“MOOOOM!”

A breath.

“MOOOOOM!”

I stepped out of my office at the end of the hall. “What? I’m here.”

I could hear him just inside the doorway. “Moooom!”

“Max!” I picked up my pace. This hallway was freaking long. “What’s wrong?”

He waddled two steps forward, just until he could turn to see me.

I stopped. My hand rose to my face, hiding my smile. I was already biting down on my lip.

My little boy.

He looked… Well, he looked like he was about to wade into zombie territory. He’d attached pillows to the top and bottom of his arms with duct tape—one pillow covered his wrist to his shoulder. He had the same on his legs, front and back. The pillows came to just past his knees, so he’d used some of the decorative pillows from the couch to cover the rest. They half covered his feet too. Two more decorative pillows covered his chest and back, and a round throw pillow covered his butt.

He also wore a full-face motorcycle helmet, with some of his blond curls sticking out.

I couldn’t.

I lost it.

“What are you doing?” I stopped laughing enough to ask.

“HUH?” he yelled.

“Max. Lift up the helmet.”

He tried. He really did. He reached up, but the pillows were in the way. Snorting, I crossed to help.

“No, no!” He waved his arms around, so I just lifted the shield over his eyes.

There, staring back at me, was my six-year-old Max Monroe. The same dark eyes as his father, but instead of Channing’s cockiness, Max’s eyes held pure innocence.

“Mom, this is very important.”

His little hands rested on my arms, as much as the pillows let them. They kept slipping off.

“Yes.” I wiped the smile from my face. He was being serious. I had to be serious too. He was sensitive sometimes.

I knelt down and rested my forehead to his. I whispered, “What’s going on?”

He whispered back, leaning into me, “I need you to check my junk area.”

Nope. Not a smattering of laughter could slip. He was dead serious.

“Why?”

“Because Maddy’s coming over to throw a baseball at me, and I can’t get hurt there. Uncle Logan always says junk shots are not cool. I can’t let her hurt me there. I’ll never be able to have children.”

He was six. Going on twenty.

I glanced down. There was no pillow in that crucial area, and he was right. Maddy Kade would throw at the one spot not covered. She had a wicked streak in her. She took after her Uncle Logan.

“What should we do about it?” I asked.

“Hold on.” He patted my arms and waddled into the living room, side to side like an adorable, helmet-wearing penguin. He swayed all the way to the couch and picked up the last round throw pillow we had, the one with the list of UFOs on the front.

It’d been a gift from his Uncle Nate. Because there was more than one type of UFO out there. Max had seen four of them himself. He swore it.

The pillow was his prized pillow—he just loaned it to the couch.

He held it up now, as well as he could. He got it up to his chest and yelled through the helmet, “THIS ONE, MOM!”

A mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do.

Maddy Kade—no matter how adorable with her jet-black hair, green eyes, and facial features already promising to be as striking as her mother’s—couldn’t be allowed to harm my little boy. Maddy was a year older, but it didn’t matter. Since they’d been crawling then running, the two of them had been inseparable. There were other cousins, but those two had a special bond.

The duct tape beckoned me from the shelf in the front entryway, and I sighed, reaching for it.

“Okay, little buckaroo.” I held it up. “I’m ready. Let’s do this.”

He waddled back to me, smiling wide through his helmet the whole way.

Children’s screams and squeals drifted in from outside, and Channing paused at the window overlooking the side yard. He had lifted a beer to his mouth, but held it there, frowning. He rotated swiftly to me and narrowed his eyes.

“Why is Maddy Kade whipping a baseball at my son as if she wants to kill him?”

“Because apparently, Maddy Kade is proving she can throw as good as any boy. Her words, not mine.”

Channing’s eyes widened, even more alarmed. “She does have an arm as good as a boy’s, better than most. Why is my son allowing himself to be a moving target—and better question, why are you letting that happen?”

Almost the same look as I’d seen before.

He was just as serious as his son, with the same dark eyes looking back at me.

I had a sinking feeling Max was going to take after Channing, because his reason had been the same one Channing once gave me when we were kids.

“When I asked him, he puffed up his chest and said, ‘Mom, she’s not as tough as me, but I have to let her think she is.’ Then he winked at me and said, ‘Plus, I’m way faster than her. It wouldn’t be fair if I threw the balls at her, now would it?’ And then he went outside to wait for Maddy.”

Channing lowered his beer now. “What. The. Fuck?”

“Relax.” I gave in, relieving his concern. “I switched out all the balls. She’s not throwing a baseball at him. She’s throwing a foam Wiffle ball.”

His eyes rounded and he whipped back to the window. “Damn. She can throw, if that’s what those are.”

