Chapter 1

After about seven hours, the head doctor came into the hall where the Spencer family was waiting. “It’s a girl.” The doctor told them.

“Mother and baby healthy?” Nathan asked.

“Another one?” Holly asked, not bothering to hide her disappointment.

“Both perfectly healthy,” the doctor assured them, not quite sure what to say to Holly. “You can come see them if you’d like.”

“Thank you.” Holly said as they walked into room, bringing Ivy and Ella along to see their new sister.

Ella still looked distraught – she hadn’t been pleased to discover she would no longer be the baby. “Can we give it back, Grandpa?” She asked.

“Sorry, Ella, but I don’t think your mommy and daddy want to.” Nathan responded, picking his three-year old granddaughter up.

“Does she have a name?” Holly asked Cassidy.

“Kayla,” Cassidy replied, holding the tiny little person in one arm, as Garrett was holding her other hand still.

Garrett’s look of disappointment had quickly disappeared upon seeing his new daughter.

“Daddy, I don’t want her, I wanted a little brother,” Ella told her father, making a face at the new baby.

“Shh,” Ivy said. “She’s sleeping.” She clambered up next to her mother.

“She’s cute though.” Garrett told his daughter. “And you get to be a big sister and look out for her and everything.”

“But…” Ella began, but then stopped as her uncle placed a hand on her shoulder.

“You’re going to love your little sister, Ella,” Gavin told her.

Ella turned to her mother. “I still want a little brother next time!” She demanded.

“It’s not something we can really control.” Garrett told his daughter. “It’s up to God.”

“Well tell God!” Ella replied.

“Do you want to talk to him, Ella?” Grace asked.

Ella considered. “Yeah.”

Ivy hopped off the bed. “Mommy, can I go too?”

“Of course you can go. You two be good for your Auntie Grace.” Cassidy told them, looking particularly at her middle daughter.

“Alright, let’s go.” Grace picked up Ella. “We’ll go to the little chapel and you can talk to God all you want because that’s his house, and he has to listen if you’re in his house.” She brought them down a hall and opened the door.

Ella looked around. “God lives in the hospital?”

Ivy nodded. “He’s got even more houses than Mommy and Daddy do.”

Grace set Ella down. “Talk to him,” she said gently.

“God, will you please make my little sister a boy?” Ella asked out loud.

Holly came up behind Garrett and hit him over the head. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Ow! What’s wrong with *you?*” He replied, not having heard her approach because he was watching baby Kayla in her little crib in the nursery.

“Six years, and three girls. Within three, your father and I had two sons.”

Garrett raised an eyebrow. “Well I apologize, I must not be filtering things properly!”

”Whatever you are doing, you better fix it, and fast. Bryce Callahan is still head hunting our family and at this rate we’ll have enough girls to fill an entire boarding school but no one to hand the organization over to when your father decides to retire! I don’t know what kind of switch you have to flip to get the male machine moving but I suggest you flip it soon. Your father is going to give the organization to whoever has a son first. Grace may keep having miscarriages, but they’ve all been boys so far and one of these days, she’ll carry it full term and have a boy and Gavin’ll get the organization while you and Cassidy are still popping out girls!” Holly paused for a breath. “Three girls already, Garrett. Despite what you may think, Cassidy isn’t a baby machine, she’s not going to want to keep having babies for long, so I suggest that you get your ass in gear and have a boy!” Holly paused again to look into the nursery. “She is a darling little baby, isn’t she?” She said before walking away.

Garrett was left absolutely nonplussed for perhaps the first time in his life, but he headed back to Cassidy’s room.

“You went with her to the nursery?” Cassidy asked with a slight smile. Garrett always made the trip down the hall with the new baby before coming back to his wife.

“Yeah. Sorry about the wait… my mother met me there.”

“How’d that go?” Cassidy asked as Garrett sat in the chair by the bed.

There was a pause. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That bad?”

“My mother just publicly scolded me for my seeming inability to produce boys.”

Cassidy winced. “Ouch.”

