by Cassie Cole
“Right this way, Miss Parker,” said my bodyguard. Eddie had interviewed dozens of bodyguards from prestigious private security firms before deciding none of them were adequate for my protection, so now he served as my bodyguard whenever I was on tour. He scanned the area while leading me backstage as if assassins would pop out at any moment.
“Relax, Callahan,” I said. “I hardly think we’re in danger here.”
“Still, ma’am.”
I giggled at our little game. We kept our love life private, especially while out on tour. It was fun playing pretend with him around everyone else.
As exhausted as I was, after leaving the stage I made sure to follow my assistant down to the meeting area where I signed autographs. Sure I wanted nothing more than to hop in my limo and close my eyes, but I’d made a promise to myself eight years ago. I would never become too full of myself that I didn’t sign autographs for the fans. Without them I was nothing.
That was something I could never forget.
I smiled and greeted each fan that waited in line, pouring genuine enthusiasm into each one. Eddie kept one hand on his taser while inspecting each person who approached my table even though most of them were teenage girls not yet old enough to wear makeup.
I didn’t mind, though. I liked my protective man.
Two more hours later I was being ushered to my limo, then east to Love Field, the smaller airport where most private planes took off rather than the huge DFW airport. A private plane. I still wasn’t used to that after all these years. A plane just for me, with a pilot dedicated to my travel plans, and my very own flight attendant to see to my drink and food needs.
Well, and the needs of my assistant. And Eddie. And Michel, who now served as my manager and agent. He was waiting for me on the plane—he’d left right after the concert while I signed autographs.
“Your throat was giving out on the high notes,” he said as soon as I came through the door. The plane was full of cream colored leather and polished wooden accents, and by the looks of things Michel was on his third cocktail.
Eddie rolled his eyes.
“It’s the last show in a 20 city tour,” I said as I dumped myself into a chair. It was so soft I could have gone right to sleep. “My voice is always strained at this point.”
“Still. It is my job that you are aware.”
“And I thank you for that,” I said with a smile. The flight attendant approached. “Just a water, Vivian. Thank you.”
“You should drink tea,” Michel said. “It sooths the throat.”
I hesitated. “Too much caffeine makes me jittery after a show.”
Michel made a disapproving noise. Eddie eyed me sideways, but said nothing.
The flight down to Saint Martin was uneventful and I slept most of the time. We took a simple cab from Princess Juliana International Airport, at which Michel turned up his nose. The airport was on the Dutch side of the island, something which never failed to annoy Michel upon arrival. He let out a noticeable sigh when we crossed over to the French side, taking deep breaths as if the air was suddenly cleaner.
It was 4:30am when the cab dropped me and Eddie off. We’d rented the same beach villa for two years before finally buying it, and now it was our home. Despite the early hour the lights were on in the kitchen. Xander often stayed up all night writing new music—both for himself and for me. Some of my biggest hits were songs Xander had written and tested in little Saint Martin cafes before passing them on to me.
But it was Bryce who was pouring himself coffee in the kitchen when we came in. “Don’t tell me you waited up!” I said as I hugged him.
He kissed me on the cheek. “I’d love to pretend that’s exactly what I did, but I’m afraid I’m not that sweet. Amanda has an ear infection.”
I grimaced. “Another one?”
“I told her no swimming for a week after the last one, but…” He spread his hands as if it couldn’t be helped. At just seven years old, our daughter was more at home in the water than on land. She competed in all the local swim meets but there wasn’t anyone her age that could compete. Her swim coach had started racing her against the eight and nine year olds just to give her a challenge.
“I’ll scold her when she wakes up,” I said. “What about Jessica?”
Bryce’s face darkened. “She woke up when Amanda did. Xander got up and helped distract her while I put drops in Amanda’s ears. I swear she cries just for attention.”
“Jessica’s three,” Eddie said. “Take it from me: the younger sibling has to fight for attention.”
Bryce was the best stay-at-home dad any of us could ask for. His job playing online poker meant he got to choose his own hours, and he had made so much in the last few years that he could take off long stretches at a time. And he loved taking care of the girls. He was a natural parent. The late night phone calls telling me about their day always helped me get through long tours away from home.
I kissed Bryce on the cheek. “I’m going to get some sleep before everyone wakes up.”
I went down the hall and peeked in on the girls. The light was on. Amanda was a sleeping lump in her bed, but Jessica’s bed was empty. I stuck my head in far enough to find her: she was curled up in Xander’s lap in the rocking chair. His head was tilted back and he snored like a seamstress tearing cloth. I don’t know how Jessica could sleep with such a loud noise right next to her ear.
I guess a girl just wanted her daddy sometimes.
I went down the hall to my room and didn’t bother changing as I crawled under the covers. When I got pregnant with Amanda none of us knew whose she was, nor did we care. But the baby the doctor handed to me in the hospital room had tufts of blonde hair and eyes like blue sapphires, so there was no question who the father was. When Jessica came along things were more ambiguous: she had darker hair and darker eyes, which could have been Xander or Eddie. But as she grew older it was clear she was Xander’s blood: the same ears, the look she got in her eyes when she was amused by something. Even weird mannerisms that shouldn’t have been genetic, like the way she tapped her fingers when she was bored, the exact same way Xander did.
