Wednesday January 1st

 

“What the f…?” Kian grunted. Because Irene, Jean and Bernard were still staying with them and they had a house full of children, the girls were in Sierra’s bedroom, the boys were in Mateo’s and Cate and Kian were sleeping on the air mattress in Lola’s bedroom. Cate loved her family but she couldn’t wait for them to all go home so that she could have her lovely, comfy bed back.

It was one am and they’d just been woken up by a loud bang.

Kian rolled over on to his back and slung an arm across his face. “I’ve got to be up again in a couple of hours.”

“Go back to sleep, I’ll go and find out what’s happened.”

She checked on the boys first but they were fast asleep. When she opened the door to Sierra’s bedroom, Sierra and Sofia were stood with their sleeping bags pulled up to their chins. “We’re playing sumo wrestlers,” Sierra giggled.

Cate raised her eyebrows, “at one am?”

Lola looked up from her sleeping bag on the floor, “I tried telling them.”

“I can’t sleep,” Sierra said.

“I can’t sleep either,” Sofia looked up at Cate. “I miss my mommy.”

“OK.” It was going to be a very long night. “Why don’t we go downstairs, I’ll make you some warm milk and honey and then you can watch a movie until you fall asleep?”

At least if the two troublemakers were safely ensconced downstairs in the lounge, there was less chance of them waking up the rest of the house.

 

“Wow,” Remy said when Cate opened the door the following morning. “You look even worse than Liv did this morning.”

Cate shared a look with Liv which said that Remy very definitely needed a high-five in the face with a chair. She’d finally got to sleep at about three am with Sierra and Sofia sprawled all over her. Kian had woken her up at five am to give her a kiss goodbye before he’d left for the airport.

“Where are you going?” Nate asked Cate several hours later as she walked zombie-like along the upstairs hallway. All of the children that weren’t hers had been collected by their parents, Jean and Bernard had gone out for the day and she thought that Irene had said that she was catching a flight to Buenos Aires but in her sleep-deprived state she wasn’t one hundred percent certain. “I need a bed. Although, to be honest, it doesn’t even have to be a bed, just a lovely flat surface will do. This carpet looks so soft,” Cate rambled.

Nate stopped her before she could curl up on the floor. “Come on,” he guided her into the spare bedroom where Irene, seriously the world’s best mum, had changed the sheets on the bed before she’d left for the airport. Cate flung herself face first on the mattress, filling her lungs with the scent of freshly-washed cotton.

“I think this might just be heaven right here, Nate,” Cate mumbled before she fell asleep.

 

At least when she woke up a couple of hours later, she felt a little more human. When she walked into the kitchen, Layla was there with Nate.

“Oh my goodness, I hate you,” Layla exclaimed, giving Cate a big hug. “You are seriously the only person I know who loses weight over the holidays. I swear to God I must have put on at least half a stone.”

Cate rolled her eyes, “oh please, you look just as gorgeous as ever. Did you have fun back home in Sacramento?”

“Mm,” Layla nibbled on her bottom lip, “it was great to catch up with everybody again. I just wish Nate could have been there.”

Cate looked over at Nate, “I thought you said you were going back home for Christmas.”

“The knucklehead was invited but he decided to stay here in Seattle instead.”

Nate rolled his eyes, “it would have been the most awkward Christmas ever and you know it, Lay.”

“You don’t know that, Nathaniel,” Layla frowned. She was obviously pissed-off because nobody but their mom ever called Nate by his full name. “Dad was trying to make an effort and you totally threw it back in his face.”

At least Layla and her dad were on good terms again. Their dad, Sarge, had overheard Nate talking to Eric on the phone after he’d competed in a kickboxing competition in San Diego. He’d confronted his son and when he’d found out that Eric was married with a family, he’d given Nate an ultimatum; either cut off all contact with Eric or he had to move out of the house. Nate had left Sacramento the next day and moved up to Seattle. Because she worked for Eric and his wife, Nate and his parents had allowed Layla to believe that Sarge had kicked Nate out of the house because he’d found out that he was gay. It was only after Eric and Allison had separated over the summer that Nate had finally admitted the truth to Layla.

Layla turned to Cate, “how was Christmas in the Warner household?”

“It was good but exhausting, there’s just so many of us now.”

Layla laughed, “Nate told me about your walking dead moment earlier.”

Cate covered her face with her hands, “definitely not my finest moment. I love my children fiercely but is it really awful that I can’t wait until they go back to school?”

“Definitely not,” Layla reached into her handbag. “I brought back some of your favourite peppermint bark. It can either be a little late Christmas present for this year or a really early one for next year.”

“I think I love you,” Cate cradled the bag to her chest, “I need to think of a really good hiding place so the children don’t find it.”

“Where’s Kian?” Layla asked.

Cate’s smile quickly turned upside down. “Fresno. Don’t ask.”

Layla looked at her watch, “I’d better be getting back. I just wanted to stop by and give you the peppermint bark and oops, I almost forgot, Eric’s having a post-Christmas get-together on Friday night. Now that he’s a somewhat single guy, his family sent him back with so many leftovers, there’s no way the three of us could possibly eat them all and they’re so yummy he decided to share the love.”

“That sounds good,” Cate smiled, “will you tell him thank you and we’ll definitely be there.”

“Will do,” Layla slung her handbag over her shoulder. “Bye Cate.” She scowled again at her brother, “you!”

Cate looked at Nate, “would it really have been so bad to go back to Sacramento for Christmas?”

“My dad never spanked us, not once,” Nate said. “He didn’t need to. He’s got this look he gives you instead, that tells you just how disappointed he is.”

He put his head in his hands, “you can’t even imagine how awful it would have been.”

Cate laughed, “oh yeah? When Kian and I told our families that we’d got married in Vegas and were having a baby, my mum gave the exact same look. That was right before Ben slugged Kian and then shortly after that, Kian’s sister suggested that he might want to get a paternity test done on our unborn baby because I was such a humongous slut. You really think that it would have been more awful than that?”

Nate laughed, “OK, maybe not quite.”