A jolt of electricity slips up my spine. I grin at her, and take Chase from Anna. “Good morning to you,” I say, and he kicks his chubby little legs in the air.
“Good morning, sunshine,” Emilio says to me. “So glad you could join us. After you put your morning wood away, you should join us for breakfast.”
I jerk my thumb toward the hallway. “I’m just going to get some jeans.”
“Maybe a cold shower wouldn’t hurt.” Emilio glares at me until warmth creeps up my face.
“Be right back.”
I walk down the hallway and into my room, wondering how the fuck Wren’s father just turned me into a twelve-year-old with one glance.
Wren
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I scold Emilio as I follow him into the kitchen.
“Done what?” he asks with a grunt as he fills Roxy’s little plastic bowl up with more O-shaped cereal.
I lower my voice to match his deep growl, mocking his tone. “You should put your dick away, Mick, because my daughter has never seen one before and she might faint at the very idea of someone having…” I scrunch my face up. “What did you call it?”
“Morning wood,” he grunts out.
“Oh, yeah. Morning wood. You embarrassed him.”
“He should be embarrassed. He was dry-humping my daughter on top of a couch cushion in the middle of the room.”
“He was not,” I scoff. “He fell.”
“Some men have a habit of falling directly into a p–”
I shush him. “Don’t say it.” I jerk my thumb toward the living room. “The kids are out there.”
“I don’t need to say it. You know what I was thinking.”
I grimace. “Unfortunately, I do.”
Emilio has never been shy with me or my sisters about men, sex, or anything that might happen when you put those two words in the same sentence. He’s not pervy, but he can be direct. When I was younger, I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. As I got older, I realized that he did it because he loved us. He wanted to share his knowledge of men, whether we particularly wanted to hear it or not.
“Do I need to send your mother over to have a talk with you?” Emilio threatens.
I pop a grape into my mouth and talk around it. “Only if you’re intimidated by it.”
“Intimidated, my ass,” he snarls playfully. Then he glances toward Roxy’s high chair. “How’s it going with the kids?” he asks. “Did they keep you up last night?”
I yawn into my fist. “They only got up once during the night. Then they were all up when the sun came up.”
He laughs. “The joys of parenting.”
“It’s not parenting,” I argue. “It’s babysitting.”
“Yeah, same difference.”
“It is not. Parenting is permanent.”
“Damn, I wish somebody had warned me about that before we adopted all of you. There we were, thinking we could give you back when you all got your periods the same week of the month, or when you all needed cars at the same time. We tried to return you, but they wouldn’t take you back.”
I laugh. “You did not.”
He sobers quickly. “No, we didn’t. We knew the minute we saw you guys that you were ours. We saw Peck first, and then the rest of you. One trip out of the group home for ice cream, and we knew we had to have all of you.”