“Would you stop doing that?” I ask, giggling as Troy tries to poke at my belly for the twelfth time today.

He’s not hurting me, he’s just… entirely fascinated by the process of a pregnancy, I think. Or at least one that he can claim to have as much part of as anyone else in the household.

“We’ve had this talk,” Troy starts grimly, before grabbing me and putting both hands on my belly in the middle of the kitchen. “My kitchen, my rules!”

He kisses my neck and I laugh, relaxing against him just as the front door bangs shut. We share a look and Troy reluctantly lets go of me, demanding a quick peck on the lips before I can get out of the kitchen.

“Don’t be a stranger,” he says, swinging a sauce ladle at me. “These carrots won’t chop themselves, you know.”

Over the last few months since we all moved into the twins’ Hampton house, I’ve had a crash course in cooking, and I’m oddly transfixed by it. Not only is Troy an awesome cook, but he’s also a great teacher, and I think he genuinely enjoys being out of the spotlight for a while. We’ve sort of been hiding out, though if you believed the press, we’ve fortified ourselves in an unknown bunker off the coast of Maine, not shacked up in the Hamptons.

Whatever, I don’t care about what the media thinks.

Which is not something I would have ever thought I’d say when all of this began, I remind myself with a smile, walking over to the front of the house to see who came home.

I find both Callum and Austin discussing something casually as they trudge in.

“Finally, all my boys are home,” I say cheerfully as they come up to me and kiss me on either cheek at the same time.

I love it when they do that.

“We missed you too,” Callum murmurs as he kneels down and kisses my belly as well.

I’m only four months along but by the way Austin, Callum and Troy have been treating me, I may as well be seconds from giving birth. I sort of don’t mind. Their excitement is adorable, and makes me feel like I’m in good company. It’s not every day a woman carries triplets… by three brothers. Well, stepbrothers, partially. But still.

“How did it go?” I ask, as Austin takes my hand and leads us back towards the kitchen.

We converge around the island and as we take seats watching Troy cook, I’m overcome with a feeling of… well, bliss. Everything feels right.

It’s something that I’ve been experiencing time and time again since making the leap and deciding to stay with Austin, Callum and Troy. Thought they’ve done their best to insulate me from the world, and I haven’t really been looking for contact with it outside of what’s necessary, I think I’ve come to a place now where I’m at peace with it.

I know not everyone agrees with our love, nor will understand it, and that’s fine. I know that the choices I made for my career were difficult to overcome, but it was the only right thing to do in order to build a future with these men. And I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished.

I’ve told them all about my past, what happened with Jacob… How he kicked me out of my home, how he cheated on me and how he destroyed my confidence. For every wrong that Jacob ever did to me, or that I allowed him to do to me, the Stephensons have done at least three rights. I think that more than makes up for it, and I hope I’ve managed to do the same for them.

“Everything’s fine,” Austin says, stretching his arms above his head. “The office is fine, everything’s working well.”

“From the tone of his voice, you can tell how thrilled he is by that,” Callum adds dryly.

“Aw, is the world not falling apart when you’re only spending six hours a day at the office instead of fifteen?” Troy mocks from across the kitchen, ducking as Austin sends a roll flying his way.

Troy catches it and takes a bite, making a muffled groaning sound as he chews.

“Divine. I wonder who baked these!?”

It was him, of course.

“Wise-ass,” Austin snorts. “Or should I put that in the plural?”

“You know you love us,” Callum says with a grin, taking my hand in his.

I giggle. This is what we go through on a daily basis. Friendly bickering and giving each other a hard time… and then being the closest family that I ever could have imagined. It’s magic, and I don’t want it to ever stop.

“Oh, I ran into Christine,” Callum says, making me snap into the moment.

“You saw her and you didn’t tell me?!” I gasp.

“Well, is that really that shocking that I saw her, considering that she works for us?”

I guess he’s right about that.

Christine quit the same day that the brothers came to find me at the airport. A couple of weeks later, she’d turned into the unofficial media rep for the Stephenson family, and she’s sort of been running with it ever since. We have her over for dinner at least once a week, and Troy makes a big show and tells about making her guess which of the dishes he cooked, and which were my contraptions.

She’s annoyingly good at guessing which is which.

“Fine,” I say, admitting defeat.

“She’s coming over in like an hour,” Callum says, checking his watch. “For late Thanksgiving.”

We had a Thanksgiving meal, the four of us (or should I say the seven of us?) but Christine was off with her family then.

“I can’t make a turkey in an hour,” Troy says, scowling at Callum.

“Yeah, well, I bet we can order sandwiches in an hour.”

He looks at me and my breath hitches. I know what it means when he looks at me like that.

It means that an hour might not be enough.

Like they’re all on the same wavelength or something, I feel strong arms scooping me up from behind, with Austin grabbing me in his lap. Troy’s already turning down the heat on the stove and Callum’s pushing the kitchen door open as I sigh and shake my head with the widest smile on my lips.

* * *