Layla

Finally finished with one job, Mom put the used wipe on top of the small mountain of the things next to him.

“Okay, time for the Neosporin.” She held her hand out to him and waited for Luke to pass it. Instead, he picked up a bag that was almost full to the brim and passed it over.

“I asked the chick behind the counter about disinfecting bites, and she told me to use this stuff before the Neosporin. She also said to go to the doctor first thing or to the ER to get them all checked over.” His eyes slid to the side. “Then again, she thought it was a dog that’d done it, and I didn’t think it was a good idea to correct her.”

He had a point, but then again, I doubted if anyone would be surprised if he’d told them it’d been Townsends who were responsible.

Not that I didn’t deserve the hurt they’d put on me today, though. I deserved way more than I’d gotten.

Adam snorted. “I’ve changed my mind about Colette and Maya. I thought they were the mild mannered ones, the ladies who were the sweetest of the sweet until I saw them in action this afternoon.”

Luke’s head snapped up from his contemplation of the worst bite on my arm. “Did you see her grab Jack and Tom by the hair and pull them off him?”

That’d been Colette.

“Yup, and Maya grabbed Ren and Cole the same way and was shaking hair out of her hand when we were getting in the car,” Adam added, shaking his head. “I saw Ebru and Sabine carrying kids and blocking them from chasing after us, too, and then Layla and Ariana got involved and yelled at the Townsend cousins.”

“Look,” Mom said quietly as she used whatever the hell Luke had gotten from the store—my guess was acid—on my cuts, “I don’t condone whatever y’all did four years ago, but once they calm down, we need to sit down and discuss it. Like adults,” she added firmly.

Eyeing me, Luke asked, “Wanna fill us in on the details before then so we know what we’re going to be dealing with, Mark?”

Did I? Not particularly, but they had a right to know.

“Remember when I went to Vegas twice in one month four years ago? I said the first time was a weekend away, and the second was the bachelor party for Rocko?” My brothers looked blankly back at me, but Mom nodded her head. “Okay, so it was a badly kept secret, but Layla and I had been seeing each other for a long time by that point—”

Adam snorted with disbelief. “Man, y’all have been together since she graduated high school. Don’t talk shit.”

“Language,” Mom snapped at him, then glared at me. “He’s right, though.”

No, it’d been slightly before then, but I didn’t bother to correct them.

Blowing out a breath, I nodded. “You’re right, but she didn’t want to let her family know because they have a tendency to…get dramatic.” That was putting it diplomatically. “Once she hit twenty-one, though, Layla said screw it and stopped making it all so cloak and dagger.”

“Is that why you quit college?” Luke asked, passing Mom a tube of Neosporin and putting another one next to him on the table.

“No, I did that because I didn’t want to be an architect and join the family business. I thought I did, but once I got there and was studying it every day, plucking my pubes out hair by hair would’ve been more interesting, and I realized I’d made a mistake. I had another eighteen months to go, but I quit and started working with you and Dad at the firm to make sure it wasn’t what I wanted.”

I’d done it all ass-backward, every last bit of it.

Adam had an impassive look on his face, but Luke was watching me with his eyebrow raised.

“Really? You wasted almost three years of time and money to decide you hated it. That sounded like a great idea.”

Given what I was about to tell him, I didn’t appreciate his sarcasm one bit, which I let him know with a glare.

“Anyway, we continued sneaking around, even when she went away to college the first time, until Layla’s twenty-first birthday, except none of her family noticed when we made it more obvious. Because of that, she was more nervous about just coming out and saying it, so we decided to wait until they did.”

“What changed things, honey?” Mom asked, smearing some of the crap on a particularly painful cut.

“She missed her period and took a pregnancy test.” All three members of my family sucked in a breath. “I decided we’d go to Vegas and get married before we told them.”

“Wait, you got married because she was pregnant?” Luke asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees.

“Where’s the baby?” Mom said quietly, looking pale.

“I’m getting to that,” I assured her, then looked at my brother. “No, I married Layla because I’ve been in love with her for as long as I can remember. If I had my choice, I’d have married her years before that, and it’d have been a huge wedding with everything she’d ever dreamed of.”

She couldn’t help it, Mom’s face softened, and she cooed, “Aww!”