A Navesink Bank Christmas Read online

  She declared that in a crowded store after some woman she had never seen before pressed her hand to the bump and asked when she was due.

  "The damn timer needs to go off. I need him out. Like now. He uses my bladder as a pillow," she declared, voice grave, and I knew this was going to be another 'I don't think this is a miracle; it is really creeping me the eff out' speeches. "And sometimes, if I am sitting still, he moves and, ugh, so gross... you can see parts of him popping out of my skin. It's some straight up Alien shit."

  Shooter laughed at her, reaching over to twine his pinky with hers. "But just think, soon he will be out, and you can have coffee again. No? What did I say wrong?" he asked when she yanked her hand away and got up on a growl to go into the kitchen. "What'd I say?" he asked, looking over at me.

  "She's gonna nurse," I explained. "So no coffee for at least another six months."

  "Shit. No wonder she's so miserable. I found this shirt for her for Christmas," he said, lips twitching. "Pregnant lady shirt with writing on the belly that says Don't Fucking Touch Me. I think she will wear out the seams she'll wear it so much."

  "I might have to get one for each day of the week," I agreed as Alex reached into the fridge."

  "Pickles?" Shooter asked, smirking.

  "I wish. Fucking hot peppers in hummus. Hot. Like if you put your mouth anywhere near hers within twenty-four hours of her eating them, your lips feel like they're burning off. And she eats them every day."

  Before the baby, she had avoided spicy food like the plague, claiming she just didn't have tastebuds that could handle it. Now, she couldn't get enough. I once tried to replace the super hot ones for only mildly hot ones to save myself. But she'd taken one bite, small-eyed me, and told me not to fuck with her.

  Luckily, I found Alex's brand of prickly amusing as fuck, and it was only amplified with her long list of new things that made her irritable.

  "Make her drink some milk after. You know, for the baby," he suggested, looking back from where Alex was balancing the hummus on top of her stomach as a little table.

  "Yeah, and how do you suggest I make Alex do anything?"

  "Got a point there," he agreed, sipping his coffee. Having a bit of a headstrong woman himself, he got it. "What'd you get her? Her Christmas list wasn't exactly romantic."

  Except, to Alex, computer components were romantic.

  So I got her some of those.

  But I had also tracked down something infinitely more sentimental.

  My goal was to make my little hardass at least tear up.

  It was no easy task. Even with a few years together, I think I had only seen it happen twice.

  In case you were wondering, no, one of those times was not when the stick turned blue. That had been complete and utter paralyzing terror.

  "Get Amy anything interesting?"

  "Got her some normal crap, but I think she's gonna bug out about a trip back to Alabama." It didn't happen often, but once and a while, his accent came on thicker than usual. And, for whatever reason, every time he spoke of his home state, it was heavy. The words stretched and rolled. "Dade is offering for us to stay in his guest cottage thing on his ranch. Amy really likes him. And she has always wanted to learn to ride a horse. She's already a little fed up with the cold this year. She could use a break. We're leaving the day after Christmas and staying till after New Years. Don't worry," he said, seeming to pick up on the train of my thoughts, "we are gonna be back in more than enough time to see that kid be born. Well, not see it," he said, shivering a bit in dis-ease over the whole idea, "but you know."

  "No one is seeing anything," Alex called, putting her peppers away and reaching for her coffee, a combo I couldn't fathom trying to mix, but she did so without a grimace as she came closer. "Breaker is already under the threat of castration with a plastic butter knife if he tries to even look below the waist while that crime scene happens."

  "Well, then can he film you cussin' and swearin' at him, telling him he will never get to fuck you again? 'Cause I'd like to see that."

  "You wanna see that, you can just stop by just about any night of the week," Alex admitted, shaking her head a little. "I'm sure he's told you I've been nothing but a damn shrew this whole time."

