Delectable, Page 34

  Two Weeks Later…

  “You’re wasting your time, ladies,” Reese said, pausing on the way to the moving truck so that he could lean down and kiss his beautiful wife.

  “We had a deal, Yummy,” Kasey said, gesturing for him to get moving as she reached into the red cooler and grabbed another apple juice.

  “He’s going to say no,” he reminded her as he hefted the large box in his arms.

  Frowning, Sara looked at Kasey and asked, “Why is he here?”

  Sighing heavily, Kasey shrugged. “He keeps following me everywhere.”

  “I feel so bad for you,” Sara said with a pitying look as she checked her manicure.

  “Me, too,” Kasey said, letting her shoulders sag in defeat and making his lips twitch.

  “You’re so mean,” he said, chuckling as he stole another kiss.

  “You knew this going in,” she pointed out with a smile.

  “You really did,” Sara said, nodding in agreement as she helped herself to a Coke.

  “It doesn’t get any better,” Zoe said with a heartfelt sigh as she helped herself to a whoopie pie.

  “It really doesn’t,” Haley said with a nod.

  “We can hear you,” Jason bit out from where he stood with Trevor, glaring at their wives.

  Blinking, Zoe said, “And?”

  “And we’re not moving another goddamn box until we get one of those whoopie pies,” Jason said, stubbornly crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Well, I guess if you’re giving up…” Haley said, letting her voice trail off with a shrug and making his cousins eyes narrow suspiciously.

  “You’re rating us again, aren’t you?” Jason demanded.

  “We really never stopped,” Kasey said, as Zoe pointed out, “Yummy’s still in the lead.”

  “What the hell?” Jason demanded in outrage.

  “He’s the only one willing to work without a shirt,” Haley pointed out.

  “It’s like forty degrees out here!” Jason snapped, and since he was in the lead he decided against mentioning that his wife had stolen his shirt again just so that she could ogle him and since he enjoyed her deviousness, he’d let her.

  “Which is why he gets an extra ten points,” Zoe said, which earned more glares until his cousins finally stormed off back towards the house to grab more boxes.

  Chuckling, he leaned down to kiss his wife one last time before he headed towards the large moving truck they’d rented for the move. Once he had the box loaded, he turned around and came face to face with the man that he’d been avoiding for the past two weeks.

  “No,” Uncle Jared bit out with a glare.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured,” he said, biting back a sigh, because he knew this wasn’t going to happen.

  “You have a good job, Reese.”

  “I know,” he said, telling himself that he wasn’t disappointed.

  He knew what his Uncle’s answer was going to be and it was fine. He had a good job, which in the last two weeks had been a hell of a lot better since he’d had Kasey and Mikey to come home to. They were staying with his parents while they were waiting to close on the old Jackson place and he wasn’t the only one that was thriving.

  His parents were ecstatic to have Kasey and Mikey around. They were spoiling Mikey and, of course, his father was taking advantage of Mikey’s arm and the two of them had already been busted for smashing a window with a wild snowball pitch. They were now banned from throwing snowballs without adult supervision, which meant that his father snuck Mikey outside every chance he got.

  His mother was loving having Kasey there. They cooked all day and his mom was loving helping with the cooking videos since Kasey needed an extra hand right now. At night, when the nausea hit, his mother sat with her, binge watching Netflix and keeping her company while she helped Mikey with her homework. It didn’t hurt that Mikey was loving her new school and that she’d already made quite a few friends, but her best friend seemed to be Sebastian, who was at the house every day waiting for her when she got home.

  In a few weeks, they’d be moving into their new house and Reese would start working on renovations and getting the house ready for the babies. It would give him something to do until spring hit and he could cash in his vacation and finish fixing up Kasey’s house so that they could put it on the market.

  “Look, if you want to come work for me part-time then I’d be more than happy to have you, but I can’t sit back and let you quit your job, Reese. I just can’t,” his Uncle said, before adding, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, shrugging it off. “I promised my wife that I’d ask.”

  “I’m sorry, Re-”

  “Uncle Jared?” Sara said, joining them with that creepy smile that gave him nightmares.

