Be Mine (Jackson Boys 2)

I follow at a slower pace, which is a good thing when our youngest barrels down the hall.

“Slow down there, cowboy,” his father warns, catching the seven-year-old by the arm. “Where’s the fire?”

“Cassie says the baby’s coming,” Thane shouts. His eyes dart around his father’s to pin on my stomach. “Is it? Is it going to drop out right now? Have you peed yet? Cuz Harper said when his mama had a baby she peed right on the floor. That’d be gross.”

Gross things fascinate Thane. “I’m not peeing on the floor, baby.” I run a hand over his short brown hair, dark like his daddy’s. “Your brother isn’t ready to come out yet.”

“I wish we were having another girl,” Thane grumps. “We’ve already got three men in the house.”

I hide a smile behind the back of my hand. Ever since Thane learned he wasn’t the youngest anymore, he’s been referring to himself as a man. I find it adorable, but he’s a serious boy, so I can’t let on that it amuses me or I’d hurt his manly feelings.

Nick swings our soon-to-be middle son up into his arms. Long, lanky legs dangle down the side of Nick’s frame. Thane’s going to be a tall one—taller than his daddy, for sure. “I’m not good at making girls, son. Besides, we’ve got Cassidy and your mom. No other girls can compare to these two.”

“Uncle Reese says I smell like a barn and that if we had more girls around, maybe I’d smell better, and then Sancha would like me instead of Dobson the dickhead.”

“Thane! Language!” I scold. I wait for Nick to add his rebuke, but he’s staring at the ceiling, nearly dying from the need to laugh.

“Sorry, Mama,” Thane says, completely unrepentant. “Uncle Reese says that—”

“Uncle Reese isn’t going to be babysitting you anymore if that’s the kind of language he’s using,” I warn.

“Uncle Reese didn’t say Dobson was a dickhead,” Thane says, with a most put-upon tone. “He said dickheads were guys that were so dumb, their heads were in their dicks. Dobson is dumb and so he’s a dickhead. It’s two plus two,” he informs me.

“Nah, you’re messing it all up.” A new voice adds his two-cents from the end of the hallway. Our oldest boy pushes away from the wall to shake his head at Thane. “Get it right. Dickheads are guys who think with their dicks. The guys with their heads up their dicks are assholes.”

“Gray! That’s enough,” I cry and shoot my husband a pleading look, but Nick is so red from holding in his laughter, I swear he’s going to explode.

“I am getting it right,” Thane replies indignantly. “The asshole is where the poop comes from. That’s different than the peehole. I ain’t the one wrong. You are!”

“Am not,” taunts Gray.

The two launch themselves at each other. Nick finally gathers his self-control and wades into a mess of flying fists to separate our two boys. Born only eleven months apart, the two look almost like twins. Their identical mouths are set in mulish lines, and their brown eyes spark fire at each other.

“None of that now,” Nick says. “You two promised to get along and take care of your mama tonight. You reneging on your promises?”

“No, sir,” chorus my two angels. They straighten their shoulders and shoot to my side, each one taking a hand. “We got you, Mama.”

“Thank you,” I say. “Now, we’re going to go downstairs and see your sister and daddy off.”

Halfway down the stairs, I stumble to a halt as Cassidy floats into the foyer. Standing under the crystal chandelier Nick had flown in from Milan when we bought this house seven years ago, my eldest child looks like she should be on the front cover of a magazine. Dressed in a peach gown with tiny sleeves and a skirt with so many layers of chiffon, we could cover the entire house from end to end.

Nick slaps a hand across his chest. “Where’d Cassidy go?” he asks in mock surprise. Although, by the tone of his voice, part of that shock is very real. She’s growing up, and it’s so bittersweet. Nick proposed to me after his third SuperBowl win, right on national television and while that was romantic and all, it was what happened after I said yes that cemented him as a hero across the world.

He got down on one knee, took Cass’s hand and said that he was ready to accept the position as her daddy—the one she’d identified the very first moment she’d seen him. She threw herself into his arms so hard, it knocked his Super Bowl MVP-ass on the ground. He’d bought her a ring and hung it on a necklace around her neck. It was his promise to be her daddy forever after. There wasn’t a dry-eye in the entire stadium or so I heard.