighed and placed a gentle kiss on the baby’s tiny head. “Yeah, I guess I’ve kept them awake long enough, hogging up all the baby snuggles,” Beth said. She handed the baby to me and stood next to Mrs. Wright.

“We’ll see you back at the inn tomorrow,” Mrs. Wright said softly. I nodded at her and Beth. The baby was snuggling into my chest and fighting her sleep. And I was helplessly under her spell.

Hunter just couldn’t stay away. He was supposed to come and pick us up at the hospital the next morning, but here he was, entering the room behind a nurse later the same evening. At least he looked refreshed and showered. His eyes lit up when he entered the room and found me and the baby awake and sitting up in bed.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Hunter murmured before placing a kiss on my lips and then one on the baby’s forehead.

“You talkin’ to me or your newest little sweetheart?” I asked.

Hunter flashed me a wide smile and then one at his daughter. “Both,” he answered softly. “Can I take her?” he asked.

I nodded and helped him pick her up gently. He sat down next to me in a rocking chair. “You know she’s going to be spoiled rotten before we ever leave the hospital, don’t you?” I asked with a happy sigh.

Hunter shrugged. “If this is spoiling her, then I’m a hundred percent for it,” he answered. I smiled as I watched him with little Grace. It was clear to anyone with two good eyes, heck, even one would do the job—that Hunter Wright was head over heels in love with the little bundle in his arms.

“She’s going to want to be held all the time,” I warned.

“Well, then, I’ll just quit my job, sell the business, and become a full-time baby holder,” he answered seriously.

I snorted. “You just want to make her a daddy’s girl,” I accused with a smile.

“And what’s wrong with that?” Hunter asked with a twinkle in his eye. “Then I’d have the two most beautiful girls in the world under my spell,” he said with a wink.

“Oh really?” I asked with a raised brow. “You got me under your spell, huh?”

Hunter looked down into the face of our daughter and smiled, his face full of wonder and love. “You’re right,” he agreed. “I’m the one under the spell.” He looked up at me as he held the most precious thing on the planet to either of us in his arms and smiled.

“And I never want to be anywhere else,” he said softly.

“You guys look like you spent a lot of time in the sun!” Beth said. She only sounded a little jealous.

I grinned over at Hunter, who was talking with his dad and brothers as they stood around the barbeque grill. Hunter winked at me, and I blushed. We sure had. Our honeymoon had been beautiful and relaxing. It had lasted two weeks and had taken us forever to finally get around to. Six months after we’d married, in fact. Time flew when you were busy and had a two-year-old to care for. For our honeymoon, we had gone swimming, snorkeling, took surfing lessons, and even spent some quality
“alone time”
on our private beach one evening.
A lot of things checked off my bucket list
, I thought with a grin.

“Oh my, I don’t even want to know what that smile is all about,” Beth said with a smirk.

I cleared my throat and shook my head.

“Momma… Daddy say… Uncle Matt likes ‘em,” my little princess said as she patted my arm.

I glanced into the bucket and squealed. A frog.
Ick
.

“Okay, honey, well, how about you go and show Uncle Matt then?” I said with a gentle push. Grace was wearing a leopard print T-shirt, a pink tutu, and a pair of brown cowboy boots. All curtesy of Auntie Beth. I rolled my eyes. I had to admit, though, Grace reminded me a lot of her Aunt Beth. Same wild and restless spirit, same heart of gold, same inexplicable love for cowboy boots.

“So, when do you find out what you’re having?” I asked. Beth laid a hand on her tiny stomach and growled. I was grinning.

“Not for another four weeks,” she said. “Doggone kid. Now we have to wait until they can fit us in at the place that does those fancy ultrasounds.” Beth frowned. She had been very displeased when the doctor couldn’t tell for certain what she was having.

I grinned. “Well, you know what I think…” I said.

Beth held up her hand. “Don’t you dare, Jennifer Wright. I’m warning you,” she shrieked.