  “Sara, it’s-”

  “Why don’t we go talk inside, hmm?” she said, cutting him off and somehow managed to lead Uncle Jared, who was throwing him a questioning look over his shoulder, towards the house.

  Knowing that it was pointless to tell Sara that she was wasting her time, he shoved the box the rest of the way into the truck and decided to go find his wife. He’d break the news to her. She’d be upset, but thanks to that amazing website that she’d created for him, he could probably catch a little work on the side.

  When he spotted his cousins watching him with somewhat terrifying expressions on their faces, he couldn’t help but frown and wonder what they were up to. He moved to go find out when the front door suddenly flew open and his uncle, looking incredibly pissed, stepped outside, glanced around the yard until his eyes landed on him and when they did, Reese found himself taking a step back.

  “You,” his uncle bit out accusingly.

  But, before he could ask his uncle what was wrong, the spry bastard was coming after him. He would have managed to escape if it hadn’t been for the two bastards that had taken it upon themselves to grab him and hold him in place.

  “You son of a bitch!” Uncle Jared snapped, storming towards him as Kasey and the rest of the ladies popped open fresh bottles of apple juice and settled in for the show.

  “What the hell did I do?”

  “Payback’s a bitch, isn’t it, Yummy?” Jason asked, releasing his hold so that he could shove him towards his father.

  “You made that kitchen island?” his uncle demanded.

  “He designed it, too,” Trevor said, throwing him under the bus as Sara walked past them, sighing with satisfaction as she said, “Told you so.”

  “I-”

  “And you held out on me?”

  “I-”

  “He designed the floor, too,” Jason added, smiling smugly.

  “And did you check out those built-in shelves in the living room?” Trevor, the bastard that he was going to throttle with his bare hands, said.

  “Let’s not forget about the bathroom,” Jason mentioned as he moved to stand behind his father’s back so that he could mouth, “Bitch,” at Reese without his father seeing.

  “You designed all of it?” his Uncle demanded with a calculating gleam in his eye and before he could answer, Kasey was coming to stand by his side and Sara was stepping up to his other side.

  “We’ll handle the negotiations from here, Yummy,” his wife said.

  “I-”

  “Shh, you’ve done enough,” Sara said, nudging him out of the way.

  “But-”

  “It’s really for the best, Yummy,” Kasey said, moving to step away when he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against him so that he could kiss the devious woman that drove him out of his fucking mind.

  Epilogue

  One Year Later…

  “This isn’t really helpful,” Reese said, smiling down at his son, who was doing his best to drool all over his big sister’s baseball.

  “Well, he seems happy,” Mikey said quietly as she shot a nervous glance towards the closed bathroom door where her mother had been hiding for the past hour.

  “Yes, he do
es,” Reese said, smiling down at Nathaniel before glancing at his other son to make sure that Zachary was still sleeping.

  “Is it always going to be like this, Dad?” Mikey asked, worrying her bottom lip.

  “Only for the first six months,” he said, hoping that this pregnancy wasn’t going to be as rough as the last one.

  “So, three more months,” Mikey said, squishing her face up as she reached down and tickled her brother’s foot.

  “Maybe we should call Uncle Roger?” she suggested.

  “Don’t call him that,” he said with a mock glare for his little girl even as he had to wonder how the bastard managed to wrap every woman around his little finger. Well, everyone but his sister, he thought with a smile, thinking about just how much he enjoyed watching as his sister eviscerated the bastard every chance she got.

  “Might as well,” Mikey said with a shrug.

  “Traitor,” he said, leaning over to give his son a kiss before getting up to go check on his wife.

  “Can Sebastian come over?” Mikey asked, which meant that her best friend was already on his way.

  “Sure. Just try to keep it down so that your mother can rest,” he said, leaning over to pick Nathaniel up so that he could put him in the playpen next to his brother’s before heading towards the bathroom.

  He didn’t bother knocking. He simply walked inside the bathroom and-

  “Twins,” she said with a whimper from where she lounged in the bathtub. “Really, Yummy?”

  “Well, it is the fastest way to get those ten kids that we talked about,” he pointed out, chuckling when she shot him a murderous glare.

  “Not funny, Yummy. Not funny,” she said, closing her eyes with a sigh.

