Chapter Eighteen
Brooks stood outside his apartment door staring at the knob.
Harrison leaned around his shoulder. “You’ve got to go in sometime, mate.”
“I know.”
Cole finally blew out a long breath. “Everybody move.”
Brooks, Harrison, and Chris all stood out of the way to let the veteran daddy through.
“Have you ever been to a baby shower before?” Harrison asked Brooks.
“Seriously? What the hell is a baby shower anyway?”
“I don’t think I want to know,” Harrison said. “Is Marcus going to be here?”
“No, he had a big conference call or some other excuse. I didn’t pay attention. Why?” Brooks asked.
Harrison shrugged. “This might have been one instance where having him around would have been handy, especially if it meant you didn’t have to go.”
The three men stood staring through the open doorway into an apartment that had been completely covered in pink.
Brooks looked at Harrison. “Hold me. I’m frightened.”
Harrison snorted and pushed him inside. He and Chris followed behind Brooks, using him like a shield.
“The men are here,” Izzy, Kiersten’s old roommate and fellow lotto winner, said.
Brooks loosened up a little bit to see Izzy and their other friend Cass. He’d known them back when they used to work in the assistant pool at the office. Before they won the lotto with Kiersten. Since then they’d been traveling the world and having a great time.
Chris wandered over to Cass and gave her a quick kiss. Brooks and Harrison stared, mouths open.
“She’s the one you’ve been seeing?” Brooks asked. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because I didn’t feel like playing twenty questions with my personal life,” he said. Cass elbowed him in the gut.
“I asked him not to say anything just yet. It’s pretty new. I wanted to keep it between us for a while. But since we’re all here at the shower…”
“Speaking of which,” Harrison said, “I have a few questions. Do we shower at this shower? Or shower a baby? And if not, why the hell is it called a shower?” He glanced over at the other guys. “I know a few escape routes if anyone is interested.”
“It’s not going to be that bad,” Kiersten said, coming up behind them. “And no, there is no actual showering involved, of a baby or otherwise. It’s a party to celebrate the coming arrival where you shower the new parents with gifts for the baby. Basically, we’ll be hanging out and talking.”
Brooks, Harrison, and Cole all groaned.
“And drinking, for the non-pregnant people.”
That made them cheer.
Kiersten shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Juveniles.”
Brooks gave her a little bow. “I have been called much worse, madam.”
She laughed. “I know. By me. Last week.”
He winked at her. “You know you love me.”
Leah came in, her face lighting up at the sight of Brooks. “You came.”
He leaned in to whisper in her ear. “I did. And so did you. Twice.”
Her cheeks flushed deep red and he laughed, loving that he had that effect on her.
“Don’t start with that,” she said. “Or it won’t happen again.”
“Hmmm,” he said, wrapping his arms around her growing waist and pulling her close. “You know you can’t resist me.”
She cuddled into him more, proving his point. Damn…too bad they couldn’t sneak off somewhere and have a private party of their own.
“Okay everyone,” Kiersten said, waving the guests over. “It’s game time!”
“Run,” Harrison said. “Run, now.”
But there was no escape. Kiersten wrangled everyone together for a series of baby shower games, which, if Brooks was to be honest, he enjoyed. Not that he would ever admit that to another living soul.
He kicked total butt at the belly race. He and the rest of the boys strapped a ten-pound bag of flour to their bellies and raced around a small obstacle course Kiersten had set up on one side of the apartment. Brooks won, by a navel. Some of the other games he wasn’t quite as good at, and one in particular terrified the shit out of him.
When Kiersten lined him and the other boys up in front of naked baby dolls beside a stack of diapers, powder, and blankets he was ready to bolt. Until Cole started in on how easy it would be for him to win since he was supposedly such an expert now.
“You going to let him get away with that kind of talk?” Leah asked.
“Hell no, baby.” He rolled up his sleeves. “It’s on.”
He grabbed the baby powder and liberally doused his baby. And himself, by accident. And then Cole, on purpose. One good shot to the face, and Cole started sputtering and swearing and powdering Brooks back. He was not, however, diapering his baby, a fact he remembered when Brooks held his own baby up in triumph.
Sort of. He had managed to get the diaper on the baby, but it ended up being backward. And it may have taken him three or four tries, but hey, he did it finally. And the blanket… Well, who was to say that the way he did it was wrong?
Kiersten, apparently. And since she was the judge…
“The baby is covered,” Brooks argued. “It should totally count. Take blanket, cover baby. As long as those two points are covered, I don’t see why it needs to be done any other way.”
“He’ll suffocate,” she said. “You’ve got his face wrapped up and his feet sticking out the top.”
Brooks looked down at his baby doll. “Wellll, maybe he wanted to take a nap and it was too bright and it was just a little too hot so he stuck his feet out. Don’t judge.”
“Sorry, it’s my job to judge. I declare Chris the winner!”
They all stared at him and his perfectly wrapped baby in surprise.
“It’s like the damn barnyard all over again,” Cole said. “How the hell is he so good at this stuff?”
