Blackout After Dark (Gansett Island #21) - Marie Force Page 0,59
when he’d face-planted last week while playing football in the yard.
“About twenty or so,” Seamus said.
Kyle groaned. “That’s too soon. Why can’t every day be summer vacation?”
Jackson and Ethan pumped their fists in support of Kyle’s idea, the three of them running off with the dog in hot pursuit.
“Holy moly,” Seamus said to Hope, who returned his smile. “To have that much energy.”
“I know! If only we could bottle it.”
“Thank you for having them.”
“Always a pleasure. Ethan adores them.”
“Likewise. Our place next time, aye?”
“Aye,” she said with a grin. “Hot enough for you?”
“It’s unbearable.”
“What’re you hearing about the power?” she asked.
“Not much, just that it seems to be something in the central line from the mainland.”
“That’s what Paul’s hearing, too.” Her husband was a Gansett Island town councilman. “The power company has multiple teams working on it, but they said to expect it to be a couple more days.”
“Ugh, great. We brought a ton of ice over on the last boat. Make sure you get some.”
“Paul’s there now.”
Carolina came out to say hello to Hope, who left with Ethan a few minutes later to get home in time for baby Scarlett’s next feeding.
He and Carolina supervised the boys playing in the yard for another hour before Carolina told them it was time to come in for baths. As they rounded them up, pissing and moaning the whole time because they hated bath time, Seamus tried to remember what he used to do with himself before these two tiny men took over his life and his heart.
That seemed like another lifetime to him now that the boys and Caro were front and center in his life.
The boys were filthy after a hard day of playing outside in the heat, so Seamus went to supervise the bath, using flashlights and candles to light the room.
“You’re like a couple of nasty tea bags,” he said, as he did every night, making them laugh. He’d had to demonstrate what a tea bag was and how it made tea before they got his joke, and now they thought it was hilarious. They thought everything he said and did was funny or interesting, which only made him love them that much more than he already did. It was a tremendous responsibility, this job of shaping boys into men, and one he relished with everything he had. Raising them to be decent men was the most important thing he’d ever do, and he intended to give it his all.
“Dirt tea,” they said together, echoing a term he used to describe the kind of tea they made.
He helped them wash behind their ears, which was another thing they found endlessly hysterical. Who got dirty behind their ears? they asked every night. Boys who roll around in the dirt all day, he said.
Tears stung his eyes at the thought of anyone taking them away from him. He’d fight for them until his dying breath, if that’s what it came to.
But God, he hoped it didn’t come to that.
Chapter 19
Abby was stretched out on the bed with the windows open when Adam came to find her, carrying Liam, who was fresh from his afternoon nap. They’d been waiting for him to wake up to leave for the party at Charlie and Sarah’s.
“Someone is full of beans,” Adam said. “The poor guy was so overheated. I gave him a cool bath to make him feel better.”
“Poor baby,” Abby said. “Next trip to the mainland, we need a generator.”
“I want one of those whole-home generators like my parents got last year. I should’ve had one put in here at the same time. I wish now that I had.”
“Maddie texted to say Mac brought home a generator. They’re telling anyone who needs cooler air to come over and bring air mattresses.”
“You want to do that?”
“Maybe. Of course we had to lose power when it’s hotter than the sun.”
“I think that’s why we lost power. Too much demand for AC taxed the system, which was fragile to begin with.”
“It scares me to think we’re so vulnerable to something like this. That we can lose power for days on end, and there’s nothing anyone can do.” Her anxiety had been through the roof since the news they received yesterday about the quadruplets. Coming home to a power outage hadn’t helped anything.
“Having the generator will help. I’ll get on that right away. Try not to worry.”