Page 42 of Trickster King

I fought the urge to laugh at the reminder of when one of my old teachers had come into my kitchen and had tried to tell me how to cook. Afterwards, I realized my sneaky wife had put the man up to it, aware I’d been shorter tempered than usual and itching for a fight—and not the kind we indulged in before running a risk of adding more kids to our herd. I’d spent the entire dispute smacking my ladle against the side of my leg.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Eddie had witnessed the entire thing, and Jessica had taken care of explaining how even calm people, like me, could be pushed into having an argument with someone.

My teacher had left laughing, praising me for having finally managed to rule something properly.

“I wouldn’t actually beat them, not unless they were hurting a horse. And then can anyone blame me for smacking around an idiot with a ladle if he’s hurting a horse?” No matter how hard my wife tried, whenever I witnessed someone abusing a horse, somebody got hit, the lawyers got involved, and as a general rule, I won the dispute because nobody could come up with a good reason why I shouldn’t use a little force to stop the fool from beating a horse.

If the horse could defend itself, I observed before using minimal force.

If the horse couldn’t defend itself, things got sketchy in a hurry.

“Mom says I should probably not follow you in your footsteps on that one, but she can’t really blame you. She’d shock them for doing it, and then she’d have to use her lawyers, too,” Eddie informed me in a grave tone. “But I’ll be just like you if I see somebody hurting a horse.”

I didn’t care if Eddie’s other fathers yelled at me; I nodded my approval. “Once Geoff is done in the shower, it’s your turn, and I want you to dress in your nicest pair of jeans and a button-up shirt. I know you had a quick shower at the ranch, but let’s make sure there’s no fungus among us. Don’t worry about the restaurant’s dress code if they have one. I am going to be dressed casually as well.”

Nobody enforced dress codes on the king, and I enjoyed that part of going out and about in society. When we gave the RPS agents warning, a few came wearing similar clothes, likely in an effort to mitigate my anxiety.

I’d wisely left all my suits at home, and upon figuring out I meant to run away, one of my agents had brought a bag with my casual clothes. While my agents would worry about my anxiety levels, I would delight in dodging suits for the next two or so weeks. Considering my back problems, I really would be lucky to make it a week and five days, but I wanted my new cows, and I wanted my wife to give them to me. I would hold on, even if I had to fake being all right after the three days Jessica anticipated it would take for my back to give out on me.

Five minutes later, Geoff emerged from the bathroom, and he’d gone the casual route as well. Eddie barreled in, dragging his bag with him, leaving the RPS agent to regard the closed door with a raised brow. “What did you do? Promise him a second horse?”

“We’re having steak and seafood for dinner tonight,” I informed the agent. “This is apparently motivation to conquer the shower without making a fuss over it. He’s probably taking the fungal infection part of things seriously. I told him I knew he’d taken a quick shower at the ranch, but he didn’t seem to object to another round.”

Micky had invited everyone to use his shower, but the child had been the only one to be ordered in. Adults knew better than to roll around on fresh beds while potentially carrying around fungus.

Children saw freshly made beds and wished to roll upon them, so we’d wisely taken care of him first. The RPS agents had likely wanted me to do the same, but a promise to be the first to shower once in the hotel had been enough to appease them.

Everyone’s shoes had endured their soles being sprayed down with antifungals and dried off with rags before we’d gotten into the vehicles.

“That he would. He’s almost as bad as we are whenever you get ill,” Geoff replied in a rueful tone. “If you could follow your wife’s example a little more, we’d appreciate it.”

I chuckled; I did everything I could to boost my poor immune system. “I do seem to have this habit of picking up most bugs every other Texan is spreading around for some reason. It’s like now that I can afford to get medical care, my body has decided I need it. And it pains me how grateful I am that I can afford my constant visits to the physicians. They wish they saw less of me, though. Just be glad I seem to only make friends with one cold a year rather than every single one.”

“We’re very grateful for that. But I will be inquiring with the physicians why you seem unable to fight off fungal infections in your lungs.”

I read between the lines and eyed the RPS agent. “You think there’s an underlying health issue.”

“I am concerned there might be one or two. I’m more concerned that you might develop asthma. I’m concerned to the point I may have gotten inhalers for you that I carry around if they’re unexpectedly needed.”

As the fungal infections caused wheezing that rescue inhalers treated, I tended to have two in my pocket, one meant for short term relief along with the first one’s much bigger brother. If I used the second one, I was to go to the hospital. Engaging Geoff in a staring contest, I retrieved both, displayed them, and raised a brow.

He pulled the same trick, but he had a third one. Intrigued, I pointed at it. “What’s that one?”

“This one is a preventative, designed to be used before excessive exercise. Just in case. If you need the regular rescue inhaler more than four days in a row, you’re to use this one in the morning to see if it lessens severity or prevents them altogether.”

I returned the regular ones to my pocket and held out my hand for the new one. I examined the label and read the warnings along with dosage amounts to discover it might raise my blood pressure, much like the others could—and did—along with something about some men suffering through reduced fertility. “Riddle me this. How can an asthma medication reduce fertility?”

My other medications could do the same, although the existence of the twins on the way, both healthy, implied my fertility had beaten the inhalers.

“It is unknown if the inhalers or the condition decrease fertility in both men and women, but we may have inquired if it might prevent the next batch of children. The doctor I had asked laughed at me, told me to keep dreaming, and implied you were in the top percentile, if not at the very top, of general fertility. As such, it would take a lot more than an inhaler to stop you at this stage.”

I snickered. “You actually asked a doctor?”

“We thought your wife might enjoy a break from being pregnant all the time. It seems we were wrong. Fortunately for everyone involved, we did not notify the queen of the potential risk to your general fertility.”

Right. Jessica would put some serious thought into destroying my inhalers if she thought it might prevent us from adding to our herd. Then she’d go on a rampage in her effort to eradicate everything requiring me to have inhalers kicking around in the first place. “I would have missed you if you’d made such a severe lapse of judgment.”

Geoff joined me in snickering. “That was the general consensus. Where’d Randy disappear to?”

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