Nanny for the Army Rangers by Krista Wolf

 

Epilogue

 

 

DELILAH

“Shouldn’t we cut a ribbon or something?” I asked, watching the last truck roll away. It reached the end of the driveway and turned westbound, disappearing from view beyond the gates. “I mean, this is a pretty monumental moment!”

I turned back to where Liam held Jace in his arms, and Duncan held Courtney. Julius sat behind them in the tall, cool grass, which by the end of the summer looked lusher and greener than ever before.

“We could cut something if you like,” Liam shrugged. “Whaddya got?”

Behind them, the mansion was done. Not just as in “still a few things to button up” done, either. More like the way an expensive bottle of champagne gets smashed to smithereens over the ass end of a freshly-launched ship.

“Got any expensive bottles of champagne?” I asked smartly.

“Probably not,” said Julius. “Unless Evan sends some of those next.”

Evan was Evan Andliet. We were on a first name basis with the tycoon now, and with good reason. The trucks had started coming the very next day, right after he and his fleet of black sedans had pulled out of Southold. And they hadn’t stopped since.

“He put a whole wine cellar down there,” said Duncan. “Might as well fill it for us, too.”

“The wine cellar was already there,” said Julius. “Remember? It was a bunch of termite-infested wood-pulp and broken glass when we first moved in.”

Truck after truck they came: at first the designers, planners, and architects. They were followed by project managers and general contractors, who negotiated entire crews that somehow worked simultaneously on the mansion like it was a great, beautiful symphony.

All on Evan Andliet’s dime.

They gutted the place where it needed to be gutted, and preserved the history wherever it could be saved. They ran new electric, new plumbing, new HVAC. They polished the floors and painted the ceilings and put in all new fixtures and finishes, while the guys worked on expanding their Shop and the nanny and I took care of Jace and Courtney, who seemed fascinated by the whole thing.

Because oh yes, we had a nanny now. And that’s because going back to medical school at Stony Brook was a full-time gig.

“Should we ask for advice then?” asked Liam. “I mean, someone like Evan Andliet probably knows a thing or two about stocking a wine cellar.”

“The moment you make that call a truck will show up the very next morning,” Duncan advised. “You know that, right?”

“Oh I know,” Liam smiled.

“He’ll have the whole basement stocked so fast it’ll make all our heads spin.”

It was mind-boggling, just thinking about the sheer amount of work that had gone into building this place up over the winter. And when the snows melted and spring came? All new landscaping crews began clearing the grounds. They mended fences, trimmed hedges, restored trees. They fixed the cracked paths we didn’t even know existed because they were buried by so much overgrowth, and got the fountains running again. They even planted all new flowers to make the eight-acre estate as beautiful on the outside again as it was on the inside.

And we all fell in love with it, the children especially.

“The final truck, leaving the property,” I sighed wistfully. “The last project, totally completed.”

“Ah, don’t sweat it,” Liam grinned. “There’ll always be another project.”

Jace suddenly reached out for me, calling me by name. I hugged him tightly before planting three kisses on each cheek, as was our custom.

“That reminds me,” said Liam. “We uh, have something to talk to you about.”

I set Jace down, so he could run around in the grass. Immediately Courtney wanted the same thing, wriggling her way out of Duncan’s arms.

“Go on then,” I told them fearlessly. “Shoot.”

“Well you know how I’m Daddy Duncan,” Duncan said wryly.

“And a finer name you’ll never have,” Liam snickered.

Duncan rolled his eyes and ignored him. “And he’s Daddy Julius, and that giggling idiot is Daddy Liam.”

“Mmm-hmm,” I acknowledged.

“Well it’s been a year, almost,” Duncan faltered. “A whole four seasons since you got here. A year since you changed everything for us, for the better.”

Julius nodded. “You did change everything for us,” he admitted.

“Yes?” I smiled nervously, not really sure where they were going with this. “So?”

“So don’t you think it’s time the children start calling you Mommy Delilah?”

Time froze. My heart started beating double-time, as my eyes glassed over.

“R—Really?”

“Or just mom, really,” Duncan smiled. “I mean, there’s only one of you, so…”

“You really want them to call me mommy?” I asked carefully. “What about…” I could barely say it. “What about Kara?”

“Kara will always be their biological mother,” said Liam. “That’ll never change. But they won’t ever know her. As unfortunate as it is, they won’t have memories of her as they are growing up.”

Julius sighed sadly. “Nothing we can do will change what happened. We can only control things going forward. And we know what we want,” he said with a smile. “We want you.”

“But you already have me,” I smiled back. “All three of you. You own every last piece of my heart.” I shrugged sheepishly. “Well, at least the parts not totally taken hostage by Jace and Courtney, of course.”

