Maxed Steel by M.J. Fields
Epilogue
Christmas Break
Mila
Looking around the warehouse,I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of peace and love.
Max Steel, my husband of three months, surprised me. More accurately, blindsided me by working on the warehouse while I was knee-deep and completely obsessed with saving money and finding the best deals on every piece of furniture, appliance—hell, even the building materials—as we took our time finishing the house.
Looking around the shelves full of items that my “assistant,” Lindsey, and Cia, Saylor, Carly, Momma Joe, Aunt Pam, and all the Steel babes have obsessively clipped coupons, shopped, and stocked. I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of peace and love knowing that families in the most poverty-stricken areas of Jersey will get more help.
Lindsey smiles as she looks around. “Have I told you how much I love you for teaching me this?”
“You have.” I laugh. “Have I told you how much I love you for being my best friend in the entire world?”
“How are my girls?” Max’s voice echoes from behind us as he walks through the door separating my part of the warehouse and his part, which is much smaller, that will be a surf shop opening in the spring.
“Fat and happy.” Lindsey laughs as she rubs her hand over her swollen belly.
“Same,” I say, doing the same to mine.
Yep, Lindsey and I are both knocked up.
“You gonna let Boo—”
“Nope,” she cuts him off.
“He’s got a truck. Could help with the transportation,” Max says, still trying to force a love connection between the two of them as he wraps his arms around me and rubs my belly.
“Jack Daniels and I would prefer to avoid the idiot for as long as we can.” She grabs one of his hands and puts it on her belly. “Besides, I have you.”
I look over my shoulder at him and smile. “You’re a good man, Max Steel.”
“I’m a lucky man, Mila Steel.” He kisses me quickly then steps back, his nose flaring a bit.
I love that he’s completely turned on by my pregnant body. Well, I do now that I’m not hurling over the sink and have him poking me in the ass with a hard-on while trying to hold my hair back.
Lindsey hasn’t been sick once, but she’s dealing with Boone and parents who have pretty much disowned her, so my Max rubs her belly on occasion.
“I’m gonna go grab the girls so they can be here to help out when everyone gets here.”
“We here, Daddy!” Saylor yells as she runs across the concrete floor and dives into his arms.
It only took a few weeks to lose the Max Daddy. I kind of miss it. Max? Not so much.
“You ready to do the good good?”
“Seriously, Max? That just sounds wrong.”
“Mind out of the gutter, Cia Steel, or Santa is gonna—”
Saylor covers his mouth. “Santa loves Cia.”
“Nom, nom, nom, nom.” He pretends to eat her hand, and she laughs hard, so hard.
“Can my boyfriend come over and help us load the vehicles?” Cia asks me.
“No,” Max says as I say, “Yes.”
“I know you all are saving for college, but you better save for a therapist, too.” She stomps away.
Max grins, and I shake my head at him.
Reality is that she has a ton of respect for him, and it hurt at first when I realized how desperately she wanted a male role model, but there couldn’t be a better one than him.
I still don’t play on social media, but I have a presence on Max’s and on Lindsey’s.
I watch as Max whispers in Saylor’s ear and sets her down.
Giggling, she runs over and kisses my belly then Lindsey’s, and then she takes one of each of our hands and pulls us over to the two comfy chairs that Max set up in the corner when we started spending more time out here and insisted we put our feet up. I would have fought it if Lindsey didn’t enjoy it so much.
“I rub your belly?” Saylor asks Lindsey.
“It would be the best Christmas present ever,” Lindsey croons.
I hear Max’s cell phone chime and watch as he smiles while walking over to hit the overhead door button, and the doors lift.
When a black Ford backs in, Lindsey sighs. “Do you think he’d sing to me?”
“Uncle Brand sings on the radio,” Saylor tells her. “And cousin Cooper is his boy.”
“With Aunt Kiki, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
When Justice, Tags, Tricks, Ranger, Tobias, and Amias come in, they are followed by Cyrus, Zandor, Xavier, and finally Jase, Saylor is done with belly detail and running across the floor, yelling, “Big Daddy here!”
Jase squats down and catches her when she launches herself at him. He scoops her up and twirls her around.
“We’re missing one,” Lindsey whispers.
“It’s disturbing that you notice that immediately.”
“The sexy Spanish guy, Matteo.” She wags her brows. “Where is he?”
“Remember, I told you he has a heart defect?”
She nods, and her smile falls.
“He’s been saving his energy for his boys. Things like this get to be too much.”
“And his wife?”
“She’s amazing. Strong.”
“Good. Now, let’s just sit back and allow me to eye-bang all these hot—”
“Married men,” I cut her off as I push myself up.
“Exactly. A girl can fantasize.”
“You do that. I’m going to go direct.”
When the kids and women come in, the whole place gets much louder as I walk over to Cia. “What do you think?”
She shrugs. “It’s all right.”
“It sure is.”
* * *
Christmas Eve
“We pushing publish?”Max asks as we stare at the computer screen after uploading the heavily edited combination of all the notes Carly found in Max’s room when she was cleaning one day. Notes he saved that we passed back and forth to one another for a solid seven months before anything at all happened.
I can’t say I hate Marcello Effisto anymore. The reality is that I made a shitty choice and believed him based on my low as fuck self-esteem. But, had I not wanted what Max calls a palette cleanse, I wouldn’t have slept … or sailed, with Max that night, and Saylor wouldn’t have been born. After hearing about him and Tris, and seeing his struggle, now I actually feel sorry for him.
He had love once, and he pushed it away.
Had Max not been Max, and had he walked away after the party where I tore him up, I could see myself ending up a lot like him—miserable. But, thankfully, he pushed. And I’m even more thankful that love lives everywhere that we are, and that, I, too, have fallen in love with love as Max has been since he was young enough to remember anything.
I will also constantly pick on him about being a momma’s boy, but I also know that, because of the way he truly loves, adores, and respects Carly, as role modeled through his father, I love him even more.
And now, here we sit, having cowritten a short, hot HEA, to publish on Amazon’s app reading platform.
“It’s what your mom wants for Christmas, so yes, we push publish.”
He wags his eyebrows and asks, “Do you think the world is ready for Mila Maximus’s brand of good good?”
“I do.”
“On three, two, one…”
Together, we hit publish.
“Now, if the crew wants to know who fixed my fuck-up on the piercing, they can read the book.”
“And what if your wife wants to know?” I pry a bit.
“All she has to do is ask.”
“Max, who do I have to thank for your piercings?”
“Momma Joe, of course.”
I laugh pretty hard but quietly for a few minutes, —okay, more than a few— before he asks, “You ready for bed?”
Smiling at the tree and remembering how I envisioned our Christmas Eves to be, in bed, making love as the girls sleep, I nod and look back at him. “Most definitely.