Not to mention they bonded better than the rest of us. Whenever Jessica was feeling bad it was Xander’s arms she fled to.
Now, that wasn’t to say the girls were treated differently. Blood didn’t matter to the four of us: we all treated them like our children. Eddie was as much a father to either girl as Xander or Bryce. More so in some ways.
Still, it would be nice for him to have one of his own…
I woke up to the sound of screaming children. Amanda and Jessica came leaping onto my bed shouting, “Momma’s home! Momma’s home!”
I grunted and let them tackle me with hugs. “Papa Bryce said you were sick.”
“I was,” Amanda said.
“You don’t look sick to me.”
Amanda put on that patient expression that all seven year olds possessed. “That’s because I was sick. I’m better now.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Momma! Momma!” Jessica tugged at the blanket to get my attention. “Papa Xander taught me to play the Ukulele!”
“Wow,” I said with the exaggerated enthusiasm a mother had to give a three year old. “I bet you’re really good!”
Jessica frowned. “Not yet. You have to practice before you get good. Papa Xander told me so.”
“Papa Xander is very smart,” I said. “Practice is how he got to be such a good musician.”
“It’s how your momma got so good too.” Xander leaned against the doorway, wearing only a pair of shorts. His bare chest glistened with sweat from his morning run as he smiled at the sight of us.
“You know what else makes for a good musician? Breakfast.”
“Breakfast!” the girls cried as one.
Xander jerked his head. “Papa Bryce is whippin’ up some French toast as we speak.”
“French toast!” Jessica screeched. It was her favorite.
“But it’s on
ly for good little girls! I don’t know if we have any of those around here…”
The girls argued with Xander about whether or not they were good enough to get French toast as we all went into the kitchen. Bryce was dipping bread into an egg wash when Amanda sprinted at him, leaping up into his arms. Raw egg flew through the air as he caught her.
“I’m cooking, little one!” he said. “Now I’ve got egg all over you.”
“Eww!”
“Maybe I should throw you in the pan and make French toasted Amanda!”
“Noo!”
I giggled as Bryce chased his daughter around the kitchen island before returning to his preparation.
“You know who could use a good morning wakeup?” I said. “Papa Eddie.”
Amanda and Jessica’s eyes widened as if they’d forgotten. “Papa Eddie is home!”
They scrambled down the hall to his bedroom. All the guys had their own private rooms, though usually we took turns sleeping in my master bedroom. I heard a grunt and then a laugh as Eddie was tackled by the girls.
“It’s going to take more than the two of you to take me down!” he declared, throwing Amanda over his shoulder and climbing from the bed like Godzilla emerging from the Pacific. Jessica squealed and clutched onto his leg while he strode across the floor in his pajama bottoms.
“How about the three of us!” I fell to the ground and grabbed his other leg, squeezing tight with all my strength. Eddie made a show of groaning, falling to his knees, and then collapsing sideways. Amanda and Jessica jumped up and down in victory, then went running back into the kitchen to tell Papa Bryce and Papa Xander how easy Papa Eddie was to defeat.
I crawled on top of Eddie. “Missing being on the road yet?”
He smiled his white teeth at me. “Not even a little bit.”
Xander cooked an entire package of bacon in the oven while I cut up strawberries and oranges. A house of six went through a lot of food, most of which had to be imported to the island. Money wasn’t a problem, but I still marveled at how much we spent keeping everyone fed. Especially Amanda; the girl had a metabolism like a greyhound and routinely ate more than the adults. All that swimming, I guessed.
We gathered around the table and caught up on everything that we’d missed. Most of that was me telling the girls about my tour, even though we had daily phone calls while I was gone. They wanted to hear all about it again: which cities were the smelliest (New Orleans), which had the best food (also New Orleans), which had the prettiest skyline (Boston). Then it was my turn to ask the girls about school, which Xander taught them from home. Jessica was still young but she liked to sit in on Amanda’s lessons and take pretend notes, even though she couldn’t read or write yet. Amanda explained that she was learning her multiplication tables, which Xander frowned at and said she hadn’t been studying enough, and had gotten a C in her last pop quiz.
“It’s not fair!” Amanda said. “You didn’t warn me I should study!”
“Not fair,” Jessica echoed.
“That’s why it’s called a pop quiz,” Xander said. “Because it pops up without a warning! If you spent more time doing your homework instead of swimming…”
I smiled at the back and forth. I missed these kinds of interactions while I was gone. The mundane things that happened day to day. Ear infections and multiplication tables and French toast with extra powdered sugar.
This is what made everything worth it.
“When are you leaving again, momma?” Jessica asked.
Amanda moved her fruit around with a fork. “Probably soon,” she said.
“Actually,” I said with a smile, “I’m taking a year off before touring again.”
Amanda’s eyes lit up. “You’ll be here for my birthday?”
“I never miss your birthday!”
