by Stacy Gail
This was it.
Without a word, she opened the door. A canister with wires coming out of it was set on the floor, surrounded by enough hay to feed one of the ranch’s seed bulls for a week.
“It used to be bigger.”
Her strained, wire-taut voice worried the hell out of him. “You used to be smaller.” With great gentleness he slid his arms around her from behind and pulled her back against him, letting her take his strength while he looked at the closet from over her shoulder. “You okay, Spice?”
“I just can’t believe how tiny it is. In my dreams, it’s like this massive black cavern, and all you can see is a crack of light coming in through the door that’s like twenty feet high. But this...” She closed the door, looked at it, then opened it again. “This is nothing. Just a dinky little closet, in a dinky little house.” Slowly, she began to laugh. “Man, I can’t believe what a big deal I’ve made out of this all these years.”
“It’s so dinky you might as well burn the hell out of it, yeah?” He gave her a squeeze before brushing his lips against her neck. “All you have to do is push a button to detonate that canister, and this closet will be wiped off the face the earth forever, just like you wanted.”
“My wedding present is getting to fire-bomb my old house.” She laughed before turning in his arms, and he relaxed when he saw her pale eyes were sparkling with both humor and love. “Honestly, you are the best husband ever.”
“You know it.” He kissed her hard before grinning at her. “It’s easy to be the best when all I can think about is how I can make you happy.”
“My man.” She couldn’t seem to stop smiling as she nuzzled her face with his. “I love you, Brody.”
“I love you, Mrs. Brody.”
Fifteen minutes later, they watched the first clouds of smoke curl over Dallas’s old house. There were two teams inside, each with their own supervisor and instructor, while local TV news crews did their thing on the sidelines. With all the diesel engines running on the fire trucks and people shouting out instructions, it should have been a scene full of chaos and stress. But throughout it all, Dallas leaned against the side of the truck with him, her expression one of profound serenity. As the flames began to lick out from under the eaves, she grabbed his hand, raised it to her lips for a kiss, then asked if they could go and pick up some marshmallows for all the firemen to roast.
God, he loved his woman.
Ten days later
“She’s beautiful, Celia,” Dallas cradled the newest Brody in her arms while Celia, clearly happy to be home, sat next to her on the sofa. They both looked at her newborn daughter in awe, and Celia couldn’t seem to stop herself from holding out a finger for her baby to hold. “I think little Hannah and I are going to be the best of friends.”
“She’s already showing signs of being a daddy’s girl,” her sister-in-law said proudly. “She’ll be crying like her heart is breaking, but the moment Ry picks her up it’s all peace and coos and rainbows.”
Aww. “Remind him who has the magic touch when it’s four in the morning and you can’t get your eyes open to save your soul.”
“That happened last night,” came the drawling reply. “He just brought her in, passed her off like she was a football, and face-planted back into his pillow. It’s totally my fault, of course. I just had to have a baby during calving season.”
Mentally Dallas began counting.
October.
Hopefully Killian wouldn’t be too busy in October.
“Anyway, Ry’s still strutting over the fact that he beat Fin by having the first baby of this generation by five months.” She snorted, then kissed Hannah’s little hand when the baby fussed. “I swear, you’d think he was the one who’d given birth. Fair warning—Killian’s going to be just as impossible to live with when you have your first kid. When will the docs give you the all-clear for that, by the way? I know you can’t put a lot of stress on your system while your body repairs the damage it took.”
“I’ll be sure to make an official announcement when the time comes,” Dallas drawled, dodging a more definite answer. The fact was, a couple check-ups ago she and Killian had been given the green light to let nature take its course, as she’d improved so much thanks to Killian spoiling her in every way he could think of.
Now, it was her turn to spoil him.
She couldn’t wait.
“A little girl.” Killian shook his head as he walked Dallas from the garage and into the kitchen, turning on lights in their home as he went. “I had money riding on their kid being a boy. So did Manny.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, absurdly touched. Even though she’d had to quit The Dive after her surgery, Killian had become close with Manny as he tried to help the older man find a replacement for Dallas. Manny had wound up going with the new love in his life, Imogene, but the two men had remained friends.
“Yeah, can you believe it? We were sure the next generation was going to start off the way the last generation ended—all male. Now we get to start betting on Lilah’s baby. Just to be contrary, I’ll bet she’ll have a girl.”
“Betting on babies.” Dallas shook her head while he opened the fridge and scrounged around for a beer. “Is this what you’re going to be doing come October when our baby is due? Because I totally want to know what the gender is going to be, so fair warning right now—I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it to myself if that’s how you want to play it.”
