Abraham
Hey, little sister,” I answered my phone as I walked out of the grocery store with a pack of diapers. Apparently Ani had forgotten to pick any up earlier in the day, and Arielle was down to her last one.
I usually didn’t step foot in the grocery store—Ani preferred to do all of the shopping since I’d moved in almost a month before—but I didn’t mind doing it. It seemed like Ani worked harder once she was staying home with Arielle than she ever had managing the office.
It had only taken a week for me and Trev to hire a new office manager. It was the same guy who’d filled in for Ani when Arielle was born. Even though Ani bitched about the guy doing something to her files while she’d been on maternity leave, she didn’t argue when we told her he had things handled. She was so fucking ready to spend her days taking care of Arie and fixing up the house. It was a work in progress, and I hated when I’d come home to find her standing in the driveway sanding kitchen cupboards while Arie sat bundled up in her bouncy seat on the porch, but I didn’t complain because she loved it and she was really good at it.
“Did you know Trevor was coming down here?” my sister asked accusingly, stealing my attention from the memory of Ani bent over those cupboards.
“Yeah,” I replied, throwing the diapers into the passenger seat of the truck. “He was going to go down a couple weeks ago, but he ended up having to push the trip back. Why?”
“Is he coming to see that woman? Henry’s chick?”
“That’s the plan, yeah.”
“Ugh!” Katie growled. “He refuses to give me her name!”
“That’s because he doesn’t want your crazy ass stalking her.”
“I wouldn’t stalk her!”
“Yeah, you would.”
“Only on Facebook!”
“I rest my case, Your Honor.”
“You guys suck,” Kate huffed, and I imagined the pout she’d perfected when she was little.
“How are you guys doing?” I asked, changing the subject. “Everything good?”
“Yeah, this deployment feels longer than the other one, but we’re hanging in there.”
“Thanks for the shit you sent up for Arielle,” I said, pulling into the driveway of our house. “We won’t have to buy clothes for the rest of the year.”
“No prob. Shit! Gunner, get off the counter!” she yelled in my ear, making me grimace. “I gotta go, Bram. Have Ani call me.”
“Will do.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hung up, grabbed the diapers, and hopped out of the truck. The light from the living room lit up the front yard through the windows, and I smiled as I thought about Ani painting the bottom half of the trim on the inside when she should’ve been in bed. They’d looked like complete shit then, but they turned out all right when she’d finished them.
“You’ll probably be taller than me,” I heard Ani say as I quietly came in the front door. Her voice was coming from the kitchen, and I could tell by the tone that she was talking to Arielle.
“Your birth mom is taller than me, and so is your paternal grandmother.”
I stopped in the doorway as I took in the sight that greeted me.
Arielle was in her swing in the corner of the dining room while Ani talked to her over the little island that separated the kitchen space from the dining space. Ani looked like she was trying to make some sort of dough—probably biscuits that would turn out hard as a rock—and her hands and face were dusted with flour. So was the shoulder of her T-shirt, which didn’t surprise me because my woman was constantly on the move, and a little flour on her hands would never stop her from doing fifteen things at once.
“Your daddy is tall, so it’s not like you’ll tower over us like a giant or anything,” Ani said seriously while Arielle looked toward her like she was listening intently while sucking on her hands. “You’re going to be gorgeous, I can already tell. You’re happy and sweet, and those are the prettiest types of girls.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I murmured, startling Ani. “I like the sarcastic and rude girls.”
“You would,” Ani snorted, smiling as she rounded the counter and moved toward me.
“Hey, baby,” I murmured into her mouth as she went up on her toes to kiss me.
“Hey, did you get diapers?”
“Of course.”
“Father of the Year,” Ani teased, sliding her hands into my hair and getting flour everywhere.
“Is there a reason you’re discussing birth parents with our three-month-old?” I asked, pulling back a little to look at her face.
“Bethy called today,” she said quietly, making my heart thump hard in my chest. The reaction was instinctual, even though Ani was Arielle’s legal parent forever and ever, amen. “She asked me to send her a picture of Arie.”
“Did you?”
“I waited for you,” she said, one side of her mouth tipping up.
“Thank you,” I breathed, my shoulders slumping. “I don’t care—send her as many as you want—but thank you for asking me.”
“Yep,” Ani chirped.
“I wish Shane would hurry the hell up and get home so we could get married,” I groaned, lifting Ani onto the counter so I could step in between her thighs.
“Only a few more months,” Ani laughed, kissing my cheek.
“You feel like kissing someplace else?” I asked as her hand slid down the front of my jeans.
Ani’s eyebrows rose, but just as she opened her mouth to agree, Arielle squawked loudly from her swing. After grudgingly helping Ani off the counter, I turned toward our daughter, whose face was scrunched up in a supremely pissed expression.
As I lifted Arielle into my arms, I called over my shoulder, “We’re taking a honeymoon, right?”