by Max Monroe
Wes and I looked at one another with amused grins.
“Did you get all of that, Mommy?” he whispered into my ear. “Because I sure as fuck didn’t. Our daughter is too goddamn smart.”
I simultaneously smiled and swooned at his words.
Our daughter.
I wasn’t even sure if he realized he had said it, because he didn’t act like he did, but I couldn’t deny it only made me love him more—and if that continued to happen, it wouldn’t be long before my heart might not fit inside my chest.
“I’m afraid if the bigwigs at Atlantis catch on that she knows more about their resort than any of their employees, she will most likely get offered her current dream job as one of their marine biologists,” Wes added with a proud grin, but I was still trying to wrap my mind around his earlier words.
Our daughter.
His eyes searched mine when I didn’t offer any kind of response, completely mute and just staring up into his warm gaze.
Eventually, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of my mouth.
“She is my daughter,” he whispered into my ear. “Our daughter. We’re a family—me, you, and Lex. We’re a family.”
He leaned back and tenderly held my face with both hands. “I love you, and I love Lex, Win. I will always love both of my girls.”
“I love you so much,” I whispered past the emotion thickening the walls of my throat.
My eyelids fluttered as his lips touched mine in a soft caress, and I sighed and wrapped both arms around his waist and hugged him tightly on reflex. It was natural at this point, ingrained, a perfectly poised response to the elusive pleasure nerve. Every action of his put another block of happiness on top of the pile inside me.
“Baby Ace!” Lexi shouted ecstatically, grabbing our attention just in time to see her run toward Kline and Georgia…and Ace.
“Looks like the nannies are still hard at work,” Wes whispered with a smirk.
A soft laugh left my lips. “You think they’ll get a break during this trip? Or are they Ace’s full-time, around-the-clock nannies?”
“I wish I could say I see a break in their future, but the little man’s parents appeared a little too cozy at lunch.”
“Do you think they know they’re being manipulated into childcare duties?”
Wes looked at Kline and then back at me. “I think one of the nannies knows he’s being played, but he’s just going along with it because that little baby makes his wife smile.”
“The dirty and despicable things men do for the women they love.”
Wes slyly slid his hand down my back and pinched my ass. “Remind me to show you later exactly the kinds of dirty and despicable things men do for the women they love.”
I giggled. “Promise you’ll show me?”
He leaned down, and in a low, deep, and sexy as fuck voice, whispered into my ear, “Looks like it’s going to be a real late night for Winnie and her greedy, pretty little cunt.”
Fuck, I love this man.
Football players danced alongside pageant contestants, and all I could do was watch with the knowledge that this had been my wife’s idea. Harebrained and a little unexpected, especially the whole teenage aspect of the contestants, on the surface, it was a terrible idea. But after Wes’s talk with the players upon arrival to the big pageant rehearsal, I’d honestly never seen a group of strong, alpha men so desperate to look away from their female counterparts.
Several sets of eyes reached out to the audience and refused to move, and a few others even seemed to be staring at the ceiling. Granted, there was an authentic, mural-like design of the lost city of Atlantis painted there, but I hardly thought that did anything more than give them an actual point of interest to focus on.
No, the sparkling, low-cut tops of each contestant were like beacons, striking out and reflecting off of every available surface in the blazing stage lights. And as inappropriate as it was, it was more as though their breasts looked at you, rather than you having to look at them.
I also found it endlessly amusing how many of these fine star athletes seemed to be lacking in rhythm. Sure, Bailey and Sean Phillips seemed to be following along to each step, twist, and maneuver just fine, and Mitchell made so much fun of himself that he actually looked good—kind of like a baby so ugly it was cute—but there were a few guys really struggling. If it wasn’t so much more enjoyable to find it funny, I might have felt bad for them.
There is no amount of rehearsal that can save these guys…
Professional football players—an athletic position so highly regarded and sought after that we made them millionaires with just a year’s salary—forced to dance around a resort stage with fifty-one of the most beautiful teenage girls in the country. Partnered up—and they couldn’t even look at them.
But aside from the logistical details of this trip and its professional implications, I didn’t think my wife had ever been smarter.
The sun, fun, our friends and family, and a whole group of rowdy players just waiting to garner some attention through mindless entertainment was the ultimate mood-lifter.
Georgia glanced over her shoulder briefly, a huge smile on her face as she worked.
The feel of receiving it hit me right in the chest like her affection always did, but these days it meant more.
I knew she’d been struggling, watching her best friend carry and deliver an unplanned, healthy baby—a feat she couldn’t manage to achieve herself with even the most concise strategy.
My phone vibrated in the chest pocket of my suit. With a view of nothing more than the back of my wife’s head, I felt safe to pull it out and look. When she looked at me, I wanted her to know I was here with her rather than buried in my phone.
As if I’d conjured it with my mind, the name of the fertility clinic we’d visited just before leaving flashed on the screen. I’d planned to check the caller and then send them to voice mail without shame, but sometimes, plans needed to change. With one more glance at my work-engrossed wife, I stepped out of the auditorium, waited for the door to thud closed softly, pushed the screen to answer, and put the phone to my ear.
