Talkin' Trash (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 2)

I made a mental note to look up YouTube videos on how to French braid later as well.

If it meant being with her more, then I’d do it in a heartbeat.

“I’ll get right on that,” I teased. “But, from what I’ve heard, French braiding takes small, nimble fingers—and that’s something I don’t have.”

She gently extracted her hair from my hand and examined the braid. “It looks really good to me and let me tell you something. Your fingers are nimble. I’ve seen you throw a football. Catch a bad snap. That takes skills. Your fingers are works of art. I damn well know that if you wanted to, you could make beautiful braids.”

She was teasing—at least partially—but I had a feeling that she really meant what she said.

Not to mention the blush on her face also indicated what she was thinking my fingers could also do—like what I’d done the previous night.

“The girls asleep?” she asked.

I rounded the swing and took a seat next to her, pulling her in close and twisting my head so that I could drop a kiss on her forehead.

“Yes,” I answered, eyes closing. “They’ve been asleep for about twenty minutes now. I was watching them sleep.”

She snorted. “I think you watch them sleep more than you sleep yourself.”

That was true.

I did watch them sleep quite a bit.

“Did you get the house cleaned up to your standards?” I teased.

She sighed. “Our parents will be here tomorrow for Sasha’s birthday. I can’t have a dirty house when they come over.”

I refused to point out that we’d had the cleaning lady come and clean it twice this week, once because it was her normal day to do it, and once because Conleigh had seen a smudge of dirt on a baseboard and called her back out to clean all over again.

Needless to say, Conleigh was a taskmaster when she was pregnant, and I had no one to blame but myself for that one.

“If this baby is a girl,” Conleigh yawned. “We’re getting a bigger house.”

I snorted.

We were still in the same house that we’d started at in the beginning—my three-bedroom two-bath non-fancy home. But, she was right. If this one was a girl—which I somehow knew it would be—then we needed a bigger house. A boy would be comfortable in the office that we’d turned into a small baby room, but a girl would need room. Something that I already figured out when their closets filled up with their clothes.

But it wasn’t just Conleigh buying the dresses—GOD, so many dresses!—it was my stepmother and Conleigh’s mother as well. Hell, even my dad bought the girls things!

“I’ve been telling you for two years now that we needed a new place, but you were adamant that we hang out in this one until we outgrew it,” I teased.

Her head shook as she laughed. “It has sentimental value.”

It did.

That I agreed with.

“You know,” Conleigh said around another yawn as she typed something into the search engine on the computer. “You have more hits with Sasha than you did with that little baby you held as I took her blood. Did you see?”

Then Conleigh pulled the YouTube video up and showed me, embarrassing me all over again.

“God, I look like a dweeb.”

I’d been wearing my shorts hiked up because I couldn’t get down far enough to show Sasha how to do the movements correctly without doing so, and I had my long socks from practice on that came halfway up my shins.

That, and our daughter had thrown up on me halfway through the performance.

But, the world loved it.

“At least they got something good this time,” I muttered. “It could be like when you gave birth to Mila and that paparazzi got a big ol’ vagina shot.”

Luckily the club members—Hoax being the main one—had caught the reporter before he could do anything with the picture.

The only one to see the shot had been me when I’d deleted it from the camera and destroyed the camera card for good measure.

She pinched me in the chest. “Shut up.”

I did, but only because I wanted to kiss her.

“I love you, Conleigh James.”

She sighed. “I love you, too, Lincoln James. Even though you have weird camera guys following me around and taking crotch shots.”

I laughed. “He paid for that.”

And he did.

I’d kicked his ass, and Hoax had helped me.

It’d been the last time that a reporter had tried to take any such shots of my wife and kids since.

And I hoped it stayed that way.

If it didn’t, I’d just make another example out of the next photographer that thought he could violate my privacy like that all over again.

Because in the end, I’d do anything to protect my family, even risk prison time.