Page 19 of The Cowboy's Bullfighter
Then he was going to have to talk Benji down out of the trees. He assumed that he was up there with Mina.
Thank God for Mason. The boy wasn’t the brightest on earth, but he was good-natured and he liked to play football. That was it. Those were the things he could say about Mason—good-natured, needed copious amounts of food, liked to play football.
If he was mad, Coop sent him out to run something over. If he was happy, Coop sent him out to run something over. It was a bright blessing and, in a line of six children, five of whom were complicated as fuck, it was nice to be able to deal with one boy.
Brooks sighed, rubbing his hand over his face. “Sure. Sure, I’ll come meet them all.”
“Good man.” See? No beating required. Coop had no damn doubt in his mind that Brooks was just going to lurk under the waterline like an alligator and wait for his chance to make a big fucking splash, but right now the guy looked exhausted.
So he was no doubt conserving energy.
Brooks got up. “Let me take this to the kitchen.” He held up the beer.
“I’ll come with.”
“S’your house.”
Damn right it was. And Coop thought he was being utterly reasonable about it.
All of the kids were sitting in the front room on the huge sectional except for Mina and Benji, who were in the recliner. All their eyes were wide as Brooks came in, and Coop put on a big smile.
“Hey, y’all, this is your Uncle Brooks. He was your daddy’s brother. You remember him, huh, Lucy? Ricky?”
Ricky nodded. “I remember you. You brought Lucy a stuffed horse for her birthday. Hi.”
Brooks nodded back. “Hey, guys. I’ve been out of the country and I just found out about…your parents. So I came to?—”
“Help and say hi,” Benji said, his voice hard and sure. “It’s great to have him come visit.”
“Family is important.” Lucy had that look that was older than her years, showing how much she’d been through. She and Mina were the most alike in appearance, although her hair was much more brown where Mina’s was near black. “Right?”
“Right.” Coop offered her a smile.
“Is he going to stay here with us?” That was Mason.
“Yep! We’re going to put him in the guest bedroom, the one on the third floor.” It was a good size, comfortable, and sharing a bathroom with Ricky was…well?—
“How many bedrooms does this monstrosity have?”
“My house has eight bedrooms.” Sure, it was a monstrosity, but it was his monstrosity and he loved it.
“Eight bedrooms?”
“Eight. Which is handy because there’s seven of us and that leaves one all for you.” He was fixin’ to lose his temper.
The kids stared at him, and Benji’s lips were tight, so he powered on.
“I thought we’d have pizzas. That’s something easy. We all can have whatever we want on ours. And I do want to hear what everybody did because I didn’t get to listen to any of the things that happened.” He was not going to let this derail their evening. All they had to do was put up with Brooks so he could go up and get some sleep, and surely, when he came down, he would be more reasonable. Or Coop would dunk him in the hot tub until he began to be.
Either way, what bliss.
“I like pizzas.” Johnny looked nervous as hell. “Mina said Nell was staying for dinner.”
He shook his head. “She had to go home with her dad, but we decided that the sleepover would be maybe fun on Saturday.Pizza and sleeping bags. Movies in the family room. Sound okay?”
Mina nodded. She kept sneaking looks at Brooks like he was going to bite her or something. Poor baby.
Brooks finally smiled, and it did good things to his face. “Sorry, guys. I’m just real tired. Y’all know how far it is to Australia?”
