It Happens (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 6)

“Your father is literally in his chair doing nothing. Take it to him,” I said as I folded a towel that was still warm from the laundry.

Aggie looked at her father, who was indeed sitting in his chair doing nothing, then gave me a pointed look that clearly said, “Daddy isn’t good enough to open this juice box.”

I sighed and held out my hand. She placed her juice box into it, and I ripped off the straw and jabbed it into the foil-covered hole.

“There,” I said, handing it back.

She took it and started to leave, but Zee’s deep voice stopped her.

“What do you say?” he rumbled menacingly.

“Thank you?” Aggie asked it like it was a question.

My lips twitched in laughter.

“Yes,” Zee grumbled.

I turned back to the laundry, and Zee, who’d gotten out of his chair to fetch a beer, went back out to the living room where I could no longer see him.

I heard the chair squeak as he sat, though. Then the clunk-clunk of the ottoman being pulled closer so he could get comfortable once again.

Aggie cleared her throat and I glanced down at her.

“Do you have anything you’d like to say?” she pushed.

I folded the next towel before I answered her.

“You’re welcome?” I guessed.

“Yes.” She turned up her nose and walked back into the kitchen, drinking the stupid juice box before she’d even gotten four steps in.

Honestly, I was confused as to why Zee had bought her the thing since she had zero chance of making those things last for longer than three seconds flat, but whatever.

That was also why he was the favorite.

He got them whatever they wanted and didn’t care how much it cost in the process.

Or whether it caused diabetes.

Ultimately, Zee had been a really good father.

So good, in fact, that the kids preferred him way more than they loved me.

Not that I was bothered by that.

Zee had a way of making my heart seek him, and I knew that was the same for our kids.

That’d been the way it was since day one.

I’d actually started back to work early, taking the babies with me when I went.

Sure, they loved their mama, but when Daddy stopped by on his lunch break? It was like his entire world lit up, along with theirs, too.

“Mama open?”

I turned to find our youngest, Eitan, staring at me expectantly holding out a juice box of his own.

Eitan looked like his daddy.

Tall for the age of three, he was lean, mean, and in charge.

His fiery red hair and constant scowl was seriously so much like his father that it hurt sometimes to look at.

I took the juice box just as Annmarie, my oldest at the age of four and a half, walked into the kitchen with a massive cupcake in one hand, and a bottle of chocolate milk in the other.

Now that girl? She was all me.

She was introverted, stayed to herself, and loved her daddy something fierce.

Her long, jet black hair and pale skin were only a few of the traits that she shared with me.

“Mom, I’m going to eat this outside.”

Then she was gone.

Annmarie and Aggie were twins. After our first invitro-fertilization, the two of them were the result.

Our first try we got the babies that we wanted.

Eitan happened naturally—though they said that once you got pregnant and had a successful pregnancy, it was easier to get pregnant for the second time.

And it was.

Which had been our mistake.

We’d expected to need invitro-fertilization with our next one, so we hadn’t been careful, going about our normal sexual routine as it’d been for the years before that—no condom in sight.

And when I’d gotten pregnant six months after the girls were born, I hadn’t even realized it until I was well over four months along.

“Open!” Eitan bellowed.

I narrowed my eyes at my young son, but it was his father from the other room that had me wincing at him in sympathy.

“Get in here now, little boy,” came Zee’s annoyed growl.

“Better go, baby,” I suggested, shooing him with his now-open juice box.

Eitan took it and drug his feet as he walked away, looking for all he was worth as if he was headed to the gallows.

The kids respected their father, unlike me.

But that was also due in part to the fact that he was a police officer and their father, and I was just their mother who gave them everything they could ever want within reason.

One day, my kids wouldn’t be there to ask me to open a juice box because they’d be adults and capable of doing it themselves.

One day, I wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night to a baby crying and my eyes so tired that I could literally join my baby with tears, too.

One day, the computer paper that I’d bought for my office wouldn’t be scattered all over the floor, cut into tiny, impossible to pick up with your fingers pieces.