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20

Liam

I came into my apartment—make that our apartment—still dripping from melted snow. “If it gets much colder, I’m going to need to buy a bigger coat,” I told Jared, setting all my shopping bags down at the door before taking off my boots and setting them on the plastic tray that helped keep our floor dry. Already my winter coat could barely cover my burgeoning belly, and I had many more inches to gain.

“What’s all this?” Jared asked, picking up the heavy fabric shopping bags and peeking inside to see what I’d picked up on the way home. “More baking supplies? You should’ve just told me what you needed. It’s my day off, I would’ve picked it up for you.”

“I know you would’ve, but I didn’t know I needed it until the craving hit about half an hour ago.”

That was partly true. It was my holiday tradition to bake tins of goodies to give to all my family and friends every Christmas, and I’d been working my way through them for the past few days, one recipe at a time. Peanut brittle, dark-chocolate almond bark and cashews drizzled with white chocolate, and of course, Jared’s favorite, my butter tarts. What I hadn’t known, though, was that my unborn baby had a request. No, scratch that—they had a demand . Baby wanted Pops’s ginger cookies, complete with the secret ingredient, which I still hadn’t managed to work out.

Jared helped me set up in the kitchen, then he went and put on some classic holiday music—John Denver and the Muppets. It was the perfect soundtrack for my childhood memories of Pops.

Humming, I got to work. First, I tried a batch adding cardamom, but as they baked and the apartment filled with the aroma, I knew even before tasting it that it wasn’t right. The next batch, I tried swapping dried ginger with fresh grated gingerroot, and that definitely wasn’t right. It threw the texture right off.

By the third batch, this time with nutmeg, my back was killing me. My rounding stomach was making it difficult to sidle right up to the counter, so I was bent over at an awkward angle, and my muscles were screaming in protest.

Jared moved in behind me and set his hands on my hips. “You’re making faces,” he informed me.

“I can’t help it. I’m getting frustrated,” I growled, tossing the wooden spoon into the bowl of batter.

“No, they’re not frustrated faces. I have spent months now watching you, and I’d like to think I have a PhD in interpreting your emotions. You’re in pain.” He said it with such certainty, and I was about to argue the fact, but he moved his hands until his thumbs dug into my lower back.

There was no choking back the orgasmic moan that slipped out. “Yeah, right there.” I leaned back into him and dropped my head on his shoulder. “How are your hands so strong,” I purred.

“Comes from kneading dough.” Lucky dough .

We stood there in the kitchen for a few minutes, with Jared rubbing his hands slowly over my body before settling on my stomach. He hummed along with the music, rocking me back and forth, lulling me into a warm, cozy dream—at least until the timer went off.

I groaned, ready to take the latest batch of cookies out, but before I could even reach for the oven mitts, Jared had set his hands on my shoulders and turned me toward the living room. “Go, put your feet up. Let me have a go at the cookies for a bit.”

“Okay, but you’ll never get it,” I teased. “How can you possibly get the recipe right if you’ve never tried Pops’s cookies?”

“Have a little faith,” he said, giving me a quick kiss and a pat on the ass to get me going.

Instead of going to the couch, though, I sat myself at the nearby dining table so I could keep Jared company. I did put my feet up, though. My ankles had begun to swell when I spent too much time on my feet. I could only imagine what it would be like in the coming months. I would need to hire even more staff at Grounded .

While Jared finished the batch of cookies I’d been working on, we talked a little about our current living situation. We’d slowly been moving Jared’s stuff to my apartment, since his lease was running out, and between the two of us, covering rent on my two-bedroom apartment wasn’t a problem, but it was a temporary solution. We would need more space.

“Did you look at the listings I sent you?” I asked from my perch.

“Yes, but none of the houses felt right to me. The blue one was too far from downtown. We would end up spending most of our time on the commute. The yellow one with the porch was nice, but it didn’t have a yard, just a tiny patch of gravel and a garage.” He peeked at me as he put the tray in the oven and set the timer. “There’s no rush. We can make the second bedroom into the nursery for now.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh. “I had hoped we’d have the extra room for when Dad comes to visit. I just want everything to be perfect.”

“It will be, no matter what that looks like. As long as we’re together, that’s all that matters.”

Jared washed out the big mixing bowl, dried it, then set up for a new batch. I held a hand up to get his attention. “Make sure you sift all the dry ingredients. It really does make a difference.”

He smirked at me. “Are you trying to tell me how to do my job?”

“Sorry. Don’t take it personally. I trust that you know what you’re doing.” He’d been doing this for years, and his macarons were the best. I was sure he could handle following a recipe. Even still, I had to bite my tongue every time I saw him doing something that wasn’t how I would do it—which was everything . He stirred with his left hand instead of his right, changed the temperature on the oven by five degrees, and I was pretty sure I’d just seen him add chili powder to that next batch of cookies.

