“Fair enough. And damn right I would do that for a kid. Ours or any other.”
“And here’s where you could reassure me that you will do whatever you can to keep our kid from being stuck in a tree in the first place. Particularly one surrounded by alligators.”
“Well, baby doll, we’re gonna be raising a bayou boy. There will be gators in his life.”
“Or a bayou girl.”
Zeke nodded. “Yeah, and they tend to be even more trouble than the boys.”
“Even the ones who become adopted bayou girls?”
He leaned in, cupped the back of her head, and pulled her in for a kiss. “Oh yeah. In my experience, they’re the ones who flip your world totally upside down.”
Epilogue
Four months later…
Zeke's phone vibrated in his pocket and he shifted the pouch in his arms to his left side to reach for it.
It was Jill. And it was a video call.
"Dammit."
That wasn’t, of course, how he generally felt about a call from his fiancée, but he didn’t want her to know that he was running around outside as a hurricane was approaching.
He looked around. Ellie's was the only place he could duck into to take the call. It was where he’d been headed in the first place so he started for the door. But once he answered the call inside, where nearly half the town was gathered, it was going to be hard to hide that something was up.
Of course, the sheets of torrential rain and nearly forty-mile-per-hour wind outside were pretty tough to ignore too.
He yanked the door open, slid the hood of his rain jacket off his head, and swiped the screen to connect the call.
He smiled at the love of his life. “Hey, cher. How was your meeting?”
Was he trying to distract her from the rivulets of water running down his face and the noise of the crowd behind him bringing supplies and people in from all over town?
He ran his hand over his face and cradled the pouch he held closer to his chest. Yes, he definitely was.
But he also absolutely wanted to know about how her meeting in Denver had gone. He was so grateful her doctor had cleared her to fly on the private plane to Colorado even though she was past the sixth month of her pregnancy. She was coasting through the pregnancy. She hadn’t had a bit of morning sickness or even a backache so far. Her doctor didn’t feel there was any reason to worry about the travel. And, as he’d told Jill at her checkup two days ago, they had fabulous OBs in Denver if she did need anything.
So, she was several states away as Hurricane Clare shifted course and edged up into Louisiana a bit rather than just blowing by to Alabama the way she’d been expected to. Which was the one bright spot in this whole thing. Having Jill and the baby far from this chaos was awesome in his opinion.
Jill’s face brightened. "Oh, it went so well. Not only are we going to add ten more penguins but one of the pairs has already had chicks twice. And Ken has established a very healthy trust that goes along with the birds. It's going to be amazing."
Ken was another of the private investors who’d joined the penguin protection program but had realized that he’d rather Jill take his portion over as well. He’d heard from William, the first to ask Jill to add his penguins to her collection, how well Jill’s expanded rookery was doing and he’d called two weeks ago.
"I'm not surprised,” Zeke said. “You're absolutely the person who should be taking care of all of the penguins."
Zeke’s heart swelled with love and pride. Jill was not only glowing because of her pregnancy, which had been one of the easiest Ellie said she'd ever seen. She was also absolutely over the moon with her growing waddle of penguins. Ever since they'd added the ten penguins from Phoenix, the original eight had perked up and been happier and healthier than ever.
There had actually been a very successful pairing between Greta and Ferdinand. Of course, Donovan insisted that Greta had been impressed by Ferdinand’s big adventure and bravery when faced with three alligators and that’s what had sealed the deal.
And sure enough, Columbus and Magellan had both found girlfriends. The first four penguin chicks born in Autre had hatched a month ago and there were three more on the way.
"Well, thank you,” Jill said. “And thank you for the shoes.”
He grinned. “You needed them then?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course I did. And you put them in the perfect place.”
He’d tucked her dress shoes into the leather bag she packed with all of her files, including information and stats on the penguins currently on-site in Autre, plus her plans for the future of her program and how it differed from the program A.J. had been a part of. He’d figured if she got to the meeting and had forgotten her shoes, that was the perfect place to put a back-up pair.
Then Jill peered closer at her screen. “Are you at Ellie's? Why are there so many people there? Are you all having a party?"
“Um, yeah. Kind of.”
“So hurricane parties are a thing in Autre, huh?”
They were. For sure. He’d been to several really fun ones.
And he was busted. “Uh…so you know.”
“That Hurricane Clare is estimated to hit about two hundred miles east of Autre and that you guys should be taking precautions and preparing? Yes. I do have a weather app and the internet,” she said. “Plus my pilot told me we won’t be taking off tonight because we won’t be able to land in Autre.”
“I thought you weren’t comin’ home until Thursday.” Which was two days from now.
“We got everything ironed out quickly and I thought I’d surprise you.” She lifted a forkful of something to her mouth and took a bite. She chewed, swallowed, then asked, "So is this going to be a thing? Chaos is going to erupt every time I leave town?”
She was taking this in stride. Zeke was amazed. And proud. She’d definitely learned to roll with things. An absolute necessity when living with the Landrys.
“In fairness, I think there’s plenty of chaos when you’re here in Autre too,” Zeke said with a grin. “I mean, things got pretty crazy two nights ago.”
“Well, sure,” Jill said, laughing. “But we’d just told everyone that we were having twins. We expected that to result in a lot of emotion.”
Twins. He still couldn’t believe it. He and Jill had, of course, known for weeks but they’d told the whole family the other night. And yeah, it had gotten crazy. Good crazy. Happy crazy. Loving crazy.
“So, not hurricane chaos, but yeah, there’s always going to be some crazy down here,” Zeke said. “I’m glad you’re learning to roll with it.”
Jill sat back and put her hand on her big belly. "And thankfully these babies are your kids. They are completely laid back. I sleep well, I can eat whatever I want and don’t get sick or heartburn or anything. We are all three absolutely fine." Jill lifted another forkful of food to her lips.
Zeke grinned. He’d worried at first that adding a pregnancy on to everything else Jill had going on would ratchet up her stress levels, but it really did seem that she’d become more relaxed as the pregnancy had progressed. "Where are you?" he asked.