  "He's said no such thing," Shooter assured her, giving her bare knee a squeeze, used to her pantslessness at this point. "And you're allowed to be miserable. You got a parasite in there eating up all your food, growing hair and nails and shit. That'd put anyone in a mood."

  "Not helping," I grumbled at him, watching as he gave me a 'not my problem' smirk.

  "It'll all shake out," he assured her, reaching for his phone as it buzzed in his pocket. "Welp, I gotta go. My angel is waiting for me. Hopefully in nothing but a Christmas ribbon. Take care of your woman," he told me, clamping a hand on my arm as he moved to stand then move toward Alex, reaching to tilt her head up to face him. "Little tip, sugar," he said, leaning down close to her, "a cup of milk after those hot peppers. For your man's sake."

  With that, he was off, wishing us a Merry Christmas, and saying he would see us in the morning.

  "Why didn't you say anything about the hot peppers?" Alex demanded as soon as we were alone again, using the arm of the chair to drag herself up out of it, moving across the floor to the kitchen where she went right for the milk.

  "They keep you happy."

  "Be a lot happier if I didn't know you were getting burned when I kiss you."

  "Well, in my defense, I never told you you were burning me."

  "Yeah, what's up with that?" she asked, rubbing some milk on her lips before licking it off.

  "What's up with what?" I asked, getting up, and moving toward her.

  "What's up with you not telling me that kissing me is like kissing a dragon? Hm?"

  "You're mad at me for not picking a fight with you?"

  "I don't want to be treated with kid gloves, Breaker," she insisted, trying to cross her arms at me again, but I reached for them, pulling them to rest on my shoulders instead.

  "Never treated you with them, Alex."

  Her air whooshed out of her, making her shoulders relax for the first time in weeks. "I'm being kind of a bitch lately, huh?"

  My lips twitched as my hands moved around to her lower back. "Hey, you said it, not me."

  "Wanna test out the milk theory?" she asked, going up on her toes, sticking her ass out, so her stomach wasn't quite so in the way.

  "Always wanna fucking kiss you, babe," I agreed right before her lips closed over mine.

  She broke away a long minute later, slamming her forehead down onto my shoulder with a grumble. "He needs to get out," she told my shirt. "Preggo sex weirds me out," she admitted for the first time. I mean, I had been suspecting as much since her stomach really popped, and our sex life went from nearly every night to almost never. "You can't get close. And then I look down, and there's my damn belly. It's just a mood killer. But once he's out, and my lady business is all I dunno... put to rights again, I don't care how tired we are, we are breaking that bed back in."

  "Got no complaints there," I agreed, willing my cock to just be patient for a couple more months. We'd managed this far. "So how about we do presents now? I know waking your stubborn ass up in the morning to head over to be bossed around by Kenz is gonna be hard enough. We won't be able to fit presents in before that."

  We moved over to the 'tree' where her pile of presents for me was stacked, and I went down to the basement to get mine, finding that Alex was the nosy sort if I wasn't careful.

  "See? You really do love me!" she declared dramatically, holding some fucking computer thing to her chest like a little girl with a doll on Christmas morning.

  "Got one last one," I told her, reaching for the box I had kept by my side that she had eyed every time she reached for her next present.

  "Gimme," she insisted, taking the big box onto her thighs, something I chose so she wouldn't know what it was immediately. "Oh," her air whooshed out of her when she pulled
the record out of the box. "This is the song my mom used to sing to me."

  "Babe, flip it over," I offered, watching as her brows furrowed at the cover of Nat King Cole's "Smile."

  "Oh my... this can't be hers. Bryan..." she said, looking up from where her hand was touching the little scribble on the back. Her mother's name.

  There it was.

  A glisten.

  "You were rushed off to foster care so soon after her suicide. You didn't get to grab shit that belonged to her. When I looked into it, the township sent in an investigator who eventually concluded there was nowhere to unload her stuff, so they got rid of it. Vinyl hasn't been in-demand until recently. Even so, not many people are after Nat King Cole. So I went looking at all the record shops in the area. Came across this."