“You’re doing this on purpose,” I grumbled as he used a spatula to flip the cookies in the air before setting them on the cooling rack.

He winked at me. “Maybe.”

It was a good thing I loved him so much. “I know it’s silly to worry about this. I mean, the cookies are delicious on their own, even if I can’t figure out what his secret ingredient is, but…” I trailed off, feeling dejected.

Jared came and lifted my feet off the chair so he could sit down, then put his feet back in his lap, giving my toes a massage. “But you miss your pops, and if we could figure out this one ingredient, it would feel like he was here.”

I smiled through my stinging eyes, my vision going watery. “Yeah, exactly.” I was so grateful he understood.

“Your grandpa would’ve been so proud of you, Liam. Every time you remember him, he’s here.” Jared leaned forward and set a hand over my heart .

His words sent my tears rolling down my cheeks, but they were a happy kind of tears. I missed my pops more than I could explain, but having an alpha like Jared, our baby, our future… He was right, Pops would’ve been so happy for me.

Jared lifted my feet so he could get back to the kitchen. He washed his hands, ready to start again. “You got flour on my socks,” I pointed out, but I couldn’t reach to brush them off. Oh well.

“What if we made them with chai spice next?” he suggested, opening our spice drawer.

I frowned. “No, that’s definitely not the missing ingredient.”

“No, but they would taste amazing.” He smirked over at me. “I’m going to make you a dozen different option, and then your Christmas baking will be done. Two birds, one stone.”

Fair enough. I sat back in my seat and let go of control. We talked about everything and nothing over the next hour, while Jared made umpteen batches of cookies, all just slightly wrong. With each ding of the timer, I got to try another cookie. Some were spicy, some rich, and he was right, the chai cookies were incredible. I started making notes about them in a little chart on my phone, what ingredients we used and whether they were worth making again.

When I bit into the next cookie, though, I froze mid-chew, the flavors mingling on my tongue. “Jared,” I said cautiously, scared to hope, then louder. “ Jared! ”

He was immediately at my side. “What is it? Is it the baby?”

“No!” I waved the cookie at him frantically. “This one! What did you put in this one?”

“What batch is it?” he asked, scanning the rows of cooling racks, trying to decide where I got this one from.

“Um, seven,” I said, consulting the chart .

He counted down the row until he got to the corresponding rack. “That one was… pepper.”

We shared a look as intense love filled me. This incredible alpha, man of my dreams, father of my baby, just baked a dozen different versions of my pops’s recipe just for me. “PEPPER!” I shouted, and the baby kicked in excitement right along with me.

Jared loaded up the entire batch on a plate then came and took me by the hand. “Come on.”

“Where are we going?” I asked, heaving myself off the chair and following along.

“We’re going to celebrate your pops, obviously.”

We lay in bed together with our plate of cookies, and with each bite, I told our baby a story about their great-grandfather. I told them about his love of crossword puzzles and how he could’ve won Jeopardy if he’d ever cared to try. About how he’d introduced me to his favorite soap opera, Days of Our Lives , and I’d introduced him to Lonely Alpha —he was all about the drama.

“And he would stop at every payphone and vending machine to check the return slot for loose change,” I said to my stomach. Our baby would probably never even know what a payphone was. “He bent down and picked up every coin he found, and he kept it all in an old coffee can in the cupboard, convinced that one day he would have enough for a trip to Hawaii.” My dad still had the coffee can; neither of us could bring ourselves to cash it in.

“Why Hawaii?” Jared asked.

“That’s where he met the love of his life,” I said softly. “My mimi was a real sweet lady. She passed when I was just a baby, and I know Pops missed her more than he could ever say. I hope they’re together now. ”

I took another bite of the perfect cookie and rolled to look at Jared. His hands immediately went to my stomach, getting as close to our baby as he could, always hoping to feel them move. “Jared, would you… come work at Grounded?”

His hand stilled. “You want me to work with you? Won’t you get sick of me?”

I didn’t hesitate to shake my head. This had been my dream when I was younger, but now my dream was so much bigger than a café and bakery. It was building a family and a future with this man, and I wanted to share this part of my dream with him. “I miss you when I work my long days, and you’re incredibly talented. I understand if you don’t want to, and I don’t really want to ask you to leave Crave either, because Hugh is your family. But… maybe you could come bake with me on Saturdays? Only if you want, and I would pay you, of course.”

Jared cut off my rambling with a kiss that tasted like molasses, warm and sweet, just like him. “I would love to share your kitchen with you.”

My kitchen and so much more.