Pulling back to look at her, I see tears streaming down her reddened cheeks. “Jenna, I love you. It might’ve been a tough bunch of months, but it served its purpose. I know you truly love me. I know you won’t be leaving me one day for something you thought you might have lost with my brother. I know you won’t be wondering if another man can make you feel like I do.”
She sniffles. “No one can make me feel like you do, Reed. I know that now.”
I kiss her cheek and find the salty tears on my lips which I lick. “I love you, Jenna. I won’t ever let you get away from me again. Not ever. You’re stuck with me, Girl.”
“I’m very glad to hear that.” She pulls my face back down to hers and kisses me sweetly.
And finally, our lives can really begin!
Epilogue
JENNA MANNING
“Maddie, have you seen Glen’s left shoe?” I shout toward the kitchen.
Reed smacks my ass as he comes up behind me. “Here you go, Mama. The always evasive shoe our son keeps hiding in a different place every time we go to leave anywhere.”
“After three boys, how did we get one who hates to leave the house?” I ask as I hold our one-year-old down and try to get him to let me get the shoe on.
Reed takes the shoe from me. “Here, you hold ol’ wiggle britches here and let me stuff his chubby foot into his shoe.”
Out of the kitchen and into the little den area off of it where we are, come our other kids. Tanner, who’s eight, Roland who’s five, and Panther who’s three.
Yes, Reed got to name one of our four sons!
But that’s the last one he’s getting to name. And Panther is the only one who got his father’s dimpled chin.
Tanner shouts, because he apparently knows no other way to communicate, “Come on! Gee wiz! You have one kid to get dressed, Mom!”
I wipe the sweat off my brow from the struggle with our youngest and shoot a wicked look at our oldest child. “One kid? Tanner, this one kid is like three of them.”
With his shoe on and his brothers running through the room on their way to the front door, Glen busts out of my hold and follows as fast as he can after them.
Reed opens his arms and I fall into them. “Whew! And only three minutes behind schedule.”
He laughs. “You’re nearly on time, Jenna. Come on, I’ll give you guys a ride then go to the office for a bit then go back to the school and pick you up for a nice lunch. How does that sound?”
His arm wraps around my shoulders as he leads me out to our Suburban. I lean into his firm body. “That sounds fantastic. Since I moved up to being a third-grade teacher, things have been rough.”
He nods as we get outside and I see the others have left Glen to try to climb into his car seat on his own. “Dang it, Tanner!” I shout. “Can’t you see your baby brother needs some help?”
“I tried to help him and he bit me!” he shouts back at me.
Panther lets out a loud growl. “And I’m the one named after a wild animal. You should switch our names!”
And just like that, Reed and I stop and look at each other. “Oh no!” we say, simultaneously. “Just like Rod!”
Reed opens the passenger car door for me. “Climb in, I’ll strap the little devil down.”
I get in and look back as Glen hits at his father and then lunges at him with a screeching sound. Roland is in the seat next to him and watches the scene with a little bit of horror in his expression.
Reed manages to get the baby strapped in and wipes the sweat off his forehead. “Shit, Son!”
I remind him of the young ears in the car, “Reed, the kids.”
With a wink to me he says, “Sorry, boys.”
He closes the door and walks around to get in as Tanner says, “That’s okay, Mom. We’ve heard worse words.”
I shake my head and turn around as Reed gets into the driver’s seat. “Now how many more of these things did you say you wanted?” he asks with a grin.
With a smile, I answer, “I want a girl, Reed.”
He shakes his head and pulls away from our home which many see as a mansion but it really is a home to us and our kids. No matter how fancy it may seem, it’s full of love and hopes, dreams, and lives that go on just like anyone else’s.
And I love this life we have!
REED
Of course, it has to be storming like crazy when Jenna goes into labor with our daughter!
With one more son after the notorious, Glen. Who is nearly the spitting image of my brother. And if Rod been anywhere near my wife in the time frame, she got pregnant I’d have given that boy a DNA test.
As Rod had been in another state for the whole year, I had no choice but to accept the fact the little devil came from my own loins.
Two years after Glen, came another son we named, Patrick after Jenna’s dad who passed away that year. Her mother was invited to come live with us but said she’d rather stay in the house she and her husband had lived in their entire marriage.
I bet it’s really because our house is kind of chaotic with all the boys running wild, though!
I make my way to our bedroom where Jenna is walking around, trying to get through another contraction it looks like as she holds her back and stops to lean against a wall.
“She’s on her way, my angel. The midwife will be here as soon as she can. The weather is pretty awful.” I run my hands all over her back as she makes little panting sounds with her breathing.
The pain subsides, and she turns to me. “Reed, I don’t want to do this anymore. Can we stop after her?”
I laugh. “As if it was me who told you to keep having babies, Jenna. But if you want to hear it come out of my mouth, then here you go. Jenna, honey, can this be our last little bundle of joy?”
She nods. “Yes, it can. If that’s how you want it, Darling.” She smiles and I take her hand and lead her to the bed.
“You should get all comfy until your midwife gets here.”