“Yeah. I get the idea I’m going to get made fun of for quite a while by my brother.” He sighed. “I love her, she’s perfect, so please don’t take this wrong…”

“I know, I was hoping we’d have a boy too. Next time.”

“We should already have one,” he said quietly, thinking back to before even Ivy was born.

“I know that too,” Cassidy said, dropping his hand as if it were on fire.

“Cassidy…I’m not blaming you for what happened, if that’s what you think.” Garrett responded.

“I know. I just… it’s still not fair.”

“I know it’s not. We should have him already…maybe we shouldn’t wait as long in between this time.”

“Maybe. I don’t know if it’ll make a difference, but we’ll try.”

“We will. And the sooner the better, I mean dad must really be feeling old for mom to be pressuring us for a son.”

“I had this discussion with your mother after Ella was born… she seemed convinced I was doing it on purpose. I told her it wasn’t even remotely under my control and that if she wanted a baby boy in the family that badly she could have one herself.”

Garrett grinned. “That wouldn’t solve the successor problem though…he’s planning on handing the organization over to whoever has a son first.”

“Gavin would take it and promptly gift wrap it for you. He doesn’t want to be in charge. But I know, it’s the principle of the matter.” She reached out to take his hand again.

“Getting the organization is what I’ve been trained for my entire life. That was basically the whole purpose of mine and Gavin’s existence. And now he doesn’t want it.”

“That is, however, good news for you.”

“I guess, but still. We were essentially bred to run this organization.”

“I know. And the only solution is for us to wait the mandatory six weeks of hell and then try again.”

“Well at least we’re getting the practice in.” Garrett replied, kissing her.

She laughed a little bit. “Hands off, you have to wait. I know you hate it but you’ve lived before, you can make it through this time too.”

He rolled his eyes. “Obviously whoever came up with the six week waiting rule was not a man.”

She kissed him. “Sorry, handsome. Rules might be made to be broken as far as you’re concerned, but I think doing me in the bed I *just* had the baby in is probably pushing it.”

“Well I think I saw an empty room on my way back from the nursery…”

She smacked him.

~*~*~*~

“Come on, ladies, it’s time to go upstairs. Your mother’ll be going home soon,” Nathan said, lifting Ella up on to his shoulders and taking Ivy’s hand. “I’ll take them up, Grace, don’t worry about it.”

“Thank you,” she gave him a small grateful smile. She sat there in silence for another few minutes. She loved her nieces dearly…but why was her sister able to have healthy babies and she could barely make it a full term? It wasn’t fair.

Gavin entered and sat next to her, squeezing her hand gently.

“In the five years we’ve been married we’ve lost six boys, and one even before that.”

“I know. But I didn’t marry you because I wanted kids, I married you because I wanted you to be my wife.”

“I know…but Gavin, I want kids.”

“I know.”

“It’s not fair. Every time we get closer and closer…it’s like someone’s decided to play some sick and twisted game.”

“Like you said, we keep getting closer… all we can do is try again.”

She nodded. “It’s probably a good thing you didn’t marry me for my incubational skills then.”

“I didn’t.” He kissed her softly. “Though I definitely don’t object to trying all you want.”

Grace smiled slightly. “It’s not the trying that’s the problem…that’s *always* fun, it’s just keeping the baby alive for nine months is where the problem is.”

“Like you said, we keep getting closer.” He slipped an arm around her.

“I don’t know if I’d be able to handle another one…what if it’s born dead?”

“That’s not going to change how I feel about you any.”

She sighed. “I…I don’t know…I feel like I’m failing as a wife or something.”

“Shh. No. You’re a wonderful, amazing wife and I love you. No blaming yourself.”

Grace stood up. “Who else am I supposed to blame? It’s my body that keeps killing our children. Kind of hard to place the blame on the mailman there.”

“How about David Kincaide?” He asked quietly.

“Well, yeah. I can blame him. He’s the one who liked to beat me with power tools.”

Gavin sighed and stood up as well. “Come on… let’s go home.”

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