Ram Remy (Providence Family Ties 4)

His head jerked, and he muttered, “No shit?”

“No shit. I don’t know if they’ve told Marcus and Elijah, but I’ve only told you guys. It’s not that it’s a huge secret, I just didn’t want to tell them in case I fucked up and embarrassed myself. I mean, not everyone likes every book, you know? What if I wrote one that everyone hated, and I had to quit?”

Remy tilted his head as I spoke, his frown getting deeper. “You’d actually quit if you wrote a book no one liked?”

“Uh, yeah? If no one liked it, that’d be a good indicator I needed to either quit or take a long break so I could reevaluate what I’m writing.”

“A break, yeah. That’d make sense. But quitting? Fuck, no.”

Snuffling noises followed by Toby’s version of calling out without being able to say our names came through the monitor beside me, getting both of our attention. Placing my laptop on the coffee table, I stood up and made my way past him to the stairs.

“I’ll get him if you want to—” A squeak came out of me as his hand wrapped around my wrist, stopping me mid-step and tugging me until I landed on his lap.

When I was situated and staring up at him in shock, he skimmed his nose down the side of mine and said softly, “I’m damn proud of you, baby. You never fail to amaze the shit out of me.”

“It’s just words on a document with a pretty picture on the front,” I rebutted in a whisper, taking advantage of the closeness of our proximity to look at his eyes close up.

The iris was mainly pale green with a slightly darker ring around the edge, but just around the pupil, there was an almost copper color. Toby’s hadn’t changed to that yet, but he already had the same pale green shade, so I hoped they did. It looked like he had starbursts in his eyes.

“It’s more than that. I’ve never thought about writing a book, but I’ve had to write some papers for…” he cleared his throat, “…work. It’s not easy to write an introduction and then add the information into an argument before wrapping it up in a compelling conclusion. Picturing that on a much larger scale to make an actual book?”

Remy shook his head, the silky strands of the hair hanging over his forehead brushing against my own as he did it. “You also work on the ranch and look after Toby while you’re doing it. That’s fucking impressive.”

A warmth I hadn’t felt before grew in my chest, and I had to bite my lip to stop a geeky smile. “Thanks. I have great editors, though.”

“Do they write the book?” I shook my head. “Do they come up with the story?” Again, another head shake. “Then take the compliment and own that shit.”

Toby, unhappy at the lack of people responding to his calls, changed to screams, making both of us wince.

“Sorry, I wasn’t sure if I’d zone out, so I turned the volume up to the max so I wouldn’t miss it when he woke up.”

Remy reached over and immediately turned the volume down. “I’ll remember that in future. That kid’s got a set of lungs on him like his Aunt Odette has.”

Getting off his lap—and missing it almost immediately—I walked quickly over to the stairs and jogged up them to where the little man was now…

“Is he singing?” Remy asked behind me, having followed me to get changed out of the clothes he’d worn for the ranch.

“That’s what I was wondering. What the hell is that?”

Pushing open the door, I stuck my head around to look at where he was standing, holding onto the rails of his crib and doing some sort of baby twerk. The diaper butt made it look impressive, but I figured it’d be far from shoddy without it.

“What’s he doing?” Remy whispered as I pulled my phone out and skimmed through the screens until I found the camera app and hit record. “Is he twerking?”

“Looks like it. Your boy’s got skill, did he get that from you?”

A pinch to my side made me jolt, and then he groaned when Toby squatted down and then popped back up again.

“That flipping woman!”

He didn’t have to explain who he was talking about. Addy’s nonna was a pro at the slut drop, the move Toby had just copied. She also dated online like a pro, and took full advantage of the filters available on whatever app the date was being held on, swearing blind there was one to fix every issue possible.

Bad hair day? “No problems, this is the perfect app, and that filter will fix it.”

Can’t be bothered to put makeup on? “Bah, this filter does that.”

But her passion was upsetting Addy by pretending she couldn’t speak English properly. I’ll never forget the story she told us about how her family had made her way from Italy to America. She took the plot of Titanic and added in some tomatoes. The woman was a nut!