“I know, but I was afraid…”
Bryce looked surprised. “I didn’t realize you were taking a year off.”
“Not off, off,” I said. “I’ll spend that time working on new music.”
“Does Michel know about this?” Eddie asked. “Because on the flight home he was talking about scheduling a European tour in the fall.”
“He’ll know when I tell him,” I said simply. “But I’m definitely putting that off for a few days. I need to butter him up before I tell him. Order him some of those expensive cookies from France. With the icing in the middle.”
“Macaroons!” Amanda said. “J’adore les macaroons.”
My jaw just about hit the table. “When did you learn French?”
“Jay-door lees macaroni,” Jessica tried to repeat, giggling to herself.
“It was her idea,” Xander said proudly. “She wants to learn enough to greet Michel the next time he comes over.”
“If you do that his heart might just melt here on the kitchen floor!” I said. “But I love that you want to learn another language.”
We had originally moved down here to avoid any of Vladimir Yegorovich’s influence in case they figured out we stole the money, but after a few years it had become obvious that nobody cared. Our little heist was a small part of the larger FBI and Interpol raid, and had gone unnoticed. Moving back to the states when the girls were old enough to start high school, or college, was something we had discussed. Nothing was set in stone yet, but we were all so happy here on Saint Martin that I couldn’t imagine leaving any time soon. Everyone spoke English here because of all the tourists but learning French was not a bad idea.
“Back to your music plans,” Xander said. “What made you want to take a break from touring?”
I finished my last bite of fruit and dabbed my mouth with a napkin. I’d been planning on telling them tonight, when it was just the adults playing strip poker after the girls had gone to sleep, but I didn’t think I could hold it back any longer.
“I don’t necessarily want to take a break, but I know I need to,” I said. “I’m going to be a lot more exhausted in the next seven months…”
Eddie figured it out first. His eyes widened and darted down to my belly as if he could tell just from looking.
“A baby?” Bryce sputtered. “You’re pregnant?”
A smile split Xander’s face in half.
I let my hand rest on my belly and turned to the girls. “Do you girls want to have a little brother or little sister?”
“I already have a little sister,” Amanda said at the same time Jessica screamed, “YES!”
Eddie came flying around the table. He went to his knees in front of me and put his ear to my belly. “You’re pregnant! I did notice you stopped drinking in the last month of the tour…”
“And the orange juice instead of coffee,” Bryce added.
I smoothed Eddie’s messy hair down while he listened to my belly. I shared a look with my other men. Bryce looked like he was about to cry with happiness, while Xander just kept grinning like an idiot. They could do the math: I was two months pregnant and had been on tour with Eddie as my bodyguard for three months. Deep down, I think they knew how much Eddie wanted a child of his own. One more to complete our family.
“I don’t want a little brother or sister,” Jessica announced. “I want two. You should have twins.”
“Or triplets,” Amanda said.
“Oh! Triplets! Yeah!”
I almost choked on my own tongue. “I think three children is enough for one family. Even a family like ours.”
“Triplets would be fun,” Bryce said. “Then our family would have nine. Enough for our own baseball team.”
“Easy to say when you’re not the one who has to carry and deliver them,” I said. “What about quadruplets? Or quintuplets? Just tell me what you want and I’ll whip them up like an order of pancakes.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “You can do that?”
“Not quite,” I said. “But I’m very nearly positive I’m just having one baby.” I looked at the other guys. “And then that’s it.”
“You say that now…” Bryce said.
I stood
up to clean the dishes but Jessica and Amanda jumped up and hugged me first. “I’ll take a boy,” Amanda decided. “To change things up a little bit.”
“I’d love a little boy,” Eddie said.
The others came around the table and joined in our hug: our daughters down by our legs and my men squeezing my chest. A protective layer around me.
Our group had started off with a simple plan: rob a casino, then part ways. But our bond was too strong to part, and now we were so much more than that. We were a group. A family. One that was going to be even bigger seven months from now.
It was crazy to think about how far we had come. And we had so much farther to go. An entire future together, either here on Saint Martin or anywhere else. It didn’t matter so long as we were together.
“Who wants to go swimming?” Amanda asked.
“I thought you had an ear infection?”
“I told you. I’m better now.”
I shared a look with Xander, who shrugged.
“I’ll go swimming with you,” I said. “Bet I can race you to the shark buoys and back.”
Amanda and I ran off to change into our swimsuits, the new baby already forgotten.
Bonus Scene
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If you enjoyed All In, you’re going to love this other Reverse Harem Romance from Cassie Cole: Five Alarm Christmas. You can click here to buy it, or keep reading for a special sneak peek!
*
Don’t sleep with your teammates.
It was the one rule they emphasized to us ladies at the Fire Academy. The kind of rule that existed for a crucial reason.
And it was an easy rule to follow… Until I got transferred to Miami Fire Station 47.
Amy
I gripped the huge fire engine wheel and spun it around the corner, tugging on the cord to blare the horn as we surged through the intersection. We were near the end of a 24 hour shift but none of us were close to tired. The adrenaline surging through our veins saw to that.
