Light Her Fire (Private Pleasures 2)

“Spinning is an outside game, so we don’t smash anything.”

Gracie “Death Wish” Stevens dug her toes into the waist of his jeans and attempted to springboard off him like a Chinese acrobat. He somehow kept hold of her squirming weight. “Fine. Everyone outside.”

Faith, the allegedly shy one, darted to the front door, threw her arms wide to block the threshold and babbled some protest at him in a rapid, high volume language he didn’t comprehend. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t understand what you’re saying… Oww! Stop that!” The last bit was directed at Death Wish, because she kept attempting to pull herself onto his shoulder using fistfuls of his hair as leverage. But it came out louder than he intended and she burst into tears.

Fay-fay followed suit, wailing at some perceived injustice at the top of her lungs.

Hope crossed her skinny arms, shouted, “Faith, you ruin everything!” and started bawling.

Good with kids. Famous last words. Christ, he was starting to sweat.

“Okay, time out. Hope, why is Faith upset?”

She let out a long-suffering sound. “She wants you to spin her, too. She’s a crybaby. I hate crybabies.”

He hadn’t thought it possible, but Hope’s insult made Faith—the allegedly quiet one—cry even louder. Any second now windows would shatter.

“Well, then, why are you crying?”

“Because I hate crybabies,” she sobbed, as if he were some kind of moron.

“Hey, girls, if you stop the waterworks right now, I’ll spin all of you.”

A few sobs, a sniffle, a couple blinks, and then three wobbly smiles. Bribes worked. Awesome. He hefted Death Wish into one arm and pushed the door open with the other. The hair dryer was still going strong, but he called, “Bluelick, we’re stepping outside.” He barely got the last word past his lips when four little hands tugged him through the door, across the porch and down the steps to the yard, yelling, “Spin! Spin! Spin!”

“Jeez. Give me a minute here.” He herded them to the center of the yard and worked some logistics in his head. Obviously he couldn’t put Death Wish down, because she was just mobile enough to get her wish. He moved her to his left side, and supported her in his left hand and arm. “Cooperate,” he told her in a voice he hoped a one-year-old found authoritative, but not crap-her-diapers intimidating.

“Kay,” she chirped.

Right. He crouched down. “You,” he pointed to Hope, “get behind me and wrap your arms around my neck.”

“My daddy always holds my arms and spins me.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got to hold Death Wish…er…Gracie in one arm, and I figure I can hold on to Faith with the other. The person in back will get the highest, and probably best, spins, but I need her to be someone I can trust to hold on all by herself. I’m thinking that someone is you. Am I right?”

Now that Mercenary Barbie realized she’d landed in the best seat on the Josh-go-round, she grinned and wrapped her dainty arms around his neck. He stood slowly, testing her dangling skills, but she held on like a champ. “Now it’s your turn, Faith.” He reached out his right hand to her. “Grab on.”

When her little hand landed in his, he slid past her palm and wrapped all five fingers around her wrist. He gave that hold a quick test, by drawing his arm up and lifting her off her feet. She squealed but hung on.

“All right, Houston, we’ll have liftoff in three…two…one.” He started spinning. Hope’s squeal threatened to rupture his eardrums. From the shadow they cast on the grass, he could see her legs flying out behind him. Faith, also laughing, gripped his right arm with both of hers, and spun through the air about three feet off the ground. Death Wish let go of her grasp on his shirt and spun facing the sky, arms out over her head like some fearless sideways windmill. In between her screaming laughter he heard the other two chanting, “Faster! Faster! Faster!”

“Oh, no, man. Don’t do that,” a voice he didn’t recognize cut in.

“Daddddddy! Daaaadddy! Dada!” ricocheted in his ears, as he slowly brought the spin game to an end and turned to address a concerned reddish-blond-haired man standing by a dark silver Honda Accord parked at the curb.

“Sorry, is spinning them like this not good for them?” Was he accidentally scrambling their brains or something? He crouched so Hope could get down.

“It’s fine for them.” The man smiled, approached, and knelt to greet his girls. “They can do it all day. It’s not good for you.” The two eldest girls abandoned Josh without a backward glance and smothered the man they called Daddy with hugs. “Chief Bradley, right?” he managed to question, despite the arms twining around his neck like kudzu.

Josh nodded, and supplied, “Josh.”

“Ben,” the man replied, and stood. “Thanks to stunts like the three-in-one spin, I see an expensive chiropractor every week.”

Josh walked over with Death Wish still in his arms, amazed she hadn’t fired up some rocket launcher she kept in her diaper and sailed through the air to her dad. The baby reached for her father’s outstretched arms, but unlike the other two, had the good manners to turn back to Josh and say, “Buh-bye.”

He shook his head to clear it. Had she really just given him the “Buh-bye”?

“Thanks for the warning.” A laugh threatened as he watched the wily little one try the same springboard trick with her father. “But I think I’ll survive three little girls.”