might say. I’ve been talking to Si. You’re about to have four kids. We only have Sophy.”
She opened the fridge. Rat-fink bastard had eaten her ham. Ice cream it was then. Ian knew better than to touch her ice cream. “In this case, I think more is better. I know I’ve got a ton of kids, but Kala and Kenzie speak her language. Seth is already babbling in a mix of English and Russian. Ian and I speak…”
“You speak Russian. Ian speaks some weird version I can halfway understand,” Chelsea countered.
He wasn’t that bad. He just missed some of the nuances because he didn’t speak it every day. “I could say the same thing about Simon’s English. Sophy is going to grow up calling the trunk of her car a boot.”
It wasn’t exactly the same, but she felt the need to defend her husband. She was sure his Russian had been excellent once. They really needed to start speaking it more often. She spoke to the kids in Russian much of the day, but tended to switch back to English at night.
“Sure, that’s going to be her main problem,” Chelsea said with a snort. “I just think we should all sit down and talk about this as a family.”
Charlotte set the ice cream down, and suddenly there were tears in her eyes because her heart felt so full. How far her sister had come. “Yes, we’ll sit down as a family. How about you bring Si and Sophy over tomorrow?”
“And we’ll also bring food because you don’t need to cook. I’ll have something catered in,” Chelsea said.
Her sister had become a kind, thoughtful woman. For years Charlie had been the one to take care of her little sister. Now Chelsea always tried to take care of her. “All right. That sounds like a plan. Now I am going to take a break and eat a bunch of ice cream and read a hot romance. Or maybe I’ll watch TV that isn’t a cartoon.”
It had been a while. Her afternoon was wide open, and she should take advantage of that. She went for a spoon and…
Fuck. Why were her thighs suddenly wet?
Damn it. She was dripping. Not some wild gush the way it was in the movies, but enough to let her know what had happened.
“Hey, you okay?” Chelsea asked.
Nope. She wasn’t okay.
Bud looked down at the floor and then back up at her as though to say “when I do that you get mad.”
“I’m having the baby. Like right now.” Her belly seized, and she realized she was a dumbass because she’d been in labor all morning long.
* * * *
“Butter is not going to help, and now I’m a little worried I should call the fire department because I have no idea how you got stuck in there.” Panic was starting to well inside Ian, and he was not the guy who panicked. He was the dude who kept his cool even while taking enemy fire. When the bombs started dropping, Ian Taggart chilled and dealt with the situation.
“I think the butter might work.” Twenty minutes later Kala was still holding that stick of butter and he was still alone, despite the fact that he’d called all three of his brothers and Alex.
He’d gotten voice mails from everyone. Every single one of the fuckers was apparently doing something so fucking important he couldn’t answer the phone.
“Didn’t it work on Winnie the Pooh?” Kenzie was the calm one. She just sat there while her dad thought about how Charlie would divorce him if she lost an arm in a vending machine on his watch.
She never paid attention. “No, sweetie. They had to starve Pooh Bear to get him out of the hole.”
Now Kenzie’s eyes went wide and tears formed. “I don’t want to starve. I’m already hungry. I really want some chips.”
Okay. He had to go about this logically. He’d unplugged the machine. He’d tried to gently ease her arm out. He’d even maneuvered her bodily, but that sucker was stuck.
Seth was still wailing.
“So it’s okay for me to eat the candy bar?” Kala asked. “I mean, I don’t need to starve, right?”
“Go and comfort your brother.” He wasn’t going to yell. No. He was keeping his cool. He’d taken out an entire unit of enemy soldiers on his own with too little ordnance and very little cover. He could handle one vending machine without losing his shit.
Seth had been wailing for a while now and it was starting to