“Kline Brooks.”
“Mr. Brooks, this is Dr. Taunton. I’ve got some things to go over with you. Is now a good time to chat with you and your wife?”
Things to go over. I glanced over my shoulder at the door to the auditorium and quieted my voice slightly. “She’s actually working, but I can relay the message.”
And cushion the blow.
Heartsick, I rubbed at the tightness in the center of my chest with the palm of my hand and looked to the swirling pattern on the carpeted floor. Each fiber of fabric followed the lead of the one next to it, like an intricate course of dominoes, but focusing on its mundaneness did nothing to quell the approaching nausea.
God, this feeling was familiar. Disappointment and helplessness all wrapped together and stuffed tightly inside the confines of my chest. All the money in the fucking world, and all I’d been able to deliver for months was heartbreak. Our friends’ antics had provided quite a number of fun distractions, but I didn’t know how much more I could take.
“Well,” Dr. Taunton started and then stopped with a chuckle. “We got the results back from all the tests, including the blood test…”
I closed my eyes tight and braced myself, jaw clenched and back taut. My muscles were so tight, a simple touch would have shattered them. At least, that’s what it felt like.
“And your wife is already expecting.”
God, how was I going to tell her? Disappoint her again?
Wait…what?
Replaying Dr. Taunton’s words, I went over each one as carefully as I could manage while experiencing what felt like an aneurysm. I felt like I was in a desperation desert, and the hopeful words were a mental mirage of clean, flowing water.
“I’m sorry. Did you just say—”
He laughed again, interrupting and confirming, “You’re going to be parents. Your wife is preg
nant. Eleven weeks or so.”
I sank immediately to my knees, a completely involuntary movement, and tears threatened at the corners of my eyes. Denim fabric at my knees destroyed the careful conformation of the carpet, creating its own little smooshed craters. It didn’t take me long to give up the notion that I should climb back to my feet, and I sank back until my heels met my ass.
The feeling of unexpected happiness crashing over disappointment and its proponents in a wave was indescribable. I had never, in my entire thirty-five—fuck, almost thirty-six—years, felt anything like it.
Today, I wouldn’t have to look into the eyes of my wife and wonder whether I’d be able to be enough for her. I knew she was enough for me, and she did a good job of pretending I was for her, but the course of our journey toward starting a family of our own had changed her. Molded her in ways she hadn’t been expecting.
“Thank you,” I said finally, wrangling my thoughts long enough to put two simple but entirely too meaningful words together, and Dr. Taunton laughed again.
“For the first time in a while, I honestly had nothing to do with it. This was all you, her, and some extremely coincidental timing.”
“Thank you,” I mouthed again, but this time, I was talking to God—I had a feeling this had a whole lot to do with him.
Well…
Rehearsal for the pageant was going as planned.
That is, if you considered a half-goatfuck of marketing proportions part of the plan.
Luckily, I did.
The stage lights were bright and strong and pretty much unrelenting on the contestants, and their graceless dance partners and my responsibility—popularly known as the New York Mavericks—were sweating bullets from the ambient heat. The sequined-covered girls handled the spotlights with ease, but the tough, burly men missed dance steps and squinted every goddamn time they faced the audience.
Hell, some of them even covered their eyes with their thick, veiny forearms.
But I had already known this would be the kind of display our guys would produce. I had also known it would be the main draw of intrigue to fill every single seat in the auditorium, and I was certain it would lead toward future marketing and promotional opportunities for nearly every guy on the team.
There would be several GIFs, memes, and social media statuses that would go viral because of the comedic genius that was big, muscular, professional football players trying their damnedest to gracefully sway and lilt across the stage. I was certain.
Sure, it might have been a bit evil for me to put the guys in this situation, but I knew it would eventually be worth it in the end. Well, as long as no one got injured or put themselves in a precarious situation with a teenage beauty pageant queen.
Every appendage and phalange on my body was crossed in ritualistic hope that neither of those tragic scenarios occurred. Something of that magnitude would probably have Wes thinking he could spank anyone he wanted too.
God, Thatch is ridiculous.
“Looking good, boys!” An ear-piercing wolf whistle startled me out of my thoughts, and irritation, carefully contained up until this point, boiled over. I knew that familiar, melodic voice.
Speaking of fucking ridiculous, Dean stood beside me, cheering and clapping his hands in a rhythmic, classy way that only a gorgeous gay man decked out in a pristine Prada suit could pull off.
“Holy hell,” I muttered. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry, honey,” he apologized, but his smirk was anything but apologetic.
I raised a pointed brow. “Liar.”
“Ohhhhh, someone is a bit catty today,” he teased. “Is it that time of the month, sweet cheeks? Can I get you a pad? Some Midol?”
I rolled my eyes. It always came back to the period. We as women not only had to sweat and cramp and bleed over the rebuilding of our uterus every month, we also had to listen to everyone reference it. I was half tempted to smear my menstrual blood on the skin of whoever’s arm as proof the next time they asked me and I was actually on it. “I think it’s amazing that you can keep a straight face while mentioning pads and Midol when I know you are silently gagging on the inside.”