  "But... how did you know to look for this?" she asked, trying to hug it to her chest, but accomplishing hugging it to her belly instead.

  "You told me she had a huge vinyl collection. When she was sad, she listened to it. And judging by the way you hum this song all the time without even realizing it, this was the song she listened to the most."

  Her hand rose, swatting at her eye as she tried to stand, tried to hide it. But I saw it. I got through to her.

  She moved across the room to her record player I had gotten her for her last birthday. There was a pause, then the static, then the song as she turned back, and made her way toward me, sitting down, then curling into my chest.

  My arms slid around her, my chin resting against her head.

  "Merry Christmas, baby."

  Paine & Elsie

  Paine

  &

  Elsie

  --

  "For Auld Lang Syne"

  Elsie

  "I can't move," I declared, dropping backward onto the bed, my whole body aching.

  "Baby girl, you haven't slept in a week," Paine told me, sitting down beside my body.

  To be fair, he hadn't slept much in a week either. The holiday season was always a crazy time, between lights and Christmas parties, and shopping. But the holiday had taken on a much different level of sleep-deprived hell after having children. Take your normal list, add school holiday concerts, and holiday parties, trips to see Santa, having to sneak presents into the house, wrap under the cover of darkness, find hiding places, bake cookies, get a Christmas portrait where everyone's eyes are open, their smiles are genuine enough, and no one is trying to make a silly face, filling them out for all your friends and families and the weirdos who send you Christmas cards who you didn't think you were close enough with to send Christmas cards, go to see the manger, and, finally, take some time out to volunteer to teach our very privileged children that not everyone in the world was as lucky as they were, and that it was important to be aware and sensitive of that fact, and to try to help as much as possible.

  Then, after all that, there was the three a.m. mad dash downstairs to hide those mothereffing elves. And I couldn't just move them. Oh, no. Because all the Pinterest-Moms at the school did all kinds of crazy shit like making them have parties with Barbies and Batman or spill the Alphabets and spell out crap with the letters, making my kids expect those wow-moments as well.

  Whoever came up with those elves could go jump off a cliff.

  It. Was. Exhausting.

  But Paine was right there with me, holding down the paper so I could tape it, refilling my coffee cup while I wrote out Christmas cards, doing the actual baking part of baking cookies, so I didn't burn them like I was inclined to do.

  We had just come up from putting the presents under the tree, eating Santa's cookies and drinking his milk, and making sure the baby gate was set up at the top of the stairs so no one could go down without us knowing.

  It was just after midnight.

  We would have to get up in five hours to start opening presents if we wanted to be able to get to Gina's house for food prep, eating, and another round of presents.

  After that, I planned to curl up in a tub with a bottle of red.

  For two whole hours.

  And then I was going to get Jackson and Willa to bed, and I was going to sleep for nine whole, uninterrupted hours. Because those effing elves were going back to the north pole where they belonged.

  "It's a marathon, not a sprint," I told him, as I did every time he told me I needed to take a rest. "Luckily, I drag my ass onto that treadmill four times a week all year to prepare for it."

  "Fucking miracle what you can fit into your day. Kids, work, gym, house."

  "You're right there with me," I said, slapping a hand down on his thigh. We had learned to swing shifts as much as possible, so one of us was around for Willa. On days when he was booked, and I couldn't work from home, we had a long, long list of people who would step in.

  Shooter and Amelia were both home a lot since his jobs were of the extremely lucrative but also rare sort. Alex and Breaker also were happy to have her - and Jackson on school holidays - in their quiet lives. Then, of course, there was Kenzi and Tig, Reese and Cy, Gina, hell... even all the women in the girls club.

  And, of course, Roman.

  But as much as possible, we tried to have the largest part in our children's lives, even if it was tiring on the best of days.

  We were doing it.

  And well.

  Better than I knew we would.

  It was a scary thing, choosing to start a family.

