Page 195 of Ransom

It's home.

"Everyone's more relaxed here," Evie says. "I love it. I didn't know places like this existed. It's so far from New York and the way I was raised." I can believe it since she was raised by old money assholes.

Zach's tiny dog emerges from under his chair, yawning dramatically. She surveys the yard where the other dogs are still chasing the kids, then retreats back to her safe spot.

"That dog," I chuckle. "She thinks she's one of the big dogs until she remembers she's basically a rat."

"Hey," Zach calls from across the fire. "I heard that. Peaches is not a rat."

"She picked a fight with Louie," Blair adds, settling into the chair beside me. "Then hid behind Zach's legs when he whined at her." Louie's the calmest out of the dogs. He's one of the puppies dumped on the front step of Cadence's rescue. We all helped bottle-feed them, so there was no way they were getting adopted by anyone but us.

"She's scrappy," Zach defends. "Like her daddy."

Kade, Jonas, and Zach all start arguing about how not scrappy Zach is. Blair carefully helps Noah get his marshmallow off, then hands the stick to Micah as he and Holly approach. Holly's got little Grace strapped to her chest.

Blair leans across me to chat with Evie, but suddenly Evie’s up, heading for the barbecue to rescue Colton from John.

Blair groans and shakes her head. "Why won't he just let John do it?"

"I don't know. It's getting ridiculous at this point." Colton's insistence on becoming a barbecue master would be fine if he could stop burning everything he touches. But the man's either wandering away or insisting everything's fine while actual flames are shooting out of the grill.

I tug Blair’s chair until it’s touching mine.Still not close enough. "I need to buy one of those two-person chairs. So we can be closer."

"You had me plenty close half an hour ago."

I smirk at her because I'm still feeling all kinds of satisfied. "Yeah, I did."

She laughs, shaking her head like I'm being silly. But I see the heat in her cheeks. She remembers how good I gave it to her. I'm going to do my best to corner her again tonight once the kids are asleep.

"She's a lifesaver you know," Blair says. I follow her gaze to Holly and Micah, lounging on the other side of the fire, trying to keep up with the topic change.

"Holly?"

She hums a yes. "Dad was never good with the paperwork. And I didn't do much better. I know I made a bit of a stink about it. It felt weird to have someone that wasn't a McKenna in there. But it's such a relief."

Figuring out who decided to move here permanently, Micah or Holly, is kind of a chicken-and-the-egg thing. But one day, they showed up at the front door, looking all kinds of serious.

Within weeks, Micah had permanently taken over one of the three bays at McKenna's, and Holly was getting the office into shape.

"I'm glad you were open to it. Micah's custom stuff comes with a lot of extra overhead and paperwork. And he doesn't like being too far from her."

"They're adorable together," she says, grinning as Micah hauls a squealing Noah onto his lap. Noah giggles through some tickles, then very adorably leans over and gives his baby sister a kiss on the top of her head. Then he stays for a second, snuggled in Holly's sizable chest. "And they make very beautiful babies."

"They sure do."

We sit, holding hands, letting the busyness around us blur together. Finally, I lift my wife's hand to my lips and press a kiss there. "You happy?"

She turns questioning eyes to me. "Of course I'm happy. Why?"

"You just… sometimes, the way you watch the women who are pregnant makes me wonder if you wish things were different?"

She doesn't brush me off, just looks back at Becca and Janey, who just woke up from her nap and plopped herself into Jonas's lap, looking like she'd like to go back to sleep.

"I think having that experience with you, making a baby would have been wonderful. But I love what we have now. I love the freedom we have."

"But you watch them so much."

She winces, biting her lip. Then she leans in and lowers her voice. "It's just… I know it's a normal, natural thing, but I can't help thinking that one of them might just burst their way out,Aliensstyle."

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