Birthday Girl

Nine Years Later

A crack of thunder pierces the silence, and I blink my eyes awake as lightning flashes through the room. I sigh, sticking my thumb and a finger in my eyes, rubbing.

More rain, dammit.

Nope. It’s not my job to worry about it for the next two weeks, so I’m not going to. Dutch can handle it. (I have to believe that.)

Jordan and I are out of here in the morning, and he’s in charge while I’m gone. I promised her she and the boys would have my complete attention while we’re away as long as she leaves her laptop home and doesn’t try to sneak in any work, either. The problem with her is that her work is also her hobby, so I kind of felt bad asking her to stay away from something she loves for that long.

But she’s right. The kids need to see us without our eyes buried in some screen.

I turn my head, looking down at her next to me. She’s curled up on her side, her nose and lips buried in my arm with one hand draped over my chest and shoulder. Her shoulder-length hair is swept over the top of the pillow, and I reach down and pull the sheet back up over her bare legs and white panties. She wears the yellow T-shirt she got on our honeymoon in Mexico, and I still can’t tell she’s four months along with our second kid. Our first, Jake, is asleep in his room down the hall. Jake Ryan Lawson. She named him after some guy in a teen movie from the 80s, but I don’t tell people that. She can tell them, but I’m certainly not going to.

I rest my hand on her thigh and stare up at the ceiling.

I’m forty-eight years old. What business do I have with a six-year-old son and another kid on the way?

But fuck, I’m happy.

The pitter-patter of the rain hits the window panes, and I feel Jordan breathing so peacefully next to me. I close my eyes. Mine. My house, my wife, my family…mine. Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed by how lucky I am that I can’t wrap my head around this all being real. I still can’t stop reaching for her when she’s close or stop being anxious to crawl into bed at night, knowing we’re finally alone.

I suddenly remember the wash drying out on the line in the backyard and pop up and out of bed. “Shit,” I mumble, pulling on some lounge pants.

Leaving the room, I walk down the hall, stopping at Jake’s door and quietly cracking it open. He sleeps in his bed, while Cole’s son, Parker, is passed out next to him. Both of them looking like a spider web of arms and legs, and I laugh under my breath. We’ve explained to them that Jake is Cole’s brother which makes him Parker’s uncle, but it’s hard for them make sense out of something like that when they’re the same age.

My chest tightens every time I see them like this, though. My son and my grandson are more like brothers, and I really don’t give a shit if it seems weird to others, because we’re a lucky family.

Cole met his wife, Kotori, when he was stationed in Okinawa, and both of them are currently attending some convention her company sent her to in Las Vegas. We invited Parker to join us for a couple weeks, so they could go on their own.

Closing the door, I jog down the stairs, passing all our family pictures on the walls, most of which I’m in, and walk through the kitchen to the laundry room. I grab a wicker basket off the dryer and make my way into the backyard. The rain is small, but it hits my back like little darts, sharp and fast. I run over to the clothesline and start yanking beach towels and any other last-minute clothes Jordan wanted washed in order to throw in the suitcases. We probably have more than enough packed for the road trip north, but my luck, we’ll get to the lake house, and she’ll be pissed off for two weeks because she doesn’t have her other-other-pink shirt that goes better with the sneakers she got that time on that one trip.

I clear the line, stuffing all the pins into the bag, and carry the basket back inside. Opening the dryer, I stick everything in and turn on the machine, making sure it’s ready for when we wake up in the morning.

Heading back upstairs, I close the door to our bedroom and climb back into bed, Jordan immediately finding me in her sleep and snuggling up. I wrap my arm around her.

“Everything okay?” she asks softly.

“Yeah.” I kiss her forehead, pulling the covers up over us. “Go back to sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“You know I can’t sleep during thunderstorms.”

My chest shakes with a laugh, because she’s such a liar. This issue of sleeping during storms has never been an issue in our bed. She sleeps like the dead next to me, and I take a lot of pride in that fact.

I suddenly want to see her face, so I reach over with my free hand and take the matches, striking one and lighting the candle on the bedside table. Blowing out the match, the room glows with a soft light, and I look down at her face, still in shadow but a little more visible now.

Her long lashes and beautiful skin. Her pink lips that I’ve kissed thousands of times for thousands of hours. Her body that I’ve loved for ten years and in a million different ways. You think I’d be used to her by now, but my dick starts to stiffen at just the thought of her on top of me again.

Her head pops up and she looks around, startled. “Oh, the clothes,” she bursts out.

“I got them,” I tell her, patting her leg to calm her down. “Don’t worry.”

She relaxes, nodding and yawning at the same time.

“Kids okay?” she asks, putting her head back down on my chest.

“Yep. Sleeping like logs.”

I rub her back, trying to soothe her back to sleep and feel her leg drape over mine. I clench my teeth, the warmth between her thighs seeping through to my own now. My groin pulses.

“Are you nervous?” I whisper.

“A little.”

She’s giving a presentation at the opening of the botanical gardens she designed for the new museum in Rockford tomorrow. After college, she worked for a firm for several years but decided to start her own last year. The museum was her first, big solo project, and not only are the clients extremely pleased with her work, but word of it has brought in several new projects already. She’s an artist.

But one who hates public speaking, so I’m thinking it’ll be painful but short tomorrow.

“Just remember.” I kiss her hair. “We get to climb in the car and hit the road afterward.”

Her arms tighten around me. “Can’t wait.”

After the presentation, we’re driving up to Minnesota where we rented a lake house for two weeks. Her sister Cam and the latest in a string of wealthy boyfriends also rented a house nearby, so they’re bringing her son with them, and we’ll have company when we feel like it.

And someone to take the kids off our hands for a night when we don’t.

Her fingers trail down my chest, and she drags her nails lightly down my stomach. My body starts to come alive under my skin, and I don’t think I can sleep until I get it out of my system.

“So, you awake now?” I tease.

She nods. “You?”

“It’s hard to sleep when you do that.”

She laughs and raises herself up, sliding a leg over my body and straddling me. “Oh, goodie.”

She lifts her shirt over her head, and I immediately touch her stomach, feeling the hard little mound where my son or daughter sits.

She smirks down at me, cocks her head playfully, and I still see that girl crawling on the floor of the movie theater every time I look at her. She had me even then.

“I love you,” I tell her.

Coming down, she hovers over me, looking into my eyes as my hand goes to her breast.

“Oh, wait.” She pops up and leans over to blow out the candle.

“No, leave it on,” I groan, rolling my hips up into her. “I want to see you.”

She looks down at me. “Did you lock the door?”

I make a face. “Shit.”

Why do I always forget that? I’ve only had kids for over half my life.

“Can’t have them getting an eyeful, can we?” she scolds but smiles at me.

Leaning back over, she closes her eyes, pauses a moment, thinking, and then opens them again, softly blowing out the candle. The room goes dark except for the moonlight making the rain shimmer on our bedroom wall, and I see her outline come back down on top of me.

I squeeze her hips, feeling her grind on me. “You ever going to tell me what you wish for?” I ask.

She kisses me, whispering against my lips, “It’s bad luck to tell.”

She moves down my neck, and I arch my head back and close my eyes, letting her in.

“But I will say,” she goes on, nibbling my jaw, “I always wish for the same thing, and every day it comes true.”