“True,” said Liam. “But the twins need a mother. A motherly figure, yes, but also—”

“A mother,” Duncan reiterated. He jerked his chin in Liam and Julius’s direction. “For once I agree with them. They’re absolutely right.”

I was flooded with all sorts of conflicting emotions. I felt humbled. Honored. Even a little bit frightened.

But the most predominant emotion of all was joy.

“Fine,” I said, through eyes that were rapidly filling with tears. “I’d love to be a mommy.”

“Delilah, you’ve been a mommy,” Julius pointed out, “the whole time you’ve been here. This just formalizes things.”

Formalizes things.It might’ve seemed that way to them, sure. But they had no idea how important this was for me. Or what it meant for our family dynamic, going forward.

“Speaking of formalizing things…”

I wiped my eyes, and suddenly the guys were surrounding me on three sides. It happened often enough, though usually in the bedroom when they were about to knock my socks off. This time however…

OhmyGOD.

There was a ring box at eye-level, staring me in the face. All three men had a hand on it. Their arms were even shaking.

“We were wondering if maybe you’d make honest men of us?”

My heart skipped. My eyes were so full of tears I had to wipe them three times in order to see.

The ring was breathtaking. A circlet of white gold twisted from three sides around a big, beautiful diamond. It was the single most gorgeous thing I’d ever encountered, in my entire life.

I broke down not just crying, but bawling.

“Delilah?”

Courtney came running over, and I swept her into my arms. Jace too. There was so much concern in their little faces, I fought to regain control immediately.

“It’s only been a year,” said Liam, his voice thick with emotion. “But when you know, you know.”

“And we know,” said Duncan, unable to fight back tears of his own. They flowed into his mouth, somewhere around his ear-to-ear grin.

“We’ve always known,” said Julius, finishing the circle. “And maybe that’s what makes this so easy for us.”

Their arms came together, enveloping me tightly. Together they hugged me as they so often did, only this time being careful not to squeeze the children.

“We can figure out the details another time,” said Duncan. “You know, the whole three-men-marrying-one-woman thing, the stigma surrounding it…”

“The legalities or illegalities,” said Liam, rolling his eyes. “The intolerance and judgment…”

“Nobody would ever understand how this all works,” said Julius. “Except for us. We know, the four of us. And when it comes down to it—”

“That’s all that really matters,” I finished for him. Sniffing happily, I smiled and cried some more. “That’s all that’s ever going to matter.”

Jace, still concerned, was using his little two-year old hand to dry away my tears. In the meantime, Courtney mimicked my smile nervously. I ended up kissing them both on the forehead.

Then I kissed the guys — or rather, my new financés — one by one by one. Each kiss made the children’s mood a little bit brighter, until they were giggling happily again.

Married!

Sometime during the whole beautiful thing, someone took my hand. When I looked down again, the ring was shining on my finger.

“You ready to be our wife?” asked Duncan.

“More than anything in the world,” I breathed. “And I’m ready to be a mother, too.”

“You’re already a mother,” noted Julius. “We told you tha—”

“But I’m ready to be a mother twice over,” I reiterated, emphasizing those last two words. I added a sly smile. “You know,” I winked. “Whenever you guys are ready, of course…”

Children.We’d talked a little about that, too. Giving Jace and Courtney a brother, or a sister, or both. Probably both. Most likely more.

Because after all, we definitely had the house for it.

“We can walk before we run though,” I conceded with a smile. “Or even fly.”

“Speak for yourself,” Liam scowled. “I’m ready to start trying tonight.”

I laughed. “Oh are you now?”

“Sure, and why not? The twins aren’t getting any younger. And you want all the kids to be close, right? Growing up?”

Julius unfolded his arms. “Good point.”

“I want to finish school first though,” I said, responsibly. “Now that I’m back on track, I don’t want to derail. And once I do—”

“We can talk about all this later on,” said Duncan. “Right now though… who’s ready to go out?”

The little ones’ hands shot up so fast it made us all laugh. Liam raised his hand too, though. As well as Julius.

“Ummm… sure?” I laughed. There was obviously some mystery I didn’t know about. “And where would we be going?”

“Where else would we take you and a pair of two-year olds, almost a full year after you came into our lives?”

I thought for a moment, but a moment was all it took. My eyes lit up.

“The aquarium!”

Jace clapped. Courtney squealed.

“BINGO.”

I glanced down at my ring, again, for the fourth or fifth time already. I supposed I’d be doing that an awful lot in the foreseeable future.

“Could we actually see the sea lion show this time?” Liam joked, poking me in the ribs. “As opposed to the follow-that-ambulance show?”

As my would-be husband squeezed my hand, I blew him a playful kiss.

“Keep it up,” I chuckled, “and you’re never getting that jacket back.”

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