A Spanktacular Fourth

by Tymber Dalton

  “When can I go home?”

  “Not today,” the men emphatically said in unison.

  Max took over. “They’ll probably move you to a regular room later today, but they need to go in and clean out the wound on your index finger. The ones on your thumb look a little better today.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Well, you’re not going home today,” Max said. “You scared the shit out of all of us, including Essie.”

  * * * *

  Max stroked Cali’s forehead. Hell, poor Essie was practically traumatized and blaming herself for not calling Max and Sean sooner, even though they didn’t blame her and knew Cali wouldn’t, either.

  “Is she okay?” Cali asked.

  “Yeah, we made her and Ted go home around midnight,” Max said. “We knew you’d be okay by then, but we didn’t want to leave you here alone.”

  Who Max really felt badly for was Tony, who’d looked like a fucking wreck himself when he and Shayla had come by to visit last night. By then, Marcia, Derrick, Ed, and Ross had already talked to Max and Sean about everything that’d happened Saturday night.

  What a shitty week. And it’s only fucking Tuesday.

  He and Sean had spent the night in the waiting room, friends taking turns switching out to sit with them and bring them coffee and food. Ted and Josh ran by the house for them after they’d returned home from Arcadia and took care of feeding Baxter for them, as well as getting their cell chargers.

  Max left Sean there at Cali’s bedside to go out and update everyone in the waiting room, as well as text Ted so he could tell Essie. Frankly, Max was worried about the stress on Essie and her baby, with everything going on.

  They were all a little freaked out and overprotective about anyone pregnant now, after what Mal had gone through.

  The staff was getting ready for shift change in the ICU unit, so Sean and Max retreated to the waiting room to update everyone and get another round of coffee. They couldn’t go back in for at least an hour. Neither of them had gotten more than a few minutes of sleep here and there throughout the night.

  Loren had returned while they were back in the unit with Cali. Ross was getting ready to leave, though.

  “Why don’t you let Ross take you home, buddy,” Max said to Sean. “Essie will be back in a little while.”

  “I don’t want to leave her.”

  He was really worried about Sean. He looked horrible, about as horrible as Max felt. “Buddy, you need sleep.”

  “So do you.”

  “Yeah, but you can go home, sleep, and drive back in your car. I can have someone drive me home later, after you get back. We can’t do anything for her right now, and if we’re both exhausted, that’ll be even worse.”

  He didn’t want to resort to ordering Sean, because he suspected that would earn him a flat-out refusal. Between the tense call with Cali’s parents in Montana last night, and this, he didn’t have much fight in him right now.

  Eliza, who’d returned at four a.m., stepped in and channeled something between mom-tone and Domme-tone. “Sean, honey? Please go home. Max is going to need you to take over this afternoon. You can’t do that if you don’t get some sleep. I promise I will call you myself if something happens, but Cali’s on the mend now.”

  With all of them gently ganging up on Sean, Ross was able to get him up and moving.

  Once Sean left, Max curled up in the recliner Sean had been using, still warm from his body heat. “Thanks, guys.”

  Eliza took the one Max had occupied, while Loren grabbed the chair on the other side, which Ross had been sitting in. “That’s what friends are for, kiddo,” Eliza said.

  Max snorted. “You’re not that much older than us.”

  “No, but I managed to channel the right persona for him, didn’t I?” She arched an eyebrow at Max.

  He chuckled. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She smiled. “You can get away with that because I love you guys.”

  * * * *

  Sean had managed to grab a few hours of sleep at home before he returned to the hospital. He and Max and several friends gathered in Cali’s room—the room they’d moved her into around eleven that morning from the ICU—when a nurse came for her to take her to surgery. They hadn’t let her have anything else to eat or drink, because they were adding her onto the surgical schedule for her hand. It wasn’t going to be a full-on sedation like a usual surgery, but they weren’t taking any chances with her now.

  Max and Sean both kissed her before they wheeled her out. It wasn’t supposed to take long, likely less than an hour, and they were told they could all wait there in the room.