Killian straightened away from the fridge, only to go as still as if he’d been hit with a freeze ray. “October?”
She nodded, watching him carefully. “That’s right.”
His massive chest heaved like a bellows. “Our baby? In October?”
“Yes.”
“So... eight months from now?”
Good grief, did she need to draw him a chart? “Mm-hm.”
“We’re having a baby eight months from now, in the same year that Ry and Fin are having their babies? We’re going to be parents?”
“Yes. Becoming a parent usually happens when you have a baby, or so I’m told. It’s like a package deal.”
“Hot damn.” With a whoop, he abandoned his beer, picked her up and swung her around. “We might not have had the first Brody baby, but with you as his or her mama, we are going to have the most beautiful baby this world has ever seen.”
She laughed as the world whirled around her. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re ridiculously competitive, Brody?”
“Don’t tell me you’re just now noticing this, Mrs. Brody.” Smiling like he’d just struck gold, he put her down with a breathless gentleness that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and it made her heart overflow all the more. It was as if he could already feel that precious cargo in his hands, and he would protect it with everything he had. “This is it. This right here is the first official day of creating that one thing you dreamed of having so long ago.”
“That I dreamed of?” She touched his bearded cheek, a question in her eyes. “What did I dream of, baby?”
“You dreamed of a family that could never be taken away from you, a family that you could count on and love forever.” He turned his head so he could press a kiss into her palm, before he laid a protective hand against her flat stomach. “You yearned for an indestructible family, Spice. That’s what we’re going to have. You okay with that?”
“Better than okay,” she whispered before offering her mouth to his.
Eight months later
“I want my car back.”
Killian looked up from his awestruck study of the sleeping baby cradled in his arms. His wife looked insanely gorgeous with her ruby red hair arranged in a tousled side plait ending in a pink ribbon, and wearing a pink and white gown she’d brought from home. She sat bright-eyed and alert in her hospital bed. Against her shoulder rested a tiny baby, wrapped in a Halloween-themed swaddling blanket identical to the blanket that was wrapped around the baby he held. She looked like she’d just come home from shopping,
and not at all like she’d given birth to twins three hours ago.
“Killian.”
“I heard you.” A tiny snuffle came from the warm bundle of life cradled in his arms, and it was a damn wonder he didn’t melt into a puddle of goo right there. “The answer’s no.”
The hiss that came out of his wife didn’t surprise him in the least. “I’m not pregnant anymore, Brody.”
“That’s irrelevant, Mrs. Brody. You drive like a bat out of hell, and if you’re not reined in you’re going to wind up with your ass wrapped around a fucking tree—”
“Language.”
“They’re three hours old, Spice. I can still get away with dropping an F-bomb. But you can’t get away with driving like you’re trying to break overland speed records in your souped-up muscle car,” he added flatly. “You have a family to think of now.”
“But—”
“I’ve already sold it back to Coe.” He shrugged, all the while bracing for the mighty wrath of a redhead denied, but he didn’t care. On this, he wasn’t budging. “You should also know that Coe assured me he’s going to ignore the hell out of you, should you come sniffing around for your former ride. He’s a family man himself, with a passel of kids at home. He knows you’ve got two little ones who need their mama, so that’s it, Dallas. It’s done.”
She cleared her throat. “Okay, first of all—”
“Oh no, you don’t,” he cut her off quickly. By now he knew his woman well enough to recognize that when she started off a sentence with the words first of all, it was high time to either run like hell or prepare for all-out war. “My wife is my life. I had every right to take that step in order to protect not just her life, which I value more than my own, but the lives of our children as well. That’s part of what makes us an indestructible family, and I’m not going to compromise on this, Dallas. I’ll compromise on a lot of shit, but never with your safety.”
“You don’t say.” Her eyes narrowed with clear outrage. Then she looked to the baby against her shoulder, and offered a little huff. “Well. I guess that makes sense. There wasn’t a backseat to speak of in the Thunderbird, so I wouldn’t have had a place to put the kids, anyway. I suppose I can live with one of the ranch trucks, as long as it’s got a king cab and enough room for growing kids.”
He stared at her. “So...that’s it?”
She shrugged, careful not to jostle the baby lying against her. “You’ve already made huge sacrifices to make room for the kids. The moment you found out we were having twins, you gutted the master bedroom to put in their two future bedrooms, a playroom and their nursery, and you lost your much-adored media room downstairs so it could be converted into our new bedroom. If you can make those kinds of sacrifices, so can I.”
