Wrapping Up (Mitchell Family #4.5)(23)
Author: Jennifer Foor

"Please tell me the one piece is for our pregnant cousin, because Ty, if you think she is going to go for this at all, there is no way in hell she will wear that two piece."

He started laughing at me. "I was going to ask her which one she preferred."

I smacked him on the ass. "You’re so bad!"

He leaned down and kissed me softly, letting his lips linger over mine. "You love it." His kisses could still take my breath away, even as the baby monitor started blowing up with screams.

"The C.B.s are up!"

"Must you continue to call our children Cockblocks?"

We started walking toward the boy’s room. "I can’t help it. They have some kind of radar that goes off whenever we have any kind of physical contact. It’s like they have an armed guard on your tits."

"Guess they don’t want to share."

He turned around and held his hand up. "Hold up! They were mine way before they came along. If anyone is sharing, it’s me."

He was so dead serious that I just pushed him out of the way and walked past him. The boys were both sitting up in their beds with real tears running down their cute little cheeks. "Oh my goodness, real tears?" I picked up Jax just as Ty picked up Jake.

Jax had soaked through his diaper and I could tell because my shirt was instantly wet as I held him against me. Ty mimicked my actions and began changing Jake. "This is way more fun than getting naked with my wife." His sarcasm made me laugh. I knew he was kidding, but I think a part of him was just a tad bit disappointed that our love life was always our last priority, but we had sex a lot more than other married couples. I thought that waiting actually made it even hotter when we finally got opportunities to be together.

Chapter 6

Ty

The next week went by way too fast. Between the decorating and wrapping of presents, we were wiped out. Bella was becoming more anxious by the second and I could hardly wait to show her the pony we had hiding on the other side of the pasture for her. The boys were just boys except I swore they somehow knew that Miranda and I had been extra tired. They kept waking up at all hours of the night for no apparent reason.

Miranda’s mother had been staying with my parents for the past six days and they were a big help with the kids. The one good thing about them living so far away was that when they visited, they wanted to spend all of their time with the kids. We appreciated the break immensely.

From what I could see, Miranda kept to her word about leaving Conner’s business alone. In fact, she hadn’t, to my knowledge, told her mother about what she thought he was up to. We were hosting Christmas and had too much to do to worry about where he was spending his time. He hadn’t come home with the shit beat out of him yet, so obviously he wasn’t in that bad of shape.

Karen and my mother got it in their heads that it was important for us to decorate the outside of the two houses more than we ever had before. Doing that required not only myself, but my dad and John to spend a good half day up in my parent’s attic going through old decorations.

I felt like Clark Griswold climbing up on the roof to start hanging the ridiculous amount of lights that we had decided to hang. Bella played outside watching our every move. She was too afraid she was going to miss us turning them on to go in the house to play.

Colt and Van were due in any moment and we had decided to not tell Iz and let her be surprised. Between Christmas and Noah coming, we couldn’t shut her up for even one second to take a breath.

Colt had gone out and gotten Noah one of those miniature planes. I was kind of jealous, because he had one when he was little and we all wanted to play with it, but he wouldn’t let us. None of us kids understood just how expensive it was back then.

Colt was over the moon excited about Noah getting the plane. He loved doing things with his son and making sure he made up for the time he’d lost when Noah was a baby. Others may have thought he overdid things at times, but the truth was that I would have done the same thing.

Since Conner and I were high on the roof, I knew that I could mention Amy without my wife freaking out. “Your sister keeps drilling me for information about your secret romance.”

Conner stapled another row and shook his head. “There ain’t nothin’ to tell, bro.”

“She doesn’t seem to believe that.” I wasn’t egging him on; I was being quite honest about it.

“She needs to stay out of my business. I love my sister and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I don’t need a babysitter.” He sat down where he was working and waited for my next response.

“This stays between me and you.” I motioned my hands between us. “I think the two of you are cool together. Amy is a nice girl but she’s always been a victim. If you’re being a friend and helping her out, I can’t see any wrong in that. My marriage is important to me, but I know that not everyone has the kind of relationship that I do. She’s needed to leave that ass**le for a long time now.”

He nodded but immediately changed the subject. “So, I got this idea that I think Iz and Noah would get a real kick out of. My buddy back home gave me these fireworks and I found a few still in a box in my room on Thanksgiving. I think we should strap some kind of Red plastic to it and make it look like Santa is leavin’ the roof. We can do it from your parents and let the kids look out at just the right time. What do you think?”

I thought it was a great idea if we could fool proof it. “What happens if Santa’s plastic sled catches on fire and we watch him go up in a ball of flames?”

We both started laughing. “Well, maybe we should try it out first before we devastate the kids.”

“Yeah, if I had to tell Iz that Santa was really me and her mom, your sister would kill me.”

“You could always blame the whole thing on me, like you did when we were kids.” He cocked his eyebrow and shot a staple at me in the air. It wasn’t close enough to come near me, so I didn’t get the least bit upset. I chuckled when I thought about how many times us kids blamed things on little Conner.

I laughed again remembering a few of the times we had blamed Conner for things we had done. Like the time that we climbed on top of this old hay barn and fell through the roof. We called Conner in to show him what we’d done and ran away when we saw the adults heading our way. Conner cried his eyes out and we all hid behind some farm equipment just listening to my uncle scorning him. “Remember when you fell through the barn?”