He kept watching, just like I had at first. I’d waited long enough to see the first Wiffle ball hit Max’s pillow with barely a smack. Max wasn’t even fazed. With his helmet in place and every inch of him covered in pillows, he would be just fine.

And anyway, it was as he’d said. He was fast enough to whip back and forth, dodging the majority of her throws.

“They’ve been sticking to the south yard?”

I went over and he moved, accommodating me at the window. He set his beer aside and molded to my back. His hands went to my hips, his chin went to my shoulder, and right on time, I felt him hardening as his thumbs snuck under my shirt.

A nice, warm tingle spread through me.

My blood buzzed as if I’d been the one with the beer.

“Yeah,” I murmured. “I told them they had to stay in behind the play gate.”

Three dogs ran around them, along with our pygmy goat, which Max had become obsessed with at a fair a little while back. It was a fawn-colored goat that seemed convinced it was part German Shepherd and part English Bulldog—until she tried ramming her head into someone. She was all goat then.

But for now, Channing and I had the house to ourselves. It was blessedly silent.

He nuzzled under my chin, and his hand slipped up over my stomach, rubbing there. “Did you tell Sam our news?”

I leaned more heavily against him, an ache beginning to throb between my legs. I wanted his hand to move south. I panted slightly. “No. Malinda dropped Maddy off today. Sam’s in Baltimore with that new trainer.”

During Mason’s off-season, he and Samantha kept a second home in Fallen Crest, though Sam was already training hard for her next Olympics. I didn’t keep up with her training schedule, but we all helped take care of the kids as much as possible. If they asked, we helped. It was the same on their side too.

“Who’s picking Maddy up?”

“We have her for the night,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.

Shit. That flame was live and sparking. Reaching for the walkie on the counter, I turned it on and moved into Channing’s arms. The sounds we could hear outside became crystal clear as those voices now sounded as if they were in the same room. We could observe without watching now, and I reached up to twine my arms around his neck.

Channing groaned, picking me up.

My legs went around his waist as he sat me on the counter, his hands going to my ass and pulling me tight against him.

“God, I love you.” He moaned, holding still. His lips hovered over my neck. He slid his hand up to cover my breast. “We did good, didn’t we?”

I knew what he meant, and yes, we did.

Manny’s had been franchised to three other locations. Channing’s Tuesday Tits had a sister Monday Mooners closer to the city. He wasn’t involved with crew business, but his crew brothers were still in our lives every day. They had dinner over here three to four times a week.

But this night was one just for us since we were babysitting Maddy.

The warehouse Channing bought had been renovated recently for our new house. We had a pool in the south end and a walk-around porch that covered every side of the house except for the garage.

Brad had another child. Brandon had two of his own—a set of twins that had come from one of his one-night stands, but it turned out that he and the mother got along so well they’d married last summer.

My dad was loving all his grandpa status. He even took another RV caravan back for a few months of the year.

Suki was still doing her gourmet dinner events—almost every night because we gutted the old house and turned it into Suki’s kitchen place.

I didn’t know the latest on Ava, but I knew she and Roy had dated for a few years while she went to college. She used to check in with us when she was in town, but the last I heard, she was headed to graduate school somewhere. Her parents were beyond proud of her, and that said it all.

Congo had married Becca.

I put up with her presence for a long time. But acceptance had reluctantly and gradually come until now she was one of my most trusted friends.

Moose had ended up marrying a nurse from Fallen Crest. I asked once how they met, and Moose grumbled something about a Peter. I stopped asking after that.

Lincoln had a bedmate; that’s all we knew about her.

Chad married someone who came from Ginger Gypsy’s group of friends, and therefore, Channing received reports from a lot more visions than he wanted, but that was how they worked—or at least, that’s how Chad’s wife worked.

But on the whole, yes, we had done quite well.

I was panting twenty minutes later, stretched out on the counter with my pants unbuckled and three of Channing’s fingers inside of me. I was riding his hand when I faintly remembered the time.

A car door banged shut.

A second one.

I froze. “Oh shit!”

Channing grunted, his eyes glazed over with lust. “Huh?”

“OH SHIT!”

And then we heard a piercing scream from my little girl, “MOMMA!”

That’d be our little four-year-old. Natessia was my exact replica. The door opened, and we heard Bren call, “Take your goddamn fingers out of your wife. You have three dogs running around tearing up your pillows. You have another kid covered in duct tape, which Maddy is trying to tear off, and your stupid goat just head-butted my ass.”

Channing gazed down at me, his eyes so loving, and we took another second—just one second. The world stripped away for us, and he mouthed “I love you” before twitching his fingers in a sudden movement, which pushed me over the edge.

I was still trembling as he washed his hands and went to handle everything outside.

Yes. We had done quite well.

And we had a third on the way.

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