Page 40 of Legally Mated
“For certain definitions of helping?” Laine asked in dry amusement and watched the corners of Holland’s mouthtwitchup.
“Something like that.” He leaned on the doorframe and watched the children for a moment, then looked back over to Laine. “You want coffee or abeer?Tea?”
“Coffee is fine, if you havesomemade.”
“I don’t, but it doesn’t take long.” He disappeared back inside the house and Laine followed, with a last glance at thetwins.
“The kids are growing,” he said, a nice neutral topic ofconversation.
Holland paused in ladling coffee grounds into a filter to give him a startled look, then opened his mouth on a silent, ah. “You mean the pups? Yes, well, the twins are two now. Two and a bit, actually. Vawn’s a year old.” He pushed the button on the coffeemaker and turned back to the stove. “They’re pretty good. Bram’s got them well-trained.” There was something odd in his tone, almost disbelief, but humoraswell.
“Where’s yours?” Laine askedpolitely.
“The older two are hopefully not preparing to fall out of the tree. The younger one is upstairs, asleep.” Holland tasted some rich reddish sauce from one of the pots and reached for a bottle of dried herbs. “Thank Lysoonka for this stage, when they’re still not much more than a potato.” He sprinkled a little of whatever was in the bottle into the sauce and stirredagain.
A phone buzzed on the countertop. Holland glanced at the screen and grimaced. “I have to take this.” He turned down the pot on the stove and picked up the phone. “Hey Alex,” he said as he walked out into the living room. Laine sat at the table and listened to the gurgle and hiss of the coffee maker, catching only the odd word from Holland’s conversation, though he heard enough to guess that it had something to do with Holland’s modelingcareer.
When the conversation hadn’t ended by the time the coffeemaker had made it’s last groaning gurgle, Laine got up from his chair and helped himself to a cup, glancing out the window to see the three small children now surrounding a huge bear of a man.Wolf, he corrected himself, and watched with fascination as Duke hung the giggling children off his shoulders and arms and started walking them toward the house. All fiveofthem.
Duke came in through the door and scraped the two oldest off against the wall. “Git, you fleas, and go wash up.” They giggled louder and clung with even greater determination, until Holland came back from the living room, shook his head, and said, “Just squish them.” He laughed at the delighted shrieks as they thumped to the floor to avoid their certain demise, and pointed them through a door that Laine hadn’t noticeduntilnow.
Without missing a beat, Holland scooped the baby out of Duke’s arms and sniffed. “You need to be changed.” He reached to check the diapers on the two toddlers. “They could probably use newonestoo.”
“You’d be surprised how much these grocery store diapers will hold.” Duke winked and let Holland take one of the twins, Laine wasn’t surewhichone.
“I’m glad you talked Bram into buying them, even if they areexpensive.”
“We only use them at night, usually,” Duke said, and wandered over to the stove. “Oh, curry.Thankyou.”
“Will Bram eat it?” Holland called from the bedroom. Leaning forward and peering down the hallway, Laine could just see Holland bent over the bed, and bits and pieces of the children behind him as Holland stripped them out of their dirtydiapers.
“Bram’s going to get something at the hospital,” Duke called down the hallway, then put the baby down. “Go find Holland,” he told the child, and little legs waddled past Laine, the soggy diaper hanging low. Duke, meanwhile, headed for the bathroom and the two older children, so Laine followed the toddler down the hall to thebedroom.
“Isolde, did your Dad just let you run around by yourself?” Holland reached to pick her up, then had to dart back to the bed to grab her brother as he started to scramble away, still half-naked. “If you’re going to be like that, you can go four-footed, but don’t you dare pee on thefloor!”
“Here, I’ll get him.” Laine picked up the little boy and laid him on the bed again. “Diaper?”
“Right here.” Holland tossed him one, then watched with one eyebrow cocked as Laine finished cleaning Jedrick up and got the dangerous bits secured beneath another of the store-bought diapers. “I didn’t realize you knew how todothat.”
“Well, I never had a boy,” Laine said as he helped Jedrick down off the bed. “But it was fifty-fifty between myself and my ex after she went backtowork.”
“Right, you said you’d been married.” Holland finished diapering Vawn, his expression thoughtful. “How long ago was itagain?”
“The divorce was made final about six months before Garrick contacted me about Jason’s case.” Laine stood by like a surgical nurse while Holland changed Isolde, handing him wipes and creams and finally a clean diaper. “Did you think Garrick was a reboundforme?”
“Only for a second,” Hollandadmitted.
Laine huffed a soft laugh. “You know, he had about half that case ready to go before he even approached me with it? F—flippingbrilliant.”
Holland grinned at my near miss with the swear word in front of little ears. “If I hadn’t believed you before, I would have known from that.” His expression sobered as he set Isolde on the floor and we watched her scamper away after her brother. Vawn yawped and squirmed to get down, but as soon as he hit the floor, he changed his shape and went bounding after the other two, leaving the diaper on the floor behind him. Holland sighed. “He still gets around faster that way. I should be putting my foot down about it—I know Bram does—but...” His voicetrailedoff.
“You’re tired,” Laine told him gently. “You’ve got a lot on yourplate.”
Holland shrugged and threw me a commiserating smile. “I guess. Comes with the job. Jobs. Come on, let’s go have supper, and thenwe’lltalk.”
Laine followed him out into the hallway. “I dropped by the prosecutor’s office today. They’re going to charge him with attempted murder and a few otherthings.”
Holland paused and turned toward him just before they got to the kitchen. “That’s not the story that Quin gotearlier.”
