Fox (Stone Cold Fox Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  “I think they want their beautiful momma,” he said softly, and immediately, I reached out both of my hands.

  “Bring them here.”

  Gently, he placed them in my arms, and I stared down at their two little faces with more love that I could’ve ever imagined.

  “God, they are so beautiful,” I whispered. “I just can’t believe how much I love two tiny little people.”

  “I know,” he agreed, and I looked up to find him smiling down at us. “And it looks like they just wanted to be with you.”

  I looked back down at the girls, and slowly, their eyes started to flutter closed, their cries softening to silence.

  They were such dolls. Even just out of the womb, they were true redheaded beauties.

  God, it was so hard to fathom, so hard to wrap my mind around these two little humans Levi and I had created. Instantly, I was near bursting with love for them, and my eyes shone with emotion.

  My sweet, beautiful daughters filled me with a sunshine I had never known existed.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than I am right now, Levi.”

  “Me either, baby,” he said and sat on the bed beside me. “Me either.”

  We stayed like that for a long moment, both of us gazing down at our babies and soaking up every little thing about them.

  It wasn’t until Levi’s phone rang from the bedside table that we both broke from our blissful trance.

  He grabbed it from the table and checked the screen.

  “Looks like Grandpa Sam wants to FaceTime,” he said with a grin. “You feel up to it?”

  I nodded.

  Levi clicked the green phone icon, and within seconds, Sam’s smiling face filled the screen.

  “Are the babies here?” he asked, completely forgoing pleasantries. “Tell me the babies are here, and I finally get to know if my great-grandbabies are girls or boys.”

  Great-grandbabies. I couldn’t not smile at his words.

  Although there was no familial relation, it felt right.

  Sam was an important part of both Levi’s and my lives.

  Levi tilted the screen toward the two babies currently sleeping in my arms. “Here they are,” he said, and I watched Sam’s face fill with emotion.

  Relief. Joy. And love. So much love.

  “Those are girls,” he said, and his voice shook. “I know, without a doubt, those are girls. The most beautiful girls I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  I smiled. “Definitely girls.”

  “God, they are something,” he said. “Congratulations to both of you. And thank you for bringing these two beauties into my life. I couldn’t be happier right now.”

  “Thanks, Sam,” Levi said, and I smiled. “That means a lot.”

  “So…do these little ladies have names?”

  “Yes,” Levi answered, and his gaze locked with mine. Instantly, emotion and love and joy clogged my throat.

  Before I’d gone into labor, we still hadn’t known what we were going to name our babies. We’d tried. God, we’d tried. But we hadn’t really found anything we loved.

  But once our daughters made their big entrance into this even bigger world, we knew.

  In hindsight, I honestly couldn’t believe we hadn’t known all along.

  “Well…” Sam urged. “Are you going to tell me?”

  I smiled and couldn’t stop a few bittersweet tears from slipping down my cheeks as I prepared to tell him. “Sam, we’d like to introduce to you our beautiful, perfect daughters, Camilla and Grace.”

  Sam’s eyes went wide, and then soon, he also had a few tears of his own streaming down his cheeks. “God, I’m just… I couldn’t think of better names for them,” he said, and his voice shook with his words. “Camilla and Grace. Two perfect names for two perfect girls.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  The world wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair at all. But sometimes…sometimes, it paid you back.

  Hello, Hollywood!

  Ivy Stone Birth News!

  November 30th, 2016

  A huge, heartfelt congratulations are in order for Ivy Stone and Levi Fox!

  Just two days ago, they welcomed their beautiful identical twin girls into the world!

  The twenty-nine-year-old Hollywood actress delivered her twin daughters with longtime boyfriend Levi Fox on November 28th in the late evening at Cedar Hills Hospital in Oregon.

  According to an inside source, the delivery did have some complications, but both momma and her babies are healthy and doing well.

  Talk about great news!

  Our secret insider also updated both girls weighed over six pounds.

  That’s a whopping twelve pounds of baby that Ivy was carrying around!

  We bow down to you, Ms. Stone!

  We’re all dying to know the names of Ivy Stone’s baby girls, and we can’t wait to see if they look like their beautiful mother or handsome father.

  Ivy Stone’s publicist has declined to comment on the recent birth, but we’ll be on #NewbornStox first official photo and name watch.

  Expect more updates to come on this exciting news!

  December 15th, 2016

  Once I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner and took a quick shower, I walked into our bedroom to find Ivy sound asleep, the script she’d planned on reading through sitting in her lap.

  Her back still rested against the headboard, but her eyes were closed, and her head was just kind of leaned forward.

  It’d been two weeks since we’d come home from the hospital, and I knew between recovering from surgery and breastfeeding and mothering two newborns, Ivy was exhausted.

  After we’d had dinner, she’d insisted on getting a little work done, and even had high hopes of taking a shower herself. But obviously, sleep had sounded the most irresistible call of all.

  I slid the script off of her lap, careful to keep it opened up to the last page she’d been on, and placed it on the nightstand. Gently, I eased her down onto the bed and pulled the blankets over her body.