  Sean knew Max wouldn’t leave now, even though he looked like shit and was still wearing the same clothes as he’d worn yesterday. He also had a day’s scruff growing in from not shaving. Sean made him take the recliner chair and try to nap, while the rest of them occupied regular chairs.

  He was asleep in less than a minute.

  Thank god.

  In the clear light of day, with the ball-numbing fear of losing Cali starting to fade—and with a little sleep in his system so his brain could actually function—he was able to think and take charge and give Max a break.

  Ross had returned not long before they took Cali for the procedure on her hand.

  “I hate to do this,” Sean said, “and there will probably be fireworks from Max and Cali when they both chew me a new one for making a unilateral decision, but please cancel the party. Unless you want to move it to someone else’s house.”

  “We’ll host it,” Ross said. “I was going to ask you guys if you wanted to hand it off.”

  “Yeah. Thank you.” He stared at Max, who now lay with his mouth open, a thin string of drool sliding down his cheek.

  He didn’t have the heart to disturb him, not knowing when he’d be able to sleep again.

  Ross pulled out his phone. “I’ll do it right now.”

  It was Sean, Ross, June, Marcia, Essie, and Mark in the room right now. Well, and Max, but he was zonked out. “Anything else about that woman who died?” Sean asked.

  Marcia shook her head. “No. Which is…eerie.”

  Ross looked up from his phone. “A friend of mine at FHP said that she’d texted friends she was going to get dinner and call someone to pick her up. The friends apparently didn’t mention the club when FHP talked to them. Apparently, she’d pissed off the driver of the car she came up in by being a bitch the whole way.”

  “So they weren’t exactly motivated to figure out where she’d gone when they left Venture?” Sean asked.

  “No,” Ross said. “Investigators talked to one of her roommates, too. She was the Ft. Myers area’s equivalent to Lydia. Divorced twice, no kids. Perennial pisser-offer. Parents are out in California or something, but she was estranged from them. Bounced from job to job and subby to subby. Thought she was a pro-Domme, but she was really more of a predator.”

  A shudder rippled through Sean. These friends all knew their history. He didn’t feel a need to add his own commentary.

  “So now the question is do we have to start searching bags,” Marcia finally said to break the silence. “We have a no alcohol rule for a reason.”

  “Apparently that was another point of contention,” Ross said. “She was known to sneak alcohol into events she wasn’t supposed to bring them. She’d been caught doing that before.”

  Sean rubbed his face. “Motherfucker. Anyone tell Tony that?”

  “Yeah,” Ross said. “I already updated him. He’s still pretty damn shook, but he’ll be okay. He’s just had a lot of stress at work lately.”

  “Run a BDSM club, they said,” Marcia muttered. “It’ll be fun, they said.”

  They all chuckled.

  Except Max, who now softly snored in the recliner, which prompted another round of chuckles.

  “I still want to smack Kaden,” Marcia said. Then she sighed. “Damn, I wish he was here to smack.”

  “Me, too,” Ross and June said in
unison.

  They all went silent for a moment.

  “This could have been a lot worse,” Essie softly said. Mark reached over and squeezed her hand. “A lot worse,” she continued. “She’ll be okay, though. This was just a scare.”

  “It’s okay, hon,” Sean said. “We’re not upset that you didn’t call us sooner. She didn’t know she was allergic to those meds. Her parents said she was hardly ever sick growing up. And it was a freak reaction, anyway.”

  Max loudly snored, shifted position in the recliner, farted, and settled again, making everyone softly laugh.

  “I won’t tell him y’all laughed,” Sean said. “But I needed that.”

  Essie leaned against Mark, a slightly pouty expression on her face. “Why do we have to move? I don’t want to move. She’s my bestie.”

  He draped an arm around her shoulders. “Well, Josh and Ted might actually have a solution for that.”

  “What?”