The door flies open and in runs the five boys who all jump on the bed. Glen shrieks, “Baby?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. I’ll bring her out to meet you guys as soon as she gets here. Now kiss your momma and let me get you back to your bedrooms. You all have school tomorrow and it’s late.”
After exchanging a lot of I love you’s and kisses and hugs, I manage to wrangle the boys back to bed at eleven p.m. and when I get back to my wife, I see the midwife is drenched but she has made it.
“Thank God! I was afraid I would have to deliver this one. Who’s going to be our last, I’ve been told,” I say as I climb on the bed next to Jenna and hold her hand as she starts taking in deep breaths with another contraction.
The midwife checks Jenna and looks as us with a smile. “She’s at ten, she can push with the next one. I did cut it very close making here in time.”
Jenna looks at me with a red face and tears fall. “Reed, we’re about to meet our daughter. Our baby girl.”
I kiss the tears away and give her hand a little squeeze. “I know. Are you happy, Jenna?”
She nods. “More than I ever thought possible. Thank you, Reed. Thank you so much.”
I tweak her nose. “Thank you, Jenna. You’re the one who made this life we share possible. I love you more than you will ever know.”
“And I love you.” Jenna’s lips touch mine then they harden as she pulls back from me with a deep groan. “It’s time!”
We look back at the midwife who’s wiping tears out of her eyes so she can see. “You two are so perfect for each other. It pulls at my heart. Okay.” She sniffles. “Let’s see what we have here. A head full of blonde hair it seems.”
Jenna pushes and her face goes really red then she stops and looks at me. “Wow! That was hard, and she’s not even out yet.”
I gently stroke her arm. “You’re doing so good, Mama.”
With another wave, Jenna goes red again and makes a loud grunting sound then I hear our daughter crying.
It’s the sweetest thin
g I’ve ever heard. “You did it, Angel.” I kiss her cheek and she closes her eyes.
“We did it, Reed. You and me. Together, we made ourselves a family.” Her head leans against my shoulder as the midwife holds up our daughter and we gaze at her like she’s a precious work of art.
We did it!
ROD
My brother moved his family out to a place in Wyoming to get his kids out of the city and into the country. Seems his twelve-year-old son, Glen, was getting into trouble already and they wanted to see if a change in environment might help him to straighten up.
When Jenna called and asked if I could bring my family and come see their new place and maybe see if there was anything I could say to Glen to get him on a better path, I had to come.
“Wow,” Ashley says as we turn into a driveway lined with giant trees. “This is gorgeous. I like it better than the mansion they had in Bel-Air.”
I roll down the windows and take in the fresh air. “You and I are going to take the bike out for a ride while we’re here. The kids can visit their cousins for a little while so you and I can spend a little Mommy-Daddy time.”
Our two daughters in the back seat of the truck both groan. Miranda, our fifteen-year-old whines, “The cousins!”
Her twelve-year-old sister, Hope, joins her. “Dad, do we have to? Can’t you take us with you?”
“No room. Sorry,” I say and give Ashley’s hand a squeeze. “Your aunt Jenna will probably take you girls shopping. That will be nice, won’t it?”
“I guess,” Miranda says. “But this isn’t Beverly Hills, Dad. It’s the middle of nowhere.”
I pull up in front of a monster sized place that looks like a hotel instead of a home. The front door opens and there stand my brother and his wife.
My heart always does this little dance when I see my old flame. I love that girl still. But in a sister-in-law way now.
My legs are stiff as I climb out of the truck followed by my family and Jenna has me in a hug before I know it. “Rod! I’m so happy you came all this way.”
After exchanging hugs and hellos we go inside and I see young Glen looking at me with eyes just like mine. The steel-blue in them glistens as he sees me.
That kid and I are cut from the same cloth and he saunters his little twelve-year-old body up to me. “Hey, Uncle Rod! How’s it hanging?” He holds out his hand and we do this little hand clasp thing I showed him.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Reed rolling his eyes. I chuckle. “It’s hanging, little man. I hear you like to take cars out on your own already.”
He shrugs and leans back against the wall, putting his foot up behind him. Jenna calls out to him, “Glen, what have I told you about putting your feet on the wall?”
With a smirk and a nod, he takes his foot down and puts his hands in his pockets. “The car was this guy’s mother’s. This guy hit my little brother, Pat. I told him if he ever did that again, he’d be sorry he did.”
“I see,” I say as I lean up against the wall with him. “And how did his mother’s car help you make him sorry?”
“After I told him that, he ran to his mommy like a little snitch and told on me. She came up to me at the playground and griped me out. So then I needed to teach her not to ever talk to me like that. Two days later that guy hit Pat again at the same playground so I went to her car and got in. She’d left the keys in it, another thing my taking her car was going to teach her not to do again.”
“Of course,” I say as I listen to his logic.
“And I started the car and proceeded to chase the guy down with it. My parents didn’t see what I did as a good thing. Especially since it ended with me, hitting the monkey bars because the little chicken climbed up on them to get away from me. His fault, I thought.” He nods and looks at me for confirmation that he did all the right things and everyone else was wrong.
