My heart melts as he takes out his cell and takes a picture of the three of us. It doesn’t seem to matter that Poppy’s asleep in her seat, or that we were fighting less than half an hour ago.
Why is he such a nice guy?
It would be so much easier to keep my distance if he wasn’t so freaking perfect, but he is. He’s actually perfect.
The living room is full of people again when we step inside, but all eyes turn to us and then to Poppy. I’m not used to my daughter being under scrutiny and my mama bear instincts all rise to the surface ready to defend my daughter against anyone, including Penn’s family. But then they descend on us and instead of distain there’s nothing but warmth and acceptance.
“Oh my god, she’s so precious.”
“She looks so much like you.”
“Dude, you’re going to have to carry a shotgun with you all the time when she’s older to keep the asshole boys away from her.”
“I want one.”
As his family coos over my daughter I can’t help but lean into Penn’s side, wondering how it is that this room full of strangers has shown me more affection and acceptance than my actual family ever has.
“Oh. Oh fuck.”
Cora’s loud exclamation has me immediately checking on Poppy, but she’s still fast asleep.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Huck says frantically.
“My waters just broke,” Cora giggles.
“What?” Huck cries, his eyes going down to the puddle of clear liquid that’s now around Cora’s feet.
“Oh fuck, should I call an ambulance? Oh fuck is he coming? Oh fuck.” Huck’s frantic, grabbing Cora, then releasing her to move in one direction, then stopping and rushing back to her again.
“Huck, calm down,” Cora demands. “I need to go get cleaned up and into dry clothes. You need to grab my baby bag and go get the car started. It’s an hour’s drive from here to the hospital so you need to give them a call and tell them we’re coming in.” Her voice is calm and relaxed.
“Okay. Fuck, okay.”
“I’ll call the hospital, Beau will grab the bag, you help Cora,” Bonnie says, hiding a smirk.
Huck nods, then carefully helps Cora back to their door and into their apartment.
“Should we follow them to the hospital?” Granger says.
“Most hospitals only let the dad into the labor suite and it could be hours. I was in labor for twenty-eight hours with this one. Unless you want to be sitting in a waiting room all night, it’s probably best you wait here,” I tell him.
“Twenty-eight hours?” Penn looks horrified. “Who was with you?”
“Chloe.”
“Not your mom?”
“God no,” I laugh, while Bonnie makes a call and Beau reappears carrying a black carry-on bag.
“I’ll go put this in Huck’s car,” he says to no one in particular.
Cora reappears a few moments later looking annoyed as Huck fusses behind her.
“What do you mean you’ve been having contractions for the last few hours? Why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me that?” Huck snaps.
“Because I’ve been having Braxton hicks for weeks and I wasn’t sure this was the real thing. Women don’t have babies in minutes, it takes hours and there’s no way I’m having the hospital turn us away if we get there and I’m not even dilated.” She suddenly stops talking and grimaces. She breaths slowly while we all watch, then straightens and starts to walk again. “I’m pretty sure this is the real thing,” she shrugs.
One by one, everyone takes it in turn to either kiss or hug Cora, then Huck. The brothers all do that man hug, shoulder slap thing, speaking quietly to Huck until finally they give us a wave and leave to have their baby.
“Keep in touch, let us know what’s happening. If you need us, just let us know and we’ll come on down to the hospital,” Beau says with a firm nod of his head. If I didn’t already know he was the oldest I’d have figured it out right now, he’s a good big brother.
We all watch the door close behind them, a layer of tension for Cora and Huck still filling the air. That’s the moment that Poppy decides to wake up with a screech and all focus turns back to us. Carrying her seat over to the couch, Penn sits down and unclips the straps holding her in, lifting her out of the seat and pressing a kiss to her head, before he turns and hands her to me.
She quiets the moment she’s in my arms, her wet cheeks pressed into my neck as Penn coos at her from beside me. “You want me to warm up her bottle and get you her jammies?” he asks.
“Please, this is well past her bed time, but she hates sleeping in her carrier.”
“That’s okay, you feed her and I’ll get the pop up crib and the baby monitor set up in our room, that way she can sleep in there while we have dinner.”
Biting my lip, I want to argue, but honestly what can I say? He’s right, she’d be more comfortable in the crib than anywhere else. So I nod, and he stands from the couch and pulls the bottle I made up for her before we left from the bag, and disappears into the kitchen.
Suddenly feeling self-conscious, I focus all my attention on Poppy rather than deal with all the Barnett eyes that are on me. These brothers definitely have the intense thing going down and I don’t really know what to do with it.
Grabbing the folding change pad from the bag, I lay it down on the couch and then lay Poppy on it, stripping off her cute leggings and shirt and unfastening her diaper. When the couch at my side dips down I glance up and find one of the brothers beside me, his smile soft as he looks down at my daughter.