I just sat back and took a sip of my sweet iced tea, watching her from over the rim of my glass. She didn’t want to hear my predictions.
She is so havin’ a boy
, I thought to myself with an evil chuckle. Beth raised a warning finger, and I laughed.

Matt came over, kissing Beth on the cheek and rubbing her stomach. He was beaming with love for his wife and their unborn child. In a few months, Grace would have a little cousin to play with.

Grace’s giggles and screeches drew my attention to her. Her daddy was chasing her around the yard. When he caught her, he lifted her up over his head and blew on her exposed tummy. I smiled softly. Hunter then carried her over to her grandpa and uncles, where they all pretended to fight her big, bad daddy to win the hand of the fair princess. It was times like this that I was reminded just how much I had to be thankful for. And at times like this, I was sure I could feel my momma’s presence all around me.

My life was beautiful.

Had the journey to get to where I now found myself been what I’d always thought it would be? A straight and perfect road, planned out in detail and followed exactly? No, it hadn’t. But I wouldn’t have traded my curved, unplanned, and imperfect journey with anyone else’s.

Just like life… I found I actually preferred my journey with all its detours and glorious imperfections.

Perfection was overrated and imperfection was reality.

Life was imperfection.

Life was a…
perfect contradiction
.

The End

Peggy Martinez is the author of The Sweet Contradiction Series, which was picked up by Crimson Tree Publishing in early 2014 and is scheduled to release under this new imprint in the Summer of 2014. Martinez's New Adult Contemporary Romance series will include Sweet Contradiction, Perfect Contradiction and Beautiful Contradiction. 

When not writing, Peggy can be found spending time at home with her husband, her teen son and four little girls. She loves reading, writing, soap making, aromatherapy, gangster movies, prepping for the zombie apocalypse and downing insane amounts of Twizzlers and Kazoozles. 

As if being a wife and homeschooling mom of five doesn't keep her busy enough, Peggy Martinez is a full time Author who has six published books, including The Time Warper Series and State of Decay. Peggy's dream is to own a small homestead where she can raise some chickens along with her five kids, tend to a large garden and one day take her dream vacation's to Ireland, Greece and Scotland.

Read on for an exclusive look into the next Contradiction novel—Beautiful Contradiction.

Releasing via Crimson Tree Publishing in 2016

Chapter One

Charlie

“C’mon, James, I don’t want to let this jerk win,” I said in exasperation. James put a hand on his hip, a sure sign he was agitated.

“It’s not about winning or losing, Charlie. It’s about keeping you safe,” he snapped, his crystal blue eyes daring me to argue further with him. James MacAvoy, my agent and longtime friend, was quite a bit older than I was, but not so much so that people didn’t have fun writing articles about what all we did or didn’t do together behind closed doors. That would have been a decent story, except for the simple fact that James not only treated me like a younger sister, but he didn’t exactly have a thing for the opposite sex of which I was a part of either. We shared a Chicago condo, which I was sure added fuel to the fire, but it worked for us since our schedules were so busy. He hated to let them think we were sexually involved, but I told him I didn’t mind. After all, if they were so sure he and I were banging boots, then they wouldn’t dig deeper into my personal life or his. In my eyes, that was a win-win.

“I know… it’s just that I feel like getting away for a few weeks is the same thing as running from this.” I slung an arm out toward my bedroom, where several policemen were still writing notes and taking pictures. I’d been getting weird messages lately on my phone and in my fan mail. I chalked it up to some weirdo trying to freak me out. When you were in the public eye, these things happened… I knew that. But when I got home from shopping that afternoon and found my apartment door ajar, things had escalated to a whole new level. James had also happened to be out of the apartment, and we were still trying to figure out how whoever had broken in had gotten into our building in the first place. We had tight security, and we were in an upscale neighborhood. But that didn’t stop my stalker from getting into my home and then making his way back to my bedroom. The police officers had been at the scene for several hours when they finally began packing up to go home. James saw them to the door.

