Brother to the Boss (Managing the Bosses 8)

She did a quick Google search for local beaches while Alex prepared lunch, and then they packed the kids and the cooler in the car and headed down to the beach. It had, Jamie decided as they got out of the car, been a good idea after all. The beach wasn’t as crowded as she expected it to be, and the breeze off the bay was cool in the late summer sun. Alex helped her get the twins out of the car and into sun hats, and then they carried them down to a spot on the shore where they could watch the waves roll in.

Benton and Lilli tried to dump as much sand as possible onto whoever was nearest. Despite the fact that she was sure she was going to be finding it in very uncomfortable places later, Jamie found herself laughing.

“I’m glad we decided to do this,” she said, looking up at Alex. “I’ve missed you.”

He reached across the blanket and took her hand. “I’ve missed you, too. I promise, Jamie, I’m going to try to be home more. I know that things have been rough lately, but we’ll get out ahead of Nicholas soon. And once all this is behind us we can just relax.”

She hoped it was true. Except something always seemed to come up. Their entire relationship, she sometimes felt, had been one ridiculous thing after another. Every time it settled down there was a new problem to overcome, and sometimes she wondered if their lives would have been easier without so much money involved.

“You know what we should do?” Alex said, breaking into thoughts that were turning a direction Jamie didn’t want them to go.

Jamie looked up. “What?”

He grinned at her, and Jamie felt a little stirring of want in her core. He was so hot. “We should build a sandcastle.”

It was such a surprise that Jamie laughed. She looked down at the twins. “What do you think?” she asked them. “Want to build a sandcastle with Daddy?”

Lilli smiled a big, gap-toothed smile, and Benton waved both hands in the air.

Jamie took that as an enthusiastic yes. “We should have brought buckets,” she said as they moved themselves and the twins down closer to the waterline, where the sand was damp and easy to shape. “Then we’d really be in business.”

“Next time,” Alex said, holding Benton’s tiny hands in his own

and guiding him to pat sand down over the little mound of it they’d formed.

It didn’t look much like a castle, but Jamie was pretty sure that the twins weren’t going to be complaining about that. She took Lilli’s hands in her own, following Alex’s example, and they added their efforts to the guys’, building another little hill of sand and patting it into vague tower shape.

The whole venture lasted about five minutes, which was as long as it took for Lilli to decide it was way more fun to knock towers down than to build them. Alex shook his head as he watched her squealing in delight, turning their lopsided castle into a sad little pile of sand. Benton, always happy to join his sister in wanton messiness, added his pudgy fists to the effort. The indulgent smile on Alex’s face was one that Jamie was pretty sure she was going to be seeing a lot more around the twins — and especially Lilli — than she was going to be happy with. But she couldn’t really begrudge him that when she was probably going to spoil both of them just as thoroughly as their father was obviously planning to.

Alex’s phone rang in his pocket, and he pulled it out to glance down at the screen.

“Do you have to answer that?”

He looked up at her even as he swiped his thumb across the screen to answer. “It’s Zander. I told him not to call unless it was important. I’ll keep the call quick.”

“We’ll be here when you’re done,” Jamie said, offering a smile that she hoped was supportive.

There was no answer. Alex had already lifted the phone to his ear and was moving away from them, nodding along to something Zander was saying.

“Looks like Daddy’s going to be busy for a little bit,” Jamie said, moving so that she sat between the twins and the ocean just in case one of them decided to make a break for it. They didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by the fact that Alex had just walked away, which Jamie supposed was a plus. Hopefully by the time they were old enough to notice sudden departures, those would be few and far between.

Shaking her head, she built up another makeshift tower, and watched as the twins rapidly reduced it to scattered sand. Despite her frustration with business calling Alex away yet again, she smiled. It was hard to watch the amount of delight they took in smashing the sandcastle to bits and stay annoyed.

Minutes passed, and Alex still hadn’t come back. Jamie looked up from the towers she was constructing for Lilli and Benton and scanned the beach for him, but she couldn’t make out his familiar form anywhere in her line of sight, and wondered where he’d gone. What was the conversation that was so important?

When she looked down again, Lilli wasn’t there.

Jamie felt her heart stop. She had just looked away for a second. How could it be long enough for her daughter to be gone? Frantically, her eyes scanned the beach, her heart racing.

There. Lilli was five feet from her, toddling toward the water. Jamie scooped up Benton so quickly that she must have startled him, jogging across the sand to take Lilli’s little hand in her own and catch her back. She realized as her fingers closed around her daughter’s that she was shaking, and she sank to her knees, legs too weak to hold her up.

“No,” she said it firmly, turning Lilli to face her. “We don’t do that, Lilliana! Do you understand me? We do not run away from Mommy.”

Lilli looked wide-eyed at Jamie, then back at the ocean, and Jamie pulled her around again with just enough force to get her attention.

“Lilli! You don’t run away from me. No.”

She wasn’t sure if it had any effect or not. She knew Lilli could understand the word no, but she didn’t know if her daughter would understand why it was being said or what she’d done wrong. Benton was struggling to get out of her hold, undoubtedly so that he could make a dash for the water himself, and Jamie let him down but took a firm hold of his hand. Both of them were tugging at her then, trying to get her to take them down to the edge of the water. They pointed, babbling in their baby language that wasn’t quite words yet.