Page 66 of Where It All Began
She raised an eyebrow. “If short-term memory serves, you were willing to let me drive away from you.”
“I was stupid. Insane. An idiot. I must have had a stroke.”
She stared hard at the check and its looping numbers. She held in her hand her family’s salvation. And Blue Moon had given it to her. No stipulations, no requirements, just pure generosity.
“I don’t know how to accept this. It’s too much, too big. How can I ever say thank you?” Tears clouded her vision until she saw nothing but a blur of color sweeping out before her. They spilled over, hot on her cheeks.
“You can spend the rest of your life here with the rest of us,” Bruce suggested.
“They’re not going to start chanting ‘Join us, join us,’ are they?” Phoebe murmured up at John.
“Wouldn’t put it past them.” He wrapped his free arm around her waist and pulled her back to her feet. “But remember, you’re mine first and a Mooner second.”
“What would you have done if I hadn’t come back?”
“Drank every beer in the fridge, polished off your wine, and when I sobered up, I was going to come find you and beg for your forgiveness.”
“This way is a lot more efficient.”
“How are you going to stand spending your life with such an idiot?” John asked, tracing her jaw tenderly with the tip of his finger.
She sighed at the feelings that swamped her at his touch. “You can make it up to me by giving me all girls.”
John sealed the deal with a kiss that Phoebe would remember for the rest of her life.
Growing
Chapter Twenty-Four
1992
John didn’t give her girls. He gave Phoebe three boys, each the spitting image of him. On the outside, there wasn’t a hint of Phoebe on a single one of them. But she’d made her mark on the inside. They were headstrong, stubborn to a fault, and had little regard for consequences.
And most days, Phoebe couldn’t imagine her life any other way.
But not today. Today, she was deciding which one of those little monsters she was going to murder first.
Carter, the leader at six, still held the kitchen shears proudly in his little hands. He stood next to his younger brother Beckett. At four, Beckett was the middle child, and despite what so much psychology touted, the kid would never be overlooked. At least, not with the haircut his big brother had just given him.
There were bald spots. Bald spots for God’s sake on his little head. And he was strutting around as if he’d just dropped eight bucks at the Snip Shack for a professional job.
Phoebe rubbed a hand over her face, her wedding band cool on her overheated forehead. Usually she looked at the slim gold band and sent up a prayer of gratitude for her husband. Tonight, however, she cursed his name. John Pierce had done this to her.
She had a master’s degree for God’s sake. That was no preparation for dealing with these hellions.
“Okay, boys,” she breathed, trying to lull them into confessing with a calm tone. “Carter, why did you think Beckett needed you to cut his hair.”
“Well, Mom.” It was always ‘mom’ from Carter, never ‘mama’ or ‘mommy.’ Beneath his six-year-old surface, the kid was forty years old. “You said you had to give us all haircuts ‘cuz of pictures, and you know Beckett gets scared of the clippers. So I used scissors.” He was so proud of his problem-solving.
Oh, my God. The family pictures John had scheduled for them at Sears.
“You like it, Mama?” Beckett grinned, showing two missing teeth. One had been a legitimate loose tooth. The other a casualty of little brother Jax shoving him off the merry-go-round at the park.
Speak of the devil, bare feet hustled down the hallway. “Mama, I no feel good—” Jax, two, with only a diaper and t-shirt stepped into the kitchen.
“Honey, where are your pants?” The damn kid was constantly stripping.
He didn’t answer. At least, not with words. With the natural forces of a volcano, Jax spewed vomit in a perfect 180-degree arc.