  “They noticed yesterday that the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, the one next to their house, is for sale. Just listed with Lara Jarred yesterday. They called her and talked to her. It’s bigger than the one we’re in now, has another bedroom.”

  Her eyes widened. “Really?”

  “Yeah. They’re going to go look at it tonight, and—”

  She kissed him. “Yes!”

  “Honey, we haven’t even seen the inside of it yet. You might hate it.”

  “I don’t care. It’s next door to my bestie.”

  “I’ve been inside it,” Sean said. “The people who used to live there before the current owners. Kind of like ours, but two bedrooms instead of one on the far end, and they share a bathroom. I think it was the same builder.”

  “See?” Essie said. “I love their house, so it’ll be perfect.”

  “You’ll have a pool,” Sean said.

  “We can put a gate between the backyards,” Essie said. “It’s perfect!”

  Mark turned to Sean. “I think she’s sold.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  Ross didn’t look up from his phone. “You, my dear buddy, are screwed. She’s already deciding how to paint the new nursery she hasn’t even seen yet.”

  “He’s right,” Essie said. “Hey, you wanted to move before the baby was born—here’s the perfect answer.”

  “I guess we’re having a moving party,” June said.

  “Please, Sir?” Essie asked.

  “Oooh, did y’all hear that? I actually got a Sir out of her.”

  They all laughed, remembered Max was sleeping, and quickly dropped the volume.

  Then Sean snorted.

  “What?” June asked.

  “Ohh, man. She’d kill me.”

  “What?”

  Sean grinned. “I know this can’t happen, but if y’all bought the house and we moved you before Cali got home from the hospital, we could mess with her mind and tell her no, y’all were living there, didn’t she remember?”

  Marcia rolled her eyes. “That’s just evil, and I’d rat you out. I love her volunteering. We need her volunteering.” She hesitated. “Well, you and Max, too, duh, but she’s kind of become my right arm with organizing the volunteers.”

  Essie sighed. “Yeah, and as my bestie, I’d rat you out to her, too.”

  Sean signed. “Can’t blame a sadist for trying.”

  “I thought that was more Max’s job?” Ross asked.

  “Yeah, well, I have my own sadistic streak when I want to.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “So?” Essie asked Cali. “What do you think?” Her voice echoed through the empty house.

  “I like it,” Cali said. “It’s nearly identical to ours.” She hated the fucking sling, but her hand throbbed like a sonofabitch if she didn’t use it. Her hand was wrapped with gauze, and there was a drain in her index finger, and she had a brace, and all sorts of bullshit she had to deal with.

  But she also wasn’t dead, so she’d take the win.

  Plus, Max and Sean would yell at her—because Essie would rat her out—if she didn’t use the sling exactly the way the doctor had ordered.

  It was exactly a week after her brush with death, and Cali had passed her check-up with the doctor that morning. He pronounced that her hand was healing nicely, and Essie had hung on his every word to relay to Sean and Max later.

  And as Cali’s unofficial babysitter for now, she was making sure Cali adhered to the letter of the doctor’s instructions ever since Cali had been discharged Thursday morning.

  She’d probably have the Frankenhand for another week, depending on how it continued healing. From that point, she’d be able to downgrade to a smaller bandage and ditch the sling.

  Cali didn’t even want to know what the hospital bill was going to be. Sean and Max had paid the deductible and refused to let her see the bill. They also took over dealing with her insurance.

  This is going to be pricey.

  This was one time her men had put their collective feet down and gone Domly on her…and she wasn’t even going to fight them. She’d cried it out on their shoulders that she felt like she was taking advantage of them. They’d let her purge it from her system, then had ordered her that she wasn’t to think like that anymore.

  And if she didn’t know any better, she’d swear they were up to something, plotting, but she couldn’t be sure.

  They could be sneaky little bastards when they wanted to.

  But back to today’s errand.

  Essie and her men had signed the papers to buy the house and closed on it that morning. Lara had already listed—and almost immediately sold—their house.