His eyes narrowed. “Is this a trick?”
She snorted. “No.”
“Are you sure you’re my Spice? I was expecting you to try to take several layers of skin off my ass.”
“Eighteen hours of labor with twins must’ve temporarily taken the starch out of me.”
“Nice emphasis on the word temporarily.”
“My man doesn’t miss much.” She turned her head to kiss the baby’s fuzzy dark head. “I think Fallon is falling asleep.”
“That’s Sean. I’ve got Fallon.”
“Are you sure?” Moving as if the baby in her arms was twenty-year-old dynamite, she did a quick diaper peek before looking heavenward in an obvious plea for strength. “Dear God, I’m the worst mother. I can’t even tell my son from my daughter.”
“We’ll be able to figure it all out as we go.” With a chuckle, he rose from his seat to sit on the bed facing her, and held his sleeping daughter’s head close to his son’s. “You see? They might have the same dark hair, but at a glance you can see Sean’s got a longer, leaner face, and Fallon has that patented Brody widow’s peak that makes her little face look like a heart.”
“I can’t get over how perfect they are.” She leaned closer to stare in proud amazement at their children, and he couldn’t resist those lips when they were that close. When he finally backed away, there were tears shimmering in those peridot eyes.
“What?” Gently he touched her cheek even as a tear fell. “What is it?”
“I never knew I could be this happy. It’s all because of you.”
His eyes began to burn as well. “I didn’t do anything, baby.”
“Well, you did kidnap me, so there’s that.”
“Hell, yeah, I did.” His soft laughter mingled with hers. “Kidnapping you was the best damn move I ever made, even if my thumb does ache now whenever rain’s coming.”
She made a sound of sympathy. “I feel like I should apologize.”
“Never. Your spiciness is what I fell in love with. Not to mention I want our babies to be fierce little fighters like their mama. It’s a tough world out there, and they’ll need a good example of how to fight for everything they get in life.”
Her eyes softened. “You really see me like that?”
“That’s how you are. With your fierceness and my competitive nature, we’ve got a couple world-beaters on our hands.”
“I’ll say you’re competitive,” she snorted, the tears vanishing with a little laugh. “I can’t believe you told your brothers that while they may have had their babies first, it no longer counted because you were ahead of the baby count with two kids.”
“I am ahead of the baby count now, so they can suck it.” Her laughter warmed him to the core, and he had to lean in again to brush her lips with his. “I used to be envious of Ry and Fin. They’d each found their other half. They were happy, and loved, and starting to build a future that was still just a dream for me. Then I found you, and all that envy bullshit vanished. It vanished because I’d found my other half. There’s nothing else in this world that I need.”
“Killian.” Her breath trembled, and he savored the sound. “You make my world perfect just by loving me. Did you know that?”
Damn, his Spice was sweet. “I do now.”
“Don’t ever stop, okay?”
“Not a chance,” he promised, and kissed her again.
Note from the Author
Hi again!
I hope you enjoyed Dallas and Killian’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it. When these two characters first showed up in BRACED, I knew they were going to be some kind of fun, and they definitely were! There’s only one Brody brother left, and I saved the most complex and brooding Brody for last. Be sure to keep an eye out for BROKEN, the final book in the Brody Brothers series!
Before I launch into Des’s story, however, I’ve already begun HOUSE OF PAYNE: STYX—yay! As a cover-up artist, Styx has some covering up in his own life going on. He’s brash, bold and over-the-top Alpha, but will that be enough to win his chosen woman? Find out this summer when STYX’s story releases. You can also sign up for my newsletter to stay up-to-date on all my latest projects and releases!
I LOVE hearing from readers, just as much as I love interacting with them. Please feel free to drop me a line at [email protected], or follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or my personal addiction, Instagram. If you mention that you’ve read any of my books, I promise to follow back and say hi!
I’m heading back to Chicago for the next HOUSE OF PAYNE book! Look for HOUSE OF PAYNE: STYX, coming this summer!
About the Author
A competitive figure skater from the age of eight, Stacy Gail began writing stories in between events to pass the time. By the age of fourteen, she told her parents she was either going to be a figure skating coach who was also a published romance writer, or a romance writer who was also a skating pro. Now with a day job of playing on the ice with her students, and writing everything from steampunk to cyberpunk, contemporary to paranormal at night, both dreams have come true.
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