It really would.
So that was exactly what I did.
And when I got back out, the dress bag was open, and Callum was holding a delicate white dress with lacy edges.
“Oh, it’s beautiful,” I said as he held the gown up for me to slip into.
I let him do all the work, not wanting to smudge my makeup or mess up my hair any more than I’d already done.
When I was in it, the dress was zipped, and I was once again ready as I could be, I looked up at my fiancé.
“You better get out there. I’ll walk to you.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“No?” I frowned.
“There’s nobody I’d trust more than me to walk you down the aisle,” he said as he held out his hand. “Let’s go, baby.”
And I did.
I walked down the aisle with my husband-to-be, then married the hell out of him.EpilogueMy husband is hotter than this coffee.
-Coffee Cup
Desi
Five years later
The scream had me up and out of my seat before I’d even had a chance to do much more than cross my legs.
I slammed through the screen door, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that my baby—one of them anyway—was hurt.
It was that type of scream.
I knew happy screams.
I knew pissed off screams.
And I knew pain-filled screams.
And the one I’d just heard was definitely a pain-filled scream.
I scrambled around the corner of the house to see Callum on his knees in the dirt of the practice ring where he broke all the horses. In his arms was our girl, Millie.
Millie was crying so hard that she wasn’t making sense, and the expression on my husband’s face was also one of pain. That pain being for his little girl, not because he was physically hurt.
“It’s okay, baby,” Callum soothed our girl. “It’s only a scrape.”
“I’m bweeeedin’!” She sniffled. “Papa, it hurwts.”
I placed my hand over my heart as I tried to rub the pain away. Anytime one of my babies was hurt, it hurt me. Just like I knew it did Callum.
Callum had been perfect from the moment our babies had been born. But Millie especially had her papa wrapped around her little finger.
When our girl started to walk and talk, she’d gone from calling Callum ‘dada’ to ‘papa’ because we now shared a house with Ace, Codie, and their kids. As well as the rest of the family. And since Ace was called ‘daddy’ Millie had changed her calling Callum to papa. Even our son did it.
I wasn’t sure if it was due to the fact that both Callum and Ace answered to ‘daddy’ at first because they couldn’t quite ascertain which kid it was calling for them or what. But it worked now, and everyone always knew who each child was looking for. It was quite ingenious of them, actually.
“Did I do wood, Papa?” Millie asked.
Millie still had trouble pronouncing her G’s. And when she did pronounce her G’s, it was usually always in the wrong place.
It was adorably cute.
“Yeah, baby,” he said. “You want to get back on?”
Millie wiped her nose on the sleeve of Callum’s shirt, causing me to grin.
Callum didn’t miss a beat, though. Hell, he didn’t even flinch.
“Wes.” She nodded her head.
In just three more months, my babies would be three. And I both loathed and celebrated the milestone ahead of us.
The twins were getting more and more independent, and with that came the mischievous tendencies. Hell, just last week, I’d caught William in the hayloft. A hayloft in which he’d had to climb a ten-foot ladder to get to.
Callum stood up with our girl in his arms and walked over to the sheep that so obviously had been the reason my baby was crying and bleeding.
Sadly, it was Millie’s choice to do this. She’d begged and pleaded to be put into the pee-wee rodeo, and with that came saddling a sheep and riding it. The kid that could hold on the longest was the winner.
My eyes strayed down the leather chaps that were framing my husband’s Wrangler-covered ass, and I licked my lips as I thought about peeling those off of him later tonight.
“Wook at me, Mama!”
I looked in the direction of William’s bellow and found him straddling the fence. He was at the very top, and he was holding on with his legs only. Legs that were encased in the same leather chaps, only in a much smaller and cuter size, as his father’s.
William had begged and pleaded for them, and we’d finally broken down and gotten them at the rodeo last month that Uncle Banks had competed at in South Texas.
“You better not fall off of that, William Malloy,” I growled.
Will’s eyes immediately went wide, and his hands once again found the pole beneath him. He knew when Mama wasn’t playing.
Callum, who hadn’t noticed me until now, offered me a wink.