O Come, All Ye Kellys (Love & Luck #7) - Isla Olsen Page 0,30

can deal with it.” The fisherman and giant fish have been back the last two nights, which means our bed has been too crowded for my liking. Wade and I still haven’t managed to carve out any time to test out that dildo.

“And if the fish comes back and Liam and Melinda decide they don’t ever want him sleeping at their place again?” Wade asks with an arched eyebrow. “Are you sure you want to burn that bridge?”

I wave his concern away. “I doubt it’ll be an issue with Wyatt there.”

Wade considers this for a moment. “I guess you have a point.” Grinning at me, he steps closer and slides his hands up my waist. “You’re right. I do love you more now.”

I lean forward and press my lips to his, letting the towel fall from my hand as I wrap my arms around him, my hands coming up to thread through his mess of sandy hair. I breathe in the clean, freshly-shaven scent of him, humming with pleasure against his lips as our bodies mold together and I feel—

We break apart; the sound of our daughter screeching through the monitor is like a bucket of cold water.

I let out a heavy sigh and step away from Wade. “I’ll go. Baxter will probably be up soon anyway.”

Baxter’s nighttime woes are at least helping him to sleep in a little later in the morning, but that’s cold comfort to us when his presence in our bed is preventing us from getting much sleep ourselves. And preventing us from doing…other things.

But tonight we’ll be getting a night to ourselves, and hopefully a night of fun with his bestie will be all Baxter needs to get over this weird fisherman thing.

* * *

“Oh, come on baby girl,” I murmur as I walk a fussing Arya up and down the hallway for about the fifty gazillionth time tonight. “It’s time for you to go to sleep. Your daddies really need to get laid.”

Clearly having no sympathy for our plight, Arya just continues to wail and fuss. I’ve tried all our usual tricks: bouncing her against my shoulder, swooping her in my arms, letting her sit in her motorized swing. Nothing’s working. And I can’t figure out what’s bothering her; she’s not hungry or wet, she doesn’t have a fever…even that nappy rash is basically all cleared up.

Eventually, I give up and call my mom who, after raising eleven of her own, is somewhat of an expert when it comes to babies.

“Have you tried a pacifier?” she asks.

“Er, well, actually…we weren’t going to use one. There’s all this research—”

“Oh, Brendan, don’t be so modern!” she snaps. “The child’s in distress, just give her a blasted binky.”

“Okay,” I say quickly, before she can start on a rant about modern parenthood. “Thanks, bye.”

“Hey, what’s going on?”

I glance up to see Wade has emerged from the bedroom, looking totally sexy with his hair all sleep-mussed. The plan had been for me to put Arya down and then join him in bed, but it’s been so long now he obviously fell asleep while waiting for me.

“Here, can you take her?” I ask, handing Arya to him. “I need to find a binky. I’m pretty sure Cait gave us some a while back…they must be somewhere.”

I stalk into Arya’s room and start opening all the drawers and looking through cupboards, eventually stumbling upon a pack of pacifiers that I remember Wade saying we should keep around ‘just in case’.

I glance up at him to find his eyes lit with amusement, despite the fact Arya is still wailing in his arms.

“Don’t even say it,” I warn. “We don’t know this is going to work. These things aren’t magical anti-crying devices.”

“They’re pretty much the closest thing to it,” Wade says wryly.

“Sorry for being concerned about our daughter’s inner ear and cavities,” I grumble, handing Wade a binky.

He offers it to Arya and I have to reluctantly admit that it seems to help. It’s not instantaneous, but she seems to be more focused on sucking it than crying, and after a little while she seems to calm down completely.

“Why don’t you go get yourself ready and I’ll put her down?” Wade suggests.

I arch an eyebrow at him, my mouth curving into a grin. Me get ready? Well I like the sound of that…

The next morning, I wake with Wade’s arms wrapped around me and my ass feeling…not even remotely sore. I scan my memories back to last night and then bolt upright in