I walked over to my room and looked around at the mess. My room, my personal space, had been violated, and I wasn’t even sure if I could ever sleep there again. All my lingerie had been artfully arranged on the bed, snapshots of me doing so many different things, regular everyday things, were spread on top of the satin and lace. At any other time, the photos would have been pretty, artistic even, but they were too intimate, the photographer catching my moods, the way I held my head when I was listening to someone, the way I chewed on my bottom lip while trying to make a decision. The photographer had been watching me for a very long time and knew my habits well. I shivered and rubbed my hands up and down my arms. At first, I had been angry. I’d seen red over the incident, but now… now I just felt violated and
scared
.

“Charlie?”

I sniffled and turned toward James. His face was scrunched up in concern and in anger. When he saw my face, his anger vanished.

“Come here, hun,” he said softly. I put my head on his chest and let him wrap me into his embrace as I cried. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. The police will find this creep, and you’ll be back in Chicago and back in front of the camera before you know it.”

I nodded my head as he kept telling me how everything was going to be okay and how I could use a nice trip to the country anyway. I went to sit down on the couch as James did what he does best and took control of the entire situation. Before I even knew what was happening, the mess in my room had been cleaned up, my bags had been packed, and I had a ticket in my hand for the first flight out of Chicago the next morning. I was going to be flying under an alias, which happened to be my birth name, a name that not even the press knew—Charlotte West.

The high-profile, world-famous, real-sized runway model Chey Weston was about to disappear.

Jackson

“That’ll be fine,” I said into the telephone. My good friend, whom I happened to owe a favor to, as he reminded me several times, had some rich kid from Chicago needing a place to lay low for a few days.

“My friend in Chicago says this kid, Charlie, is some kind of high-profile client of his. He’s having trouble of some sort and wants to get out of the city until everything blows over,” John said apologetically. “I would have him at my house, but I’m in the middle of ripping down half the kitchen for renovations.”

I sighed. The truth was, I didn’t like someone in my house all that much. I was a private sort of man. I did have plenty of room out here all to myself though, and the agent was willing to pay a nice little sum for a week, so I was tempted.

“How do you know this guy?” I asked.

“We met a long time back when I’d moved to Chicago thinking I could hack it livin’ the city life,” John said with a chuckle. “James wasn’t such a big deal back then and when we met at a mutual friend’s wedding, we found we had a lot more in common than an inner city kid and a boy from the country should’ve had. We had lunch weekly after that to talk and keep track of one another.”

I shook my head. If John liked him, it meant James MacAvoy couldn’t have been all that bad of a guy. I sighed again.

I did wonder why this guy, Charlie, didn’t talk to me himself. A twenty-four-year-old man could surely make a call on his own. Aw, hell. I hoped he wasn’t one of those uptight, rich city guys who wore all black and only listened to heavy metal, trying to defy his rich daddy at every turn.

“Not to offend you or anything, John, but this guy, Charlie… he ain’t into drugs or anything bad, is he?”

“No, no. He ain’t into drugs or anything like that,” he answered.

So, maybe Charlie was just a spoiled rich kid. I could handle that for the extra money. “Good, then I don’t see a problem. I’ll have a room ready for him when he gets here, and I’d be glad to pick him up from the airport.”

“That would be perfect. Thanks, Jackson! I appreciate this, man,” John said in a rush. “Charlie will be there bright and early in the morning at seven-thirty via Astor Airlines, flight 202. I’ll call you tomorrow to see how you and Charlie are gettin’ on.”

“Sounds good,” I answered before ending the call. Rubbing the back of my neck, I went to put away the bills I’d spread across the table.

Looked like I was getting’ a housemate in less than twenty-four hours and a little extra cash to take care of a few of these bills.

I sure hoped the guy wasn’t a slob.