“You know, Glen, I was a lot like you when I was a kid.”
Jenna adds, “And a grown up.”
I glance sideways at her. “Okay, fair enough. Anyway, like I was saying, Glen. I was a lot like you when I was younger. I thought I needed to teach lessons. But what I found out is that’s not up to me. I just needed to live my life and let the lessons in other’s lives get taught to them in their own ways. Leave the punishing by the wayside. People get what they have coming to them in other ways. And it wasn’t up to me. You’ll do better the quicker you figure that out.”
He nods then looks hard into my eyes. “So, you’re saying, if another guy hits my brother, let my brother deal with that?”
I nod. “Or your parents. It takes a load off your shoulders if you let someone else figure out what to do about something you think isn’t right. And just live your life. Saves you a ton of trouble, I assure you. Don’t try to change a person, pick people to be in your life who are already like you or like the people you want to be around. And leave the punishing and teaching up to someone else. You get me?”
A smile moves over his face. “I got you, Uncle Rod.” He slams his fist against mine as I hold it up.
I run my hand over his little dirty blonde head, the only kid they have with the same color hair I have. “Wanna go with me on a ride? I brought my Harley.”
“Will you teach me how to drive it?” he asks with a gleam in his eyes.
I see Jenna shaking her head and Reed nodding his. “Yeah, I’ll teach you how. Come on.”
And maybe I can help this kid not to be a screw up like I was!
JENNA
The stars in the Wyoming sky are a bit brighter than anywhere else I’ve ever lived in. Reed and I sit under a tree in our backyard and look up at them as everyone else has gone to bed.
His lips touch the side of my head. “Maybe Rod’s being around Glen will change things.”
“I hope so.” I turn and take Reed’s mouth in a hungry kiss. “Want to make love to me under the stars?”
“Do you even have to ask that?” He pushes me back and I run my arms around his neck.
Next week is our twentieth wedding anniversary and still Reed’s touch sends me to another place in my head. A place where only he and I exist.
His mouth leaves mine as he looks down at me. “I love you, my angel.”
With a smile, I say, “I love you, my prince. And I always will.”
As he takes my mouth with his, I think to myself how lucky I am to have found the man who can make me feel so amazing and I will never let him go for the rest of my life.
And we all lived happily ever after…
The End
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THE LUCKY SERIES
By Michelle Love
Table Of Contents
THE LUCKY SERIES
Part 1 Lucky Stars
Part 2 Lucky Investments
Part 3 Lucky Break
Part 4 Luck in Love
Part 5 Hard Luck
Part 6 Intense Luck
Part 7 Born Lucky
Part 8 Lucky Words
Part 9 No Luck
Part 10 Happy Go Lucky
Part 1 Lucky Stars
By Michelle Love
Blake
Pinks and oranges fill the sky as the sun sets behind my parent’s home. The mailbox has become my enemy, but I check it anyway. The last letter from the IRS took millions from me. I close my eyes and hope there’s nothing else from them in the box shaped like a large mouth bass.
My father was a novice fisherman, but you wouldn’t know that by the amount of fishing paraphernalia he accumulated in his lifetime. My mother was not a very good cook, but she had enough cookbooks to stock an aisle in Barnes and Nobles.
They passed away last year, together, right in the house I still live in. I was away at college, thankfully, or I’d be where they are now.
A gas leak in the house took them as they slept one night.
I should sell the place and move, especially since I lucked out on the road trip they had me make. In their will they left me three thousand dollars, and I had to use every penny of that money to play the lotteries through every state I went through on my journey to spread their ashes.
Dad was spread in the Atlantic Ocean and Mom in the Pacific. The crazy thing is I won seven of the lotteries and each jackpot was larger than the next. I ended that week a billionaire.
Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Every time I tell that story I have to thank them. Between them and God is the only way I got that money. I don’t think I’ve ever been this lucky.
Well, the luck is running out as the IRS is finding way after way to get the money.
“Hey, what ya doin’ out here at the ol’ fish box?” my neighbor, Josh asks me as he strides out of his house next door.
He moved here a couple of years ago and we hang out now and then, he’s a bit older than I am. I’m a kid to most at twenty-one, so I get left out of a lot of the block parties the older people have. Josh is a pretty good guy though and a great neighbor.
“Just checking to see if there are any more letters from the evil government, trying to take my money,” I gripe as I close the fishes mouth and am happy to see there are no letters from my arch nemesis.
“About your money,” he says. “It’s none of my business and I love having you as a neighbor, but why the hell are you still here in the two-bedroom house you grew up in? Get a mansion like all the other billionaires, dude!”
With a shrug of my shoulders, I say, “It’s not the right time yet. I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t want to leave the old house behind just yet. I’ll get out of it someday, but not just yet. My parents’ things are all in it and I’d have to pack them up if I move. Frankly, I kind of act like they’re on vacation and will be home anytime. It makes me keep the house cleaned up.”
The Reconstruction of Cyprian Page 64