“Hey, are you paying attention?” Lex asked.

I grumbled. “No, and don’t think you’ll get Slade on board with this harebrained idea, either.”

“Rude,” he said, sidestepping around me as if I took up all the space in the room.

I snorted. “And that’s not rude? I’ll have you know your niece or nephew would be upset to think you’re subliminally calling them fat every time you do that.”

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?” Slade asked, coming up behind me and putting his hands on either side of my very pregnant belly before giving me a brief kiss.

Lex ignored his question with a wave of his hand and said, “Did you tell her it was your idea?”

Slade’s face disappeared into the crook of my neck with a chuckle.

“Please tell me he’s joking,” I said, tipping my head back to rest on Slade’s shoulder.

Slade straightened. “I worked hard on coming up with that idea. You said you didn’t want to do traditional, so I thought outside the box.”

“But a fish cake? Of all the cool ideas out there, that's what you came up with?” I huffed, keeping my face from telling on me. I had my own little secret plan in mind, but the boys… they wouldn’t know until the gender reveal.

“But it’s cake. You like cake,” Lex said, almost pleading.

“A fish. It’s really that important to you guys?” I asked, screwing up my face to keep from laughing.

It didn’t matter to me what they picked, but giving them a hard time about it was something I couldn’t help myself over. The big reveal was actually Slade’s idea. I would have been happy with having a simple baby shower, but not him. He wanted to go all out.

“Well, I mean, I guess we can keep thinking about it, but we really don’t have a lot of time. It’s only a couple of weeks away, so…” Slade said, thinking I somehow wouldn’t know he was trying to play me.

I tossed my hands in the air. “Fine.”

“Fine? We can do the fish cake?” Slade asked, sounding giddy.

I moved away from him and shook my head, putting my hands over my face as if I were giving in to him. In reality, I was schooling my own expression.

I spoke through my fingers, “Yes, fine.”

They gave each other a high five and then Slade pulled me into his arms, giving me a burning kiss before letting me go. He and Lex walked away, making all sorts of plans, while I stood rooted to the spot and wondered what in the world had turned them into a pair of party-planning princesses.

Maybe it was for the best. Getting in touch with their feminine sides couldn’t hurt. The idea made me chuckle. Those boys had no idea what was coming, but I did.

* * *

Slade

I wasn’t sure I ever could have been more shocked than I was the moment Gracen beamed at me over not one, but two fish cakes that were carried out and set in front of us.

Surrounded by everyone we loved, and a whole smattering of our neighbors, Gracen went one step further and handed me one knife while she wielded the other, asking, “Ready?”

“I don’t know what the heck is going on here, but you’re killing me with all this suspense. Cut the err… cakes,” Lex said. He paced the floor and then stopped, turned with his mouth hanging open for a second before it snapped closed.

My eyes popped wide. “Two cakes. Two babies?”

She nodded, a round of tears flooding her eyes as a double burst of over-acting hormones rose up and over like a tidal wave. “Surprise! Now how about we find out what these twins will be?”

Gracen’s knife cut into the cake in front of her as I slid my knife into the other. I let go of the knife and pulled her into my arms, burying my face in her hair so I could whisper, “Twins? How could one man get so lucky? You knew all this time and didn’t say anything? Tell me… I don’t want to find out unless it’s from you.”

I didn’t want the cake telling me daughters, sons, or both. I wanted my wife, the co-creator of our family, to tell me. I needed to hear her say it, needed her to be the one to breathe life into my fairy tale so that years down the road, when I closed my eyes and thought back on the moment, it was Gracen who shared our secret with me.

“Girls,” she said, whispering back to me. “You are going to be overrun by a whole bunch of girls.”

I whooped with joy. “I’m having girls!”

It was like someone turned the volume up. There were shouts of congratulations, a lot of back-pounding, and exuberant handshakes. People were laughing and jesting, filling the air with such happiness it filled my soul.

Gracen glowed beside me. Not even our wedding day could compare to that moment. And as if I’d said her name, she looked up at me and said, “Cheese and crackers, Slade.”

I shook my head. “More than cheese and crackers, Gray.”