Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 68576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68576 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 343(@200wpm)___ 274(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
“Ugh, fine,” Dalia grumbled.
She was just like her mother.
“Now let’s…”
When I came into the living room next, there were more wet and grassy children. But at least these kids had clothes on.
“And surprise! Hello, children,” I said to my nieces and nephews.
Catherine and Cillian—Quinn and Shayne’s kids—as well as Tex and Addison, were standing there, dripping on my hardwood floors.
“Hello,” Addison smiled. “What are you feeding us?”
My brows rose. “Who exactly is supposed to be watching you?”
They all tracked to my kitchen, and I placed Dalia on the closest stool.
She immediately got up onto her tippy toes and leaned against the counter.
“Well, technically we’re supposed to be getting dried off, but we saw you pull up,” Catherine said. “We were trying to find our towels, but she ran over here like her pants were on fire.”
Catherine was the mom of the group.
I loved the sweet, mother hen look she settled on Dalia.
“Food,” Tex ordered.
I rolled my eyes and pulled out the broccoli I was going to cook for my dinner, placing it and a cup of ranch on the counter between the five wet bodies now filling my kitchen.
“I was going to make steak and broccoli,” I said. “But I suppose I can cook up some macaroni and hot dogs.”
“I vote we go to Texas Roadhouse,” Tex mumbled around a bite of ranch that had a tiny sliver of broccoli in the middle.
“Oh, yeah.” Cillian crowed. “Butter!”
I rolled my eyes. “I…”
A frantic knock at my door, and I walked to it slowly to find just the person I wanted to see on the other side.
Though, we acted like we hated each other for propriety’s sake.
“Do you have the kids?” Pepper asked, eyes wide.
I opened the door wide, and she deflated. “I was supposed to be watching them. I went inside to grab towels, and then when I came back, they were all just gone.”
“Why are you watching the kids?” I asked.
“My car had two tires get slashed at the bakery today.” She rolled her eyes. “Quincy and Quaid took my car to the shop to get it fixed up with the trailer. I volunteered to watch the kids. I was gone like thirty seconds!”
I gestured for her to come inside. “You’ll find that the next Carter generation is a bit… wild.”
“You can say that again,” she grumbled. “Cillian belly-flopped off the four-foot section of the fort right onto the grass, and my heart nearly catapulted out of my chest.”
Catherine and Cillian were wild.
Quinn and Shayne were trying to fix that, but it was hard to break habits that had been groomed into the children for years before they’d adopted them.
Cillian and Catherine were biologically Shayne’s brother’s children. Shayne’s brother, Costas, hadn’t known anything about his kids until he’d gone to prison, and he’d begged his sister to adopt them and get them out of their poor living situation.
Quinn and Shayne had fought hard for the two kids, finding out in the process just how neglected they were.
Catherine had to grow up fast to take care of her little brother, who was only a year and a half younger than her. Cillian was just a nut case. But a loveable nut case.
“He tried to jump off the roof last week, Quincy told me,” I said as I led her to the kitchen. “Kids, were you supposed to be waiting on towels from Ms. Pepper?”
“Mayyybe,” Catherine said sweetly.
I rolled my eyes and said, “Then next time, you wait for her. Because you made her scared.”
“Sorry, Ms. Pepper,” Catherine apologized.
“Sorry!” Tex said around another mouthful of ranch.
Addison was giving the broccoli a look of disdain. “How about that Texas Roadhouse?”
Everything is figureoutable.
—Pepper to Everest
PEPPER
I wasn’t sure how it happened, but somehow, I got roped into taking five children to Texas Roadhouse.
And I was in a minivan.
A communal minivan.
“No one actually wants to drive a minivan,” Atlas was being nice for once, likely because of the children in the vehicle with us. “So we all chipped in some money—not me, though, since I don’t have kids—and bought this. That way if there are more kids than our vehicles can handle, then we can drive this instead.”
“No kids.” I snorted. “Thank God for that.”
His brows rose. “Why?”
I glanced over at him, then back to see that all the kids were engrossed with the movie that was playing on the twenty-two-inch screen protruding from the ceiling, and then turned back to him.
“Because I wouldn’t want you to raise a kid with your morals and lack of insight.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“Lack of insight?” he asked, sounding amused.
“Lack of opening your freakin’ eyes,” I explained. “Your utter blind spot where it comes to my sister.”
He frowned. “I don’t have a blind spot when it comes to your sister.”
“You have something when it comes to my sister, and whatever it is, it’s not good.” I shrugged.