“You guys act like it’s hard,” Chris said, glancing around at the other men who were almost entirely covered in powder with babies no reasonable person would deem properly covered.
Brooks looked at Cole and Harrison. “He’s much too clean. I don’t think he got any powder on his baby at all.”
Harrison nodded. “We’d better check.”
Chris didn’t stand a chance. Three minutes later and he was seated on the sofa beside the others, powdered head to toe.
“At least they smell good,” Kiersten muttered to Leah, who had to choke off a laugh when Brooks mock-glared at her.
Present time was much more fun. The women sat around in a group ooing and ahhing over each gift. The men on the other hand got to hang out in the kitchen drinking.
“Now this is my kind of game,” Brooks said.
From the women’s circle someone squealed, “Oh, how precious,” and all the men said, “Shot!”
With the amount of times that phrase was being thrown about the room, they were all going to be too drunk to walk out the door by the time the party was over.
“Don’t get too hammered,” Kiersten called into the kitchen. “I’ve got a job for you boys.”
They all turned and blinked at her like a bunch of meerkats watching for predators.
She pointed to a large box in the corner of the room sitting next to a tool box.
“Marcus couldn’t make it, but he sent a gift. He said he’d put it together later, but since you are all here…”
“We’ve got it handled,” Brooks said. No way was he letting Marcus show him up by getting the best gift in the room and being the hero that put it together, too.
“What is it?” he finally thought to ask.
“That’s the crib,” she said. “Get to it.”
The men slowly approached the box like it was a snake poised to strike.
“Have you ever put one of these together before?” Brooks asked Cole.
He snorted. “Hell, no. I attempted once. For about five minutes. Then I figured my wife and child would rather have me alive and sane, so I hired someone to come in and put it together for me. Plus, Kiersten threatened to divorce me if I didn’t. Then she added a clause to the prenup forbidding me to attempt to assemble furniture ever again.”
“Wonderful,” Harrison said.
Chris frowned at it. “It can’t be that hard.”
The women chose that moment to start giggling at something. Brooks was pretty sure it wasn’t related to their conversation. Well, maybe about eighty percent sure. Okay, fifty. They giggled again. Okay, they were laughing at them.
“Piece of cake,” Brooks said.
Cole looked over at him, one eyebrow raised. “I hope you were referring to the fact that you want a piece of actual cake. Because if you were talking about this thing being easy to put together, then you really are out of your damn mind.”
“Come on, guys, seriously. It’s one stupid little crib. There are four of us. How hard can this be?”
There was blood before they even got the thing out of the box. Chris sliced his finger cutting the box open and was now sitting with it wrapped over in the penalty box. Well, really he was over on the couch with the ladies. But for their purposes, they were calling it the penalty box. And since Chris tended to be the Golden Boy who did everything perfectly, Brooks had more than a sneaking suspicion that the ass had purposely cut his finger to get out of setting up the crib. Brooks wished he’d thought of that first.
But the rest of them hung in there. Although there were two more cut fingers, a smashed thumb, and at least forty-three inappropriate curses before they had the entire thing unpacked and laid out in neat rows so they could see all the pieces.
“These instructions are in Chinese,” Harrison said, throwing the paper at Brooks.
“Don’t you speak Chinese?” Cole asked.
“Not well enough to understand those,” Harrison said, flipping off the paper. “Besides, that’s not really Chinese, it’s English. Just really tiny print. And I don’t speak English well enough to understand those, either.”
“Look,” Brooks said, pointing to the sheets of paper. “There are pictures. How hard can this be?”
“You need to stop saying that,” Cole said. “Every time you do someone nearly slices something off.”
Harrison yelped with a muffled curse and stuck his finger in his mouth.
“See,” Cole said.
Brooks frowned at the incomprehensible instructions in his hand. “Come on, guys, we have to figure this out, or the poor kid is going to be sleeping on the floor.” And Marcus would drop by to save the day and there was no way in hell Brooks would let that fly if he could help it.
There were a few more moans and groans, but the guys finally rallied and got the thing marginally put together. Sure, there were a few pieces left over when they were done, but it looked pretty decent.
“Get in it,” Cole said.
Harrison shook his head and held up his hands, walking away slowly.
Brooks narrowed his eyes, trying to figure out what sort of sinister plan Cole had in mind.
Cole rolled his eyes. “I’m not trying to trick you. It’s just a test. Make sure it’s sturdy enough.”
“I think the baby is going to be a good deal smaller than I am,” Brooks said.
“Well, of course. That’s why you climb in. If it will support your weight then it will definitely support the baby.”
That sounded fairly reasonable. As did Harrison’s suggestion that if they wanted to make extra sure it was sturdy maybe they should try it out with two of them. Which is what they tried to explain to Kiersten and Leah when they wandered over and found Cole and Brooks cuddled up together in the crib.
Brooks explained the whole thing and pointed at Harrison.
“It was his idea. He said he read an article about crib manufacturing that recommended using at least three hundred pounds to test the crib’s safety. So we had to get two of us in here. Tell them.”