  Especially when you were a woman whose career was important to her, something you weren't willing to give up, and you knew that, for many women you knew who tried, it wasn't exactly possible to 'have it all,' that something always suffered. I was terrified that what would suffer would be my children.

  I found, though, that it really all came down to how much you wanted it. I wanted it all enough to make it work. And there were days when work suffered because the kids needed me. And there were days when I had to have Paine do my part because work was nuts. But it all shook out.

  "Come here," Paine demanded, voice low as he kicked out of his shoes, and moved to the top of the bed.

  "I think you misheard me; I can't move."

  There was a low, rumbling chuckle, a sound that still managed to shiver through my insides, even all these years later. "Alright," he said, sliding down the bed toward me, leaning down to look at me for a long moment. "I guess if you can't move, we can't do what I had in mind," he said, eyes wicked, making a wobble move through my belly - and lower - that reminded me that things had gotten so crazy that we hadn't had sex in, oh God, was it since Thanksgiving? That was just unaccep... no, wait, we'd had a quickie in the kitchen two weeks before when we messed up our schedules, and both made it home to meet Jackson's bus.

  That wasn't too terrible.

  But, I mean, no one wanted a 'not too terrible' sex life.

  Or maybe some people did.

  Maybe that was enough for them.

  But, well, not for me and Paine.

  Even through the baby stages that kept us perpetually exhausted and often covered in spit up somewhere, we always made time for intimacy at least once a week, making sure our relationship was still a priority.

  "It's been too..." I started to say, only to get cut off when Paine was suddenly off the bed, on his feet, standing over me, that same glint still in his light eyes. Seeing my gaze on his, his lips curved up as his hands grabbed the waistband of my yoga pants and panties and yanked them down my legs which dragged me closer to the end of the bed. Where he wanted me.

  His hands slid up my legs, sliding back to tease over my thighs before moving forward again, tracing the lines to my knees where his fingers sank in and pulled, spreading them apart, pressing my thighs down on the mattress, opening me up to him and his greedy mouth.

  Suddenly, all the stress, all the crippling exhaustion that was the span between Thanksgiving and Christmas slipped away. The tension that had been coiled in my back, shoulders, and neck eased as my thigh muscles tensed, as my hands tightened, one on the sheets, the other on the back of P
aine's neck, holding him to me. Not that I needed to. Paine wasn't one for playing around. When he went down on me, he did it with purpose, with the end game in mind.

  His tongue traced my clit as his fingers moved between us, pulsing against the entrance to my body for a long moment, until my hips were rising up, begging for it. Then and only then did his fingers press inside, sinking deep with one thrust, then turning and curling to rake against my top wall, working my G-spot with practiced precision.

  "Paine, I..."

  I didn't get to finish.

  The orgasm raked through my system violently, making me cry out loudly, too loudly, loudly enough to worry about the kids. You know, if I was capable of things like rational thought. Which I wasn't as I held my husband's head to me as he continued to devour me, drag it out, give me every last second of pleasure that he could.

  Finished, he kissed my inner thigh, then across my lower belly, running his lips over marks that were still angry-looking, marks put there by two kids stretching too-tight skin, marks I had been incredibly insecure about, something that I found completely unsexy.

  Until Paine seemed to pick up on the insecurity as he ran his fingers over them in bed one night. And asked me point-blank, as was his style, something I had always appreciated except when it put me in the hot seat.

  "Unsexy?" he'd asked, brows drawn together as he looked down at them, then back at me, resting his hand flat against the newest ones put there by Willa who was bent on leaving her mark on the world - and her mama who once had very nice, unmarked skin. "These represent part of the life you gave me, Else. Nothing sexier in the world than what we got."

  Sure, it made my belly - and heart - go all mushy, but it wasn't exactly a miracle cure. I still tried a bunch of creams on them and even priced the laser treatments.

  I just never seemed to have that push to go through with it anymore.