Читать книгу Summer Beach Reads - Natalie Anderson - Страница 42

Two years later

EXACTLY as Hayden had promised her all those adventures ago at Everest, it was so much less terrifying when there was someone there, stepping out into the nothingness with you.

He hadn’t left her side, not for one overwhelming moment of the birth.

She lay curled around their tiny baby boy, throbbing with love for this precious, precious gift. She’d thought it impossible to feel more love than she already did for her complex, brave Hayden but this little bundle had come out with masses more all ready to go.

She stroked his tiny cheek and glanced at her sleeping husband.

Hayden had pulled a chair up to the side of the bed and leaned forward to watch his son nurse with all the pride and amazement and trepidation of a first-time dad. Then he’d fallen asleep there, totally destroyed by the past forty hours, with one hand on her and one on his new son, draped on the side of her bed. Even the visiting nurses worked quietly around him so that he could sleep.

Then again, he had charmed every one of them. They would have done anything for him. She bundled Leo up more tightly in her hold and looked up and around her, too shattered—too happy—to sleep.

‘Mum,’ she whispered to the night. ‘This is your grandson, Leonidas. I’m sorry you can’t hold him yourself but Hayden and I will hold him for ever for you and keep him safe.’

She stroked his flushed little cheek with her index finger. ‘I get it now, Mum. How unprepared we all are at this moment. How much we want to be the perfect parent for our babies. But it doesn’t change us. It can’t make us perfect, or even better. We can only do our best.’

She gently extracted the sleeping baby from under Hayden’s touch, bundled him more securely and curled him into a hold close to her body.

And then she rocked him and told him all about his grandma.

Tick.