  “How are you feeling, sweetheart?” he asked, taking a knee by the side of the tub so that he could reach into the tub and place his hand on her belly.

  “Better,” she said, placing her hand over his.

  “Sara’s going to be home soon. She said she’d watch the boys so that we could have a night to ourselves,” he said, looking forward to spending the night making love to his wife.

  That is once the nausea passed and she no longer wanted to go for his balls.

  “I could really kill that bastard,” she said, shaking her head in disgust.

  “I know, sweetheart,” he said, knowing that she probably would have done just that if he hadn’t managed to lock her in a closet when she’d found out that Sara had walked in on her husband fucking his secretary.

  “As soon as I have the babies I’m going to do just that,” she promised with a nod, making him bite back a smile.

  “I think Eric might beat you to it,” he said, trying not to think about their other roommate, still wondering how that happened.

  “I’ve never seen him that angry before,” she said, shifting onto her side so that she was facing him.

  “Thank you for being so sweet about them staying here,” she said with a wobbly smile that had him leaning in to kiss her.

  “They’re your family, sweetheart. They’re always welcome here,” he said, deciding that it wouldn’t get him any extra points if he mentioned how close he was to killing the little bastard at work since she’d probably already figured that out.

  He still wasn’t sure how he’d got stuck with Eric. One day he’d just showed up, claimed the bedroom on the first floor and started working for Uncle Jared as his right-hand man. Eric now ran the office, did payroll, and busted Reese’s ass over every project, demanding receipts, copies of his plans, and bugged the shit out of him to help with every project. If it wasn’t for the insane amount of money that his uncle threw at him to work for him and the benefits, he probably would have shoved the little bastard into a tub of concrete and left him to rot.

  “I have to tell you something,” she said with a cryptic look that had his full attention.

  “What?”

  Worrying her bottom lip, she said, “I brought the boys to see Roger today.”

  “Did he hit on you again?” he bit out, hating the fact that he was the kids’ pediatrician, but he couldn’t deny the fact that the bastard really was the best.

  She waved it off with a, “Of course he did. I’m hot, but that’s not what I have to tell you.”

  “Are the boys okay?” he asked, shifting his attention back to the closed door.

  “Boys are fine,” she promised him.

  “Then what do you have to tell me?” he asked, returning his attention back to find Kasey biting her lip.

  “I may have done something bad.”

  “How bad?” he asked, narrowing his eyes on the woman that loved to keep him on his toes.

  “Well, after the boys’ appointment, I took them to the grocery store and I may have run across someone that you know, who may have pissed me off enough for me to make her cry,” she said, giving him a sheepish smile.

  “Who?” he asked slowly, not sure that he really wanted to know.

  “Missy,” she mumbled.

  “I see.”

  “I couldn’t help myself.”

  “What did you do?” he asked, closing his eyes on a resigned sigh.

  “Well, it really depends on who you ask,” she hedged.

  “I’m asking you.”

  “Besides making her cry?” she said, making his lips twitch.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it happened so fast that I really couldn’t put my finger on any one thing.”

  “Kasey,” he said, trying not to laugh.

  “I can’t take all the blame since the boys were really the ones to break her spirit,” she said, nodding solemnly.

  “They’re only six months old,” he pointed out.

  “And apparently they can hold a grudge,” she said with an innocent expression that he wasn’t buying for a second.

  “Apparently,” he murmured in agreement.

  “And, I don’t think it really helped matters when Sara-”

  “Wait, Sara was there?”

  “We were supposed to have lunch together,” she said, averting her gaze.

  “And you didn’t have lunch, did you?” he guessed.

  “Well, after the incident we decided that it would probably be for the best if we came home after we finished shopping, which of course took longer since we had to go to a different grocery store.”

  “And why did you have to switch grocery stores?” he asked when he knew better.

  “We really couldn’t stay there once the screaming started, could we?”

  “Umm, no?”

  “Exactly,” she said, nodding in agreement as he sat there, really trying not to smile. “So, once we cleared things up with the police and-”

  “The police were called?”

  “From what I’m told it’s the normal procedure for this kind of thing.”

  “Do I want to know?” he asked, rubbing his hands down his face