  She didn’t even startle. Her body lax and her breaths soft and deep.

  Work could wait.

  A shower could wait.

  Sleep was a must.

  Once I ensured she was all settled, I turned off the lights, grabbed the baby monitor, and walked back downstairs.

  But I only made it halfway down the steps before Camilla’s soft cries started to reverberate through the speaker.

  The thought of it made me smile. The fact that I already knew my daughters so well, I could distinguish their cries from one another.

  But newborn babies cried a lot.

  Pretty much every two to four hours for the first few weeks or so.

  Sometimes, if we were lucky, they’d go five hours, but those amazing moments were few and far between right now.

  I turned on my heels and moved back up the stairs and into the girls’ nursery.

  Camilla’s little legs and arms were tensed with irritation, and her cries were starting to grow louder by the second. She was pissed. About what, I wasn’t sure. But the girl had a track record of having quite the little temper.

  Grace, on the other hand, was more laid-back. She didn’t demand as much attention and tended to have a little more patience when she needed to be changed or fed.

  But little Cami… Yeah, not so much.

  Besides her mother, she was the cutest little diva I’d ever met.

  I lifted a now screaming Cami out of her crib and into my arms, swaying her back and forth gently. “What’s going on, little lady?”

  She responded with a shriek, but eventually, her cries softened, and only her bottom lip quivered to show her frustration.

  Ivy had fed both girls before she’d laid them down, so I had a feeling it was more a diaper situation than anything else.

  “Let’s get your diaper changed and see if that turns this feisty mood around,” I whispered to her and moved her to the changing table.

  Once I laid her on her b
ack, I set to work on changing her diaper.

  I’d learned pretty quick that twins required fast hands.

  You couldn’t do anything slow, and you generally always had to do everything twice.

  No doubt, once I managed to get Cami settled, Grace would wake up with her own demands.

  And it didn’t take long for my prediction to come true.

  Cami’s fresh diaper had been fastened no more than ten seconds before Grace decided to let me know she was also pissed.

  Although, her fury wasn’t quite as sassy.

  I placed Camilla back in her crib and got to work on appeasing little Grace.

  Once both girls were calm and quiet, I arranged both of them in my arms and sat down in the cushioned rocking chair Ivy loved so much.

  It was her favorite chair.

  Apparently, it was a dream for breastfeeding.

  Her words, not mine. Obviously, since I was lacking the equipment to have any expertise.

  “Everyone happy now?” I asked and looked down at both of them.

  Cami wiggled her little body, kicking out her legs a few times, and Grace stared up at me with big, wide eyes.

  “I’ll be honest, you little ladies can really give a man a run for his money,” I whispered. “It’s a full-time job keeping you both happy, probably even harder than being a cop and catching criminals. But you know what? It’s the best damn job I’ve ever had.”

  Sleepless nights.

  Crying babies.

  Constant, organized chaos.

  I was the luckiest man on the planet.

  “God, you girls look so much like your momma, it’s crazy,” I said, staring down at them in awe. “Thank God for that, huh?”

  Camilla blew a few spit bubbles, and Grace’s little pink lips crested wide into a yawn.

  “One day, I hope you’ll be a little more interested in the things I have to say, but I have a feeling when you’re teenagers, you’ll be too busy driving me nuts.”

  For the longest moment, I just took them in.

  These two little people that had my heart in their tiny hands.

  They’d only been on this earth for mere weeks, and still, I was certain they had me wrapped around their fingers.

  Hell, they had the whole world wrapped around their fingers.

  “Did you know there’s a whole bunch of people that want to get pictures of you and put them in magazines?” I asked, and both girls just stared up at me. “One magazine offered us one million dollars just to get a picture of you? How crazy is that?”

  Both girls stared up at me, eyes wide. They obviously thought it was as batshit crazy as I did.

  “Goddamn vultures,” I muttered. “Like your momma or I would ever use our beautiful daughters for money. Hell, like we even give a shit about money. And,” I added, “how about we keep the whole curse-word thing between us? Your mom is already on my ass about it.”

  Once news had broken that Ivy had gone to the hospital, and an unknown source inside the hospital had revealed our daughters had been born, it had been nothing less than constant requests for interviews and pictures and everything in between.

  Magazines wanted the first official photo of the twins.

  Gossip sites had published what felt like hundreds of posts about what were mostly incorrect facts about Ivy’s birth and the girls’ names.

  Hell, Ivy had shown me one website that had posted fake nursery pictures, acting like they had gotten an exclusive on how the twins’ room had been decorated.

  It was fucking insanity.

  And I was thankful we’d found our little slice of serene and very private heaven in Oregon.

  If we’d been in LA, or hell, even Cold, it would have been intolerable.

  It also helped that I was a bit paranoid about Ivy and the girls’ safety, so I had increased security since we’d arrived home from the hospital.

  We’d had enough bad shit happen to us in the past that I refused to leave anything to chance.

  I’d rather be overprotective than stupid.