“Hey, I’m Teddy, I doubt you remember. I know Penn sort of just threw names at you last night.”
“Hi Teddy.” He’s younger than Penn, still attractive in the same way all the Barnetts are, but he’s slimmer and I’d guess at shorter too.
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Could you hand me a diaper and the wipes?”
“Sure thing.” Pulling the bag onto his lap he grabs out what I asked for and hands it to me, stroking Poppy’s cheek with his finger and earning a tired smile from her cute baby face.
“There’s a pink onesie in there too, if you wouldn’t mind.”
I clean her up and change her diaper as he roots through the bag again, pulling out every single pink thing in there until he finds her onesie, handing it to me triumphantly.
“Thanks,” I chuckle, dressing Poppy in it, just as Penn appears with her bottle.
“Here you go, Kitten, I’ll go set the crib up.”
Unsure what else to say, I take the bottle from him and nod. He leaves with Beau in tow and I wish I could go with him, but it feels really rude to just get up and leave, especially when the couch is full of members of his family.
When the lights dim, I glance up and find Alice at the wall switch. “This is a strange place and we’re all strangers, I thought it might make her relax a little if it was a more calming light.”
“Thanks, that’s great,” I say, realizing that the dimmed lights have actually made me a little more comfortable as well. Shuffling back into the couch, I cradle Poppy against my chest and check the temperature of the formula before I bring the bottle to her lips. It takes her a little longer than usual, but she starts to drink as I stroke her cheek, and before long the bottle is empty and she’s asleep in my arms.
“She’s so perfect, how do you get anything done, I’d just spend all day staring at her,” Bonnie says with a wistful sigh.
“I think I spent the first three months pretty much in awe that I made her,” I say quietly. “I hate leaving her every day.”
“Penn makes good money, you could give up work and stay home all the time with her,” one of the brothers says.
“Penn and I have known each other less than a week,” I scoff.
“So. You’re his, so is she, the timescale isn’t important.”
Rolling my eyes, I look to Bonnie for some support but she’s staring down at Poppy with a strange look on her face.
“Bonnie, Alice back me up here,” I say, feeling like I need some support against all the obviously stubborn and unreasonable Barnett men.
“With any other guy I’d agree, but things work differently for the men in this family,” Bonnie says.
Shaking my head, I sigh. “So you’re telling me after a few days you’d have been ready to give up your job and just let a man take care of you.”
“I moved Alice in here the day we met,” Granger says, pulling Alice into his lap. “We got married five days after that.”
“Holy shit,” I say beneath my breath. “Bonnie?”
“Things were a little different for me and Beau, my family’s ranch is right next door so I’d sort of known the whole family my entire life, but I’m so much younger than them. Beau kind of… I want to say stalked, but that sounds much worse than it actually was.”
“He stalked you?” I ask, my voice shrill.
“You know I work at the coffee shop, right?”
“Yeah,” I nod.
“Well I open up most mornings at like five thirty and then stay till close at eight thirty. Beau turned up as I opened and again at close for a year because he thought it was dangerous me being there by myself.”
“A year together before getting serious I can totally understand, that’s normal.”
“Oh no,” Bonnie laughs. “For a year he came in every morning and every evening, but he barely spoke to me. Took a guy asking me out in front of Beau for him to pull his head out of his ass and see what apparently the rest of the brothers already knew.”
“Which was?”
“That she was mine.” Beau’s gravelly voice comes from behind me and I twist around to see him. “Once I figured it out, I never let her go.”
“And Huck met Cora through me, we went on a girls’ night out and the guys followed us, he took one look at her and he was gone, she was moved in within the week and pregnant within a month. By the way, never let Penn anywhere near your birth control, they can’t be trusted,” Bonnie says with a serious nod.
My eyes go wide and I stare at the guys as both Beau and Granger nod and the others all smirk. I feel myself go pale as I remember Penn’s blasé attitude toward me being pregnant. We haven’t been careful, and in the last couple of days he’s come inside of me three times. Fuck, I really could be pregnant already and by the sounds of his family, Penn really might be crazy enough to be happy about it.
“Kitten, the crib’s all set up, you want to come check it before you get the princess settled?” Penn says, walking back into the main house from the door to his rooms.
“Yeah sure,” I say, trying to swallow back the rising panic that’s building inside of me.
“Let me take her.” He carefully lifts Poppy from me and cradles her to his huge chest, she looks tiny in his arms and yep, you guessed it, I’m pretty sure my ovaries pop out another egg. Between his insane need to fill me with cum and my traitorous body’s ability to ovulate at will the moment he’s sweet to my daughter I really am going to be pregnant before the end of the week. He starts to walk toward the door to his apartment and I vow to stop being an idiot and get myself on birth control.
