Page 98 of Mountain Rescue
Noah had taken over everything else, including building maintenance, anything to do with the lodge and cabins, the shooting range, and ran their landscape crew with the precision of a general. The grounds were beautiful. Jack didn’t know what he’d do without him. Without any of them, actually.
“Daddy, watch!” yelled Jordan, his seven-year-old son.
“Wow, good job, buddy.” He swallowed his laugh when Maggie May fell over backward. He assumed his son was trying to teach her to sit. Jordan had decided that Maggie May was his dog, and he was determined to teach her tricks. The dog was dumber than a brick, but neither Jordan nor Maggie May seemed to care. All that mattered was the two of them loved each other to distraction.
“Where’s Cammie?”
“She’s riding a pony. She’s not really ’cause Mommy’s holding her on the pony, but Mommy said we’re letting her think she is.”
“I see.” His three-year-old daughter was as stubborn as they came. Cameron also thought she could do everything by herself.
The shouts from the kids playing T-ball caught his attention. He chuckled at seeing Rambo with their ball in his mouth. The kids were having more fun chasing him than actually playing. Deke, the game umpire, and Heather, the cheerleader for their son’s team, were ignoring the kids in favor of kissing. Jack wished Nichole would find him. He’d like to be kissing her right now.
He lowered his hand to the top of Dakota’s head. “You doing okay, girl?” She leaned against his leg. She was getting old, and he was going to cry like a baby when he lost her. But this wasn’t a day to think about that.
Twice a year, in the spring and fall, they held a weeklong open house. Many of their alumni returned for the festivities. Locals were welcome, Operation Warriors Center sponsors showed up, and best of all, friends and family came. It was a lot of work to organize what always ended up being controlled chaos, but those two weeks were his favorite. This week was their fall event, so the activities had been geared toward winter games.
“Your Grammie and Dirty Mary are telling my brothers dirty jokes,” Dallas said as he walked up with Noah. Bella was glued to Dallas’s leg. She wasn’t fond of open house days. Too many strange people, too much noise, and she didn’t like being away from her cat. She also didn’t like being away from Dallas, so it was always a dilemma whether to come with him or stay home. Since Dallas always gave her a choice, she’d obviously decided to stick with him today. On non-open house days, it was quieter, and many times her cat would come with them. Blue loved the barn and horses, especially Dallas’s horse, Lego.
Noah snorted. “Dirty Mary’s also asking which one of them wants to date a cougar. She told them that once they got it on with a cougar, they’d be ruined for anyone else.”
“They seem to be enjoying themselves,” he said as he watched Dallas’s brothers laughing their asses off.
Dallas chuckled. “Yeah, they love Dirty Mary.”
A very pregnant Rachel, Nichole carrying a sleeping Cammie, and Peyton joined them, each wife snuggling against her husband’s side. Jack eased his daughter away from Nichole and held Cammie to his chest, inhaling her little-girl smell. She was growing up too fast. Before he knew it, he’d have to get the shotgun out to scare off a bunch of teenage boys. Yeah, he hadn’t forgotten the things that ran through a boy’s dirty little mind. Cammie could have supervised dates when she turned eighteen...maybe.
“Oh.” Rachel took Dallas’s hand and put it on her stomach. “Your daughter’s been playing kick Mommy’s tummy all day.”
The expression on Dallas’s face as he felt his baby kicking was pure happiness. This was their first, so it was all new to them, and even though he’d experienced it twice, Jack had the sudden desire to see Nichole with a rounded belly again. He glanced down at his wife, and his breath caught at the longing he saw in her eyes. She’d said only two, but from the way she was looking at Rachel’s stomach, maybe he could talk her into one more. They could start trying tonight.
“You want to feel?” Rachel asked Peyton.
Peyton’s eyes widened, and she actually took a step away. “No, that might be contagious.”
“You’re silly,” Rachel said, laughing. “Being pregnant is not contagious.”
Noah and Peyton didn’t want kids, saying all they needed was each other. Jack thought they didn’t know what they were missing, but he respected their decision.
“Where’s Lucky?” he said, realizing he hadn’t seen their dog for a while.
“He decided he wanted to hang with TG and June for a while,” Noah said. “Might be because that’s where the food is. That dog loves to eat.”
TG and June had become close friends over the years. TG’s mother had walked out on him and his dad when he was a baby, and Jack thought June had become a kind of mother figure to the man. Not surprising, June and Dirty Mary had an ongoing game of trying to be the most