Harrison just shook his head. “I don’t know what they’re talking about. I think they just wanted to cuddle.”
Then he took off running.
Smart move really because Cole did an impressive vault out of the crib and took off after him. Brooks turned to Leah with a grin. “So, how are things going on your side?”
…
Leah tried not to smile. It only encouraged him. But really, it was impossible to keep it together. She laughed and shook her head. “We’re having fun, though not as much as you’re having over here apparently.”
“Getting lots of loot?”
“Tons. Between this shower and the one the sisters and my friends at work gave me, this baby will be set for diapers for at least a year.”
Kiersten laughed at that. “Try a month.”
Brooks and Leah both blinked at her in surprise. She shrugged. “What can I say? They are little pooping machines.”
Brooks opened his mouth, no doubt to make some inappropriate joke, but was sidetracked by a crash coming from the opposite side of the apartment.
“I’ll be right back,” he said, jumping out of the crib and running full tilt to where his friends seemed to be doing their best to destroy his loft.
Leah just looked at Kiersten and shook her head. “It’ll be like having two toddlers in the house.”
Kiersten nodded. “True, but that could be said of most men.”
She had said good-bye to the other guests before coming to check on the boys and Cass and Izzy helped her and Kiersten carry the gifts into Brooks’s wine room.
“Is this going to be the nursery?” Izzy asked, looking around at the dark wood, humidors, and racks of wine bottles.
Leah shook her head and folded her arms, looking around. “We haven’t discussed it. But it’s the only available room in the house. Well, the only room with a door anyway. The master suite is upstairs, but down here is all open. I’m not comfortable putting my baby in a room filled with glass bottles full of alcohol. And Brooks isn’t comfortable getting rid of any of it.”
“Translate to mean, he flat-out refused?” Izzy asked.
“Yep.”
“Why don’t you guys get a new place?” Kiersten asked.
That would be the sensible thing to do. But again, she and Brooks hadn’t discussed it. They hadn’t discussed anything actually. They hadn’t discussed whether they’d stay with the original plan and be done with the whole marriage thing once the peanut arrived or whether they were in an actual, real relationship now. Whether he wanted to be a stepfather. Whether he wanted Leah and the baby to continue to live with him once the baby came. How things were going to work with Marcus in the picture. If they’d work, because Brooks and Marcus, despite the polite smiles, did not seem to enjoy being around each other. All things that needed to be decided, and soon. And all things that Leah was afraid to discuss with him.
But her friends were looking at her, waiting for an answer, so she shrugged. “We haven’t discussed that, either. I know he really likes it here.”
“Well, unless you’re planning on strapping the baby to the pool table, you guys might want to think about getting a more kid-friendly place,” Cass said.
“I know,” Leah said.
Izzy and Cass gave her hugs before heading out. “You call us when that baby is born,” Izzy said.
“I will,” she said, walking them out.
“That was nice of them to come,” she said to Kiersten after they left.
“It was good to see them. It’s been a while. They’ve been out jet-setting since we won that money. Although it looks like Cass may be ready to settle down.”
“Chris certainly seems head over heels for her.”
“Speaking of men who are head over heels, how are things with Brooks?”
Leah snorted. “Not head over heels.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kiersten asked, nodding over in the direction of the boys.
They were now standing around the kitchen counter with beers, but Brooks’s gaze kept straying over to her.
“He can’t keep his eyes off you,” Kiersten said.
“That’s not love, that’s hormones.”
“I thought you were the one who was supposed to have the hormone problems.”
Leah laughed. “Yeah, well he must be doing sympathy pains then. I can’t seem to shake him.”
Kiersten raised her eyebrows. “Do you want to?”
Warmth spread through her cheeks but she shook her head with a grin. “Not really, no.”
“So it’s going good then?”
“Better than I thought.”
“But…”
Leah sighed. “I wish I knew what he wanted. Where he wants this to go. If he wants it to go anywhere. Or if he even knows. And with Marcus always hanging around now, things are kind of…weird. Awkward. He’s always doing nice things for me, bringing me stuff, and seems really invested in the baby. Though he does bail every time his phone rings. And don’t get me wrong, I’m happy he wants to be so involved. I just wish he and Brooks got along better. And that I knew what the hell Brooks is thinking about Marcus and all the rest of this.”
“Well, you know there’s only one way to find out, right?”
She took a deep breath and blew it out. “Yeah, I know. Freaking communication.”
Kiersten laughed at that. “That sounds about right.” She glanced around the room again. “And you might want to make that talk quick. You guys need to figure out what page you’re on so you can do something about your living arrangements. Or you’re going to be tucking your baby in at night between a couple of wine bottles.”
“Wine,” Leah said wistfully. “I really miss wine.”
Kiersten giggled. “Miss it all you want, but I don’t think you want to have your baby shacking up with it.”
“This is true.”
She knew Kiersten had a point. The baby would be there soon, and they didn’t have anything figured out yet. She wanted things settled before the baby came, and that meant she was going to have to have a conversation or two. Hopefully they went well.
She wasn’t prepared to deal with the consequences if they didn’t.