He grinned but only after settling down following a shiver. “I know, right? A little more practice and I might be able to act like I’m straight and enjoy eating pussy.”
I laughed at that. “The only pussy you eat is from that awful little mom-and-pop deli in Chelsea you still frequent.”
“Are you saying they’re serving the good people of New York cat for lunch?”
I raised both hands. “All I’m saying is that their chicken salad sure as hell isn’t being made from actual chickens.”
“Gross.” He grimaced. “Stop ruining my favorite restaurants for me.”
“I’m merely trying to save you from food poisoning. You should be thanking me.”
“Actually, you should be the one thanking me. I saved you from getting some serious wrinkles around your pretty blue eyes with my sexy whistle. You were all frowny and far too serious. And I’m a little bit offended, to be honest. You still haven’t said how fucking sexy I’m looking in this suit.”
I rolled my eyes in exasperation, but still, I couldn’t stop a smile from cresting my lips.
He nudged me with his shoulder. “Aw, there’s my favorite smile from my best girl.”
“Where have you been, by the way? I haven’t seen you since we got off the plane.”
I’d tried to convince Kline to let Dean come along to the Bahamas under the pretense of it being an actual business trip for Brooks Media, but he’d done a hell of a job ruining that argument: Leslie. So, I’d rethought my strategy and come at it from a different angle. A very sexual angle with my ass in the air and Kline behind me with his hands all over it.
Dean was the very lucky recipient of an all-expenses-paid vacation from my sexually coerced billionaire husband, and I didn’t even feel bad about it. He was a hoot, a stylist, and the best gay friend a girl could have all in one. But since the second his ungrateful ass had stepped off the runway, he’d been missing in action.
“Oh, honey, have I got some stories to tell you,” he said with a waggle of his brow. I pulled him toward the row of seats behind us and sank down in the one on the end while he sat beside me. With the way he’d looked when he said the word “stories,” I knew it’d be best to hear them sitting down. “I spent two nights on an all-gay cruise ship, and I never even saw the water.”
I shook my head as several visuals popped into my mind, and I focused on the facts. “Hold on…you mean to tell me you haven’t even been at the resort for the past two days?”
He nodded without shame and did a little shimmy. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. And I don’t regret one second of it. Two days on a big-ass boat and the only moisture I saw got swallowed.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus.”
“I haven’t been blown like that since New Year’s Eve in 2010.”
“Who’s getting blown?” Winnie asked with a smirk as she sank into the seat on Dean’s left.
He bounced in his seat and pretended to twerk before shooting a hand in the air and dropping his head back in pretend orgasm. “Two days straight, honey.”
“Yeah, this diva,” I said and hooked a thumb in Dean’s direction, “spent the last two days on an all-gay cruise ship.”
“Well, hot damn.” Winnie grinned. “Sounds like you took full advantage of the all-you-can-eat buffet?”
“Oh, girlfriend, I was the motherfucking buffet. And those hot boys ate me up like I was their favorite meal.”
Winnie and I both laughed out loud at that line. None of it should have come as a surprise, though. Dean had this hot, boy-next-door look to him and knew how to dress—the boy had no shortage of interested male suitors. Or fuck buddies, if I was being blunt about it.
“Well, I’m glad you had fun, even though you left me to fend for myself.” I feigned disappointment.
But Dean didn’t take the bait. He merely
rolled his eyes in my direction.
“Fend for yourself?” he questioned with amusement. “Pretty sure you’ve probably spent most of your time riding your fuck-hot husband,” he said and pointed a perfectly manicured index finger in my direction. “I know how you two lovebirds work. You can’t keep your hands off one another.”
“Or Georgia and Kline have spent most of their time babysitting Thatch and Cassie’s baby,” Winnie chimed in helpfully, a tilt of her head and a lift of her eyebrow the perfect picture of the stern mom face. If I was her kid and in trouble, I’d be afraid she was going to fuck me up.
I sighed. “God, they’re assholes, but I love my little baby Ace so much I can’t say no, even though I know those dicks are really just manipulating me into watching their kid.”
Winnie smirked. “Stop answering your phone.”
“Tell Thatcher to call me,” Dean suggested. “I’ll answer my phone anytime that tall drink of water wants me to be his nanny.” I laughed and raised a brow. He rolled his eyes. “Strategy. They always sleep with the nanny.”
I laughed as his eyes moved back to the stage and a slow, humor-filled smile spread across his lips. “Or the QB Pie,” he said and nodded in Quinn Bailey’s direction—well, his ass’s direction. “Tell him to call me, too. I’d answer. Anytime. Day or night. I’d even bottom for him.”
“Does Quinn know you nicknamed him QB Pie, Georgie?” Winnie asked with a grin.
I shrugged. “Doubt it.”
All three of us watched the big, burly football players attempt to prance alongside their beauty queen partners, and each of us made a valiant effort to keep our laughter under wraps. But by the time the offensive line had taken center stage with some seriously interesting dance moves, Winnie let out a boisterous cackle that broke the giggle dam.
“Please tell me someone is recording this,” Dean wheezed out between breathless laughs.