Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 88220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88220 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
The sound came from the baby monitor on my nightstand. “Livie, wake up,” Ava said quietly to her sister, unaware that we could hear every little sound coming from their second-floor bedroom.
“The sun’s not up,” Livie whispered, bringing a smile to my lips.
“Mia?” Ava said.
“Paw said we have to stay in bed.” Mia had a way of drawing me into her sweet charm.
Our identical triplets. Who would have ever guessed that was a possibility with in vitro? It was a shocking discovery during an early ultrasound.
Where Mia believed in being happy, she teetered between right and wrong. Livie followed all the rules. If there were no rules in place, she created them to remove any potential chaos to her day. Ava, well, we had trouble there. She enjoyed breaking all of Livie’s rules. As a parent, Livie was a dream child. As someone watching from a distance, Mia and Ava had all the fun.
I tuned out the whispers, confident that Amelia would handle them. She loved and cared for those little girls as much as Beau and I did. She’d become their beloved abuela.
The damned hospital gave us a false sense of assurance and confidence, making their care look effortless. They handled our daughters like they were footballs—flipping them front to back, side to side while changing their diapers and swaddling them in their blankets. Even during their neonatal stay when they were barely the size of my hand, those nurses were fearless with their care. Yeah right. There was no way Beau and I could have managed the trio alone. Three crying babies in a home of two men who had never been around children... Hell, we’d been outnumbered from the minute we were told there were three.
In the end, they survived the baby stage, and so did we.
Beau counted it a win for the parents side, which included his influence. So the win was his.
We had no difficulty getting pregnant. It wasn’t a consideration not to have all three once we got over the shock of the idea. A week shy of their third birthdays, our little girls continue to bring unbelievable depth to our love and lives. They could be quite bossy, and entirely too smart to accept simple answers to their constant questions of “why,” and they were good big sisters to our infant son, Weston. His baby monitor came with a video screen and sat next to the girls’ walkie-talkie-type listening device.
“You have to be quiet,” Ava said.
“Stay in bed until the sun comes into the window,” Livie said, repeating Beau’s directive.
“The sun’s up, Livie,” Ava whispered. “Come on. It’s Daddy’s birthday.”
“We can surprise him,” Mia said with pure joy.
The only downside to having three little girls was the collective noise that stacked until it echoed through the house. In hindsight, renovating two of the four bedrooms on the second floor into one large space to let the girls share a room together might not have been the best idea. At just two months old, Weston, who we called West, had barely slept through the night. In another small renovation, Amelia left the third floor suite to take the bedroom between the girls and West. Maybe it was going to help or maybe not, only time would tell.
Even if Amelia didn’t intervene, the girls weren’t going to get far. Where the back spiral staircase used to be, we’d installed a small elevator to help Amelia get around with ease. The girls couldn’t access that. At the top of the main staircase was a professional-grade stair barrier. No chance they could get past that locking system.
Turning quietly to face Beau once again, I took a moment to rifle through the blanket to find Beau’s warm body. This was my last possible chance for my good morning birthday sex. I hooked my leg around his thigh, positioning myself against him head to toe. Duke stirred in his bed just a few feet from ours. I lifted a fist, giving Beau’s command to motion him to the bathroom’s doggie door. After a good shake, he lumbered out with Dixie reluctantly following.
“Your body’s hot,” Beau murmured. I took it as a tease and pressed a kiss on his shoulder. Beau remained a fine specimen of a man, muscular and hard, and buried under a summer blanket to keep him warm under the icy blast of cool air I required to semi-sleep. A wicked smile formed as I contemplated the idea of keeping him warm instead of this cold, unfeeling fabric. I pushed away everything separating Beau from me as he turned to face me. My guy was more awake than I’d initially suspected.
Even with having to steal moments to be together, I was always ready, anytime he wanted me. Like right now.
“Happy Birthday,” he whispered. “They’re gonna work their way into our room.”