  They had thirty days to get moved. This afternoon’s chore was to decide on paint so that could happen over the weekend. They were armed with handfuls of paint chip cards they’d picked up on their way back from the doctor’s office.

  And Cali had already been ordered, by not only her men, but by Essie and her men, as well, that she wasn’t going to be allowed to do a damn thing to help during the painting and move, except maybe babysit Eddie.

  Although with Essie pregnant, she’d been ordered by her men to take it easy, so she might be reduced to supervising.

  Adding insult to injury, the party for the Fourth of July had been moved to Ross and Loren’s house, and June and Eliza had rearranged the volunteer schedule to take Cali off of it for at least a month to let her rest, or until she was cleared by her doctor to resume normal activities.

  Sean and Max did allow the concession that Cali could still do the administrative and scheduling things she helped Marcia with, but only if she did them at home. Sean and Max were still going to help out at the club, but one of them would stay at home with Cali while the other went to help out.

  They stepped out onto the lanai. “This is going to be a fun party house.” She grinned. “We can host parties, finally! Put a gate between our houses and spread it out between both of them, that would be awesome!” Essie actually bounced up and down so much Cali was worried she might bounce the baby right out of her.

  Cali stared at her. “How are you going to host parties with babies?”

  Essie grinned. “Grandma loves to babysit at her place.”

  “Especially since she has room now, huh?”

  Essie’s eyes widened, her smile fading as she nodded. “You ain’t kiddin’.”

  That was how Essie had met her men in the first place, because they were the cleaning team that helped Essie’s mom unhoarde the house after the death of Essie’s father. Ever since, her mom had been living a clutter-free life and loving it.

  Including enjoying being a grandmother to Eddie, when she wasn’t working part-time.

  They spent another hour at the house and deciding all the paint colors. The kitchen and bathrooms were in great shape, so no need to redo them before moving in. Not that they had the time to do them before the move, anyway. The men were giving Essie free-rein on picking the color schemes and had turned all that over to her.

 
Once they’d noted all the colors, they returned to Cali’s house. Essie’s mom was watching Eddie today, so Essie would stay with Cali until her men returned home.

  Baxter greeted them at the front door, and Essie stooped to pick him up. “Hey, buddy. How you doin’, you kinky little nip fiend?”

  Cali reached over with her left hand and petted him. “Bless his heart, he doesn’t understand why Mommy was missing for a few days, and when she finally came home, she has a weird gimpy paw now. It sort of freaks him out a little.” She switched hands to pet him, and he slowly pulled his head away from her right hand, paused, then nosed back in, allowing her to scratch him.

  “Well, it’s not his fault your men are idiots.”

  Cali snorted. “True story.”

  “At least Sean’s eyebrow is growing back.”

  Cali snickered. “Yeah. Bless his heart.”

  “So no version 2.0 of the Sparkler Flogger, huh?”

  “No. I laid down a rule of my own—no pyrotechnics.” She held up her left hand, fingers and thumb together. “Zero.”

  “Darn.” Essie grinned. “I was looking forward to egging them on from behind the safety of the fence.”

  “Nope. Not gonna happen.”

  Essie’s smile faded. “I’m really glad we’re moving next door. I mean, seriously.” She set Baxter down and hugged Cali. “I didn’t want to move away from you!” She burst into tears.

  Cali struggled not to burst out laughing and managed to keep it to a smile. On top of the obvious, Essie’s pregnancy hormones had her wildly emotional at the drop of a hat, just like they had with Eddie. “No, they can’t break up the band. But you know the problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “Yeah. My guys are literally going to be across the fence from your guys and giving your guys evil, sadistic ideas.”

  Essie’s eyes widened, and a combination of a horrified gasp and a snort of laughter escaped her. “Oh. My. God! We’re absolutely fucked!”

  Cali grinned and pointed at Essie’s baby belly. “Well, you’re fucked. Speak for yourself. I’m a switch, so there’s a bit of self-regulating that goes on. They know not to push me too far unless they’re willing to go there, too. You don’t have that safety valve.”