  And when it came to the three most important people in my life, I’d stop at nothing to ensure their safety.

  A little squeal of a cry left Cami’s lips, and I glanced down at her to find she was doing her normal, restless, “I’m tired, but I don’t know what to do” thing.

  All of that sass and sometimes, she just exhausted herself to the point of full-on irritation. It reminded me a lot of Ivy, and I smiled at the thought.

  “I have so many things to tell you girls. I can’t wait to tell you about Grace and about your aunt Camilla. I just…I can’t wait to put the whole world at your little feet.”

  Grace’s eyes fluttered closed, but Camilla stayed wide-eyed and a little bit cranky. I rocked back and forth in the chair, and that seemed to appease her enough to soften her small whines until they slowly disappeared into silence.

  Her eyes weren’t closed, but she was at least calm.

  And Grace, well, she was already sleeping.

  Laid-back and feisty.

  Sassy and relaxed.

  Our girls may have been identical twins, but they were their very own little people.

  And, God, I loved them like I had never loved anything before.

  Anxiety startled me awake, and I opened my eyes to a dark, quiet bedroom.

  What time is it? I wondered.

  I felt like I’d been asleep for hours, possibly days, but when I snagged my phone off the nightstand and checked the time, it was only a little after nine.

  I had no idea how long I’d been out cold, but the last thing I remembered was putting the girls in their cribs and reading through a new script Jason had sent over.

  Sitting up on the side of the bed, I rubbed at my eyes and turned on the lamp.

  The script I’d been reading lay open on the nightstand, and Levi was nowhere in sight. He’d hopped in the shower right before I’d sat on our bed, and I’d even had high hopes of taking a shower myself, but apparently, exhaustion had consumed me.

  I guessed that was the story for most new moms, though.

  It’d been a blissful, chaotic, yet sometimes rough two weeks.

  Being a mom was hard fucking work in general. But being a mom and breastfeeding two newborns around the clock, well, it was quite the challenge.

  One that I was thankful for every single day, but one hell of a task no less.

  Slowly but surely, we were finding our way, though.

  Levi and I had decided early on we would do this whole parenting thing without any help. We didn’t want to do what most of my Hollywood friends did when they had kids. We didn’t want a nanny raising our girls. We wanted to be the ones to care for them as much as physically possible.

  But we weren’t completely crazy. The first seven days after we’d gotten home from the hospital, my mom had stayed with us and helped out.

  Which, yeah, that had been a godsend.

  The soft sound of Levi’s voice filtered in from the hallway, and my eyes perked up in curiosity. I could tell he was talking, but I had no idea who he was talking to.

  On tired legs, I moved off the bed and into the hallway.

  And instantly, I knew he was in the girls’ nursery.

  I tiptoed toward the room, and when I reached the partially open door, I peeked inside to find him sitting in the rocker, both girls in his arms.

  Camilla stared up at him, wide-eyed as he spoke, while Grace appeared content and asleep.

  “You have your momma’s eyes,” he whispered down to our sassiest daughter. “Big, huge eyes that will for sure break some hearts when you’re older.”

  He smiled down at her, and my heart damn near melted in my chest.

  When I’d first found out I was pregnant, I knew Levi had had some terrifying thoughts go through his head. He wanted to be a good parent to our babies. He didn’t want to be distant like his father or completely absent like his mother.

  Because of his childhood, he had some serious demons to work through.
<
br />   But in the end, he’d more than proved that our girls had the very best daddy in the whole world.

  He was so attentive and loving and made sure we wanted for nothing.

  All three of us.

  “Do you want to know a secret, Cami?” he whispered down to our daughter.

  Big eyes and parted little lips, she just looked up at him in awe.

  “I’m going to marry your momma,” he said softly, and my breath whooshed straight out of my lungs at his words. “Soon, I’m going to marry her. She has no idea when or where, but I do. I already have it all planned out.”

  My heart pounded wildly in my chest, and I couldn’t hide the smile from my lips if I wanted to.

  “But that’s our little secret, okay?” he whispered and then leaned down to kiss the top of her little forehead.

  My chest grew tight from the sudden growth of my heart. As I secretly stood there, watching Levi with our girls, I was certain I’d never loved him more than right now.

  He was my world, my everything, and every day, my love for him grew inside of me.

  We’d started out like a fucking wildfire.

  We’d hated each other. We’d done cruel things and said cruel things, but the one constant that had always remained was that we were drawn to one another.

  It was like we were each other’s missing halves.

  And while we’d fought it in the beginning, in the end, we couldn’t deny we were meant to be.

  Life had thrown us so many obstacles. So many terrible things.

  So many life-altering situations that still left scars on both of our hearts, but there was no denying that when it came to us together, we could survive anything.

  I knew life wouldn’t always be easy.

  Every day, for the rest of my life, I’d have to live with the fact that I’d never be able to talk to my best friend. I’d never be able to see my sister Camilla smile or hear her laugh or call her when I needed a shoulder to lean on.

  I missed her like crazy, and there were moments when the grief of her loss felt so strong I thought I’d choke on it.