Page 49 of Declan (Gold Team #5)

“Dad,” Daphne whined. “Everyone else is going.”

Yeah, boy, one day this will be your life if you have daughters.

That thought made me swallow a groan—I felt old enough as it was. I didn’t need to think about Jack giving me grandchildren.

“Where’s your mom?” I asked.

“Inside helping Madi with her science project.”

Daphne’s lip curled, her dislike for anything not of the hottest trend clear on her face.

Now, my Madi, she loved school, loved to learn and soak up information.

Unfortunately, both of my daughters looked like their mother. In other words, a teenage boy’s wet dream.

That was precisely why I wasn’t giving in.

“Daphne, you know I love you, but the answer is no.”

“Why?” Her hands went to her slender hips and I filled a mental note to speak to Autumn about the shorts my daughter was wearing .

“How many reasons you want, kid?”

At my tone, her hands fell away from her hips and her posture sagged.

“None. I know why,” she relented.

“Right. Why don’t you invite your friends over here? We’ll drag the chairs out and I’ll build you a fire.”

“Really? That’d be cool. Thanks, Daddy.”

My girl’s face beamed and that golden blaze her mother had started all those years ago lit and I took a moment to enjoy the burn.

“One thing, Daph, that punk-ass boyfriend of yours puts his hands on your ass again, he’ll be leaving here ten digits short.”

“You have to stop threatening teenage boys,” Autumn complained as she walked into my shop.

“Baby, I don’t know how many more ways I can explain this, I am not threatening.

That boy put his hands on my girl’s ass.

My sixteen-year-old girl. I am not threatening shit when I explain I will cut his fingers off and not feel the slightest remorse.

And when I’m done with that, I’ll give Jack permission to finish him off.

And just because my boy is thirteen and that punk is sixteen don’t mean shit, because Jack’s got something that punk don’t got—love for his sister. ”

“Jack can’t beat him up, either,” my wife sighed.

“I will, he touches my sister again,” Jack added and Autumn cut her eyes at me.

One could say, my wife had aged well. She was no less hot at fifty than she was at thirty. But as she aged, she matured in a way that was so beautiful I found myself at least once a day staring at her.

“Are we talking about Score?” my sweet Madi asked.

The Score. Motherfucker punk bitch’s nickname was The Score .

And I didn’t care how many times Daphne told me he got his nickname for being the star receiver on the football field, that shit was jacked.

It was also bullshit, because that punk boy was getting himself some, and he’d better not try to get some off my daughter or I’d be removing another appendage.

One he’d want when he became a man. One I would cut off and throw in the garbage.

“Don’t say that, Madi. Daddy just gets growly when he hears Wyatt’s nickname.”

Autumn’s lips tipped up into a smile and a soft giggle escaped.

“You think this is funny?”

“Nope.” She laughed.

“Then why you laughing, baby?”

“No reason.” She laughed harder and I settled in for the show.

A show that was no less beautiful than the first time she’d given it to me. No less special. Her laughter was never taken for granted. Her smiles cherished. Her love and trust earned.

We’d fought hard to have all that we had.

“I know that look. I’m out,” Jack announced.

“You two are gross,” Daphne complained, which only made Autumn laugh harder.

“What? I think it’s sweet when Daddy looks at Mom that way.

” Madi sighed in a way that told me I was in big trouble with her—she was our dreamer.

Daphne was just a normal teenage girl wanting to go to parties with her friends.

My Madi believed in fairy tales. This was because my wife had convinced her children that she was living one.

“Just don’t start kissing until I leave,” Madi added, and hightailed it out of my shop.

Perfect. Alone time with my wife.

“Come here, baby.”

“Why am I always coming to you?”

“Because I like watching your face get soft and your eyes get hungry when you know I’m gonna kiss the fuck outta you.”

Autumn moved to me. Then I kissed the fuck out of my wife.