I follow him through the apartment to his room and find the pop-up crib all set up to the side, there’s the new pink sheets we bought on the mattress and even a mobile hanging over the side that I don’t remember seeing him put in the cart. The baby sleeping bag like the ones I use at home is spread out in the bottom of the crib, and the monitor is all set up and resting on the bedside cabinet.
“Is everything okay? Did I forget anything?” he asks.
“No, it all looks perfect.”
“I’ll wash all the sheets and everything tomorrow, I know we should have done that before she slept on them, but I’m hoping it’ll be okay for one night. If you want I can build the proper crib in here, or we can use this until her room is finished.”
“Penn,” I sigh.
“I want you both here with me, Kitten.”
How can I fight him when he’s so sincere? God, how do I fight him anyway? I want him and everything he has to offer, but he needs to know the truth first. “There’s some stuff we should talk about. About Poppy.”
“Okay,” he nods. “Dinner first, then we can talk.”
My stomach growls almost on cue and he smirks, pressing a kiss to Poppy’s forehead before he brings her to me and I do the same. He carries her in his huge, protective arms over to the crib and painstakingly carefully lowers her into it, zipping her into her baby sleeping bag before slowly moving away from her.
I don’t know if I go to him, or him to me, but I’m against his chest and being held by the same strong arms that were just cuddling my daughter a second later. If she feels even half as safe and protected by him, no wonder she never protested at him holding her and taking care of her.
My stomach growls again and he chuckles. “Come on, let’s go feed you.”
Grabbing the baby monitor I turn it on, then let him guide me away from Poppy and back into the main house, where two huge dishes of pasta are being placed down on the massive dining table in the kitchen.
All the furniture must be bespoke, because where else do you find a table big enough to seat fifteen people? Penn guides me to it, holding out a chair for me and sinking down into the one beside it.
“I hope you like pasta?” a brother whose name I can’t remember asks. “I’m Cody by the way.”
Smiling gratefully I nod. “I love pasta, thanks.”
Everyone takes their seat and plates are filled and handed out while wine and beer follows. It’s loud and chaotic and sort of wonderful and for a second, I sit back and imagine me and Poppy being here and being a part of it all. Growing up I spent most of my childhood either in daycare or with a nanny. My parents weren’t natural child rearers, and as an only child I never had any siblings to make our home anywhere near as boisterous as this place.
“So you all eat together every night?” I ask.
“Not all of us and not every night, but most of the time yeah. We all have lives and with us each having our own kitchens now, we can cook for ourselves if we don’t feel like being sociable, but most the time, dinner is when we catch up, when we stay connected to one another’s lives. We know it’s weird, but we’re close and we enjoy each others’ company. Bonnie’s dad joins us three or four times a week and Cora’s parents and brother are here at least once a week.”
“Jesus, this really is like a commune,” I say, then slap my hand across my mouth. “I’m so sorry, that was so rude.”
Instead of being offended, they all laugh.
“Oh my god, this place is like a commune,” Bonnie giggles. “Ya’ll need to grow long hair and moustaches.”
“We could get a few VW vans to go with my RV and maybe a tee-pee,” Alice chuckles shyly. “I think my sister thought it was some kind of cult the first time she met everyone too.”
“She’s not from here?” I ask.
“No, she’s in the army and based out of West Virginia. But we’re from Ottawa originally,” Alice tells me, snuggling into Granger’s side even while she’s eating.
“How did you end up in Montana then?”
“My RV broke down on the edge of town. Granger pulled over to see if I was okay and needed any help, and he did his whole caveman ‘Mine’ thing. He convinced me to stay here for the weekend and I’ve never left.”
“Wow, so that knowing at first sight stuff really has happened before?”
“Yep,” she nods.
“And you were okay with that?”
Alice blushes. “Not really.”
“I think we all fought it at the start, I mean they’re a lot. But if you haven’t noticed already, Barnett boys are hard to resist. At least Cora and I lasted longer than Alice though,” Bonnie laughs.
“Hey,” Alice half-heartedly protests.
“What? You know it’s true, you lasted like a day, must be Granger’s massive dick.”
I choke on my bite of pasta.
“We didn’t get the sound proofing till well after I moved in, I’ve heard more than I ever need to know about Beau’s dick,” Alice barbs back, blushing bright red.
Bonnie doesn’t even show an ounce of embarrassment, she just nods and smiles, lifting her glass into the air and raising it in a silent toast. Alice lifts hers too and then both women turn their faces to me expectantly. “To big dicks and great orgasms.”
Fighting a smile, I lift my glass and tap it against theirs.
“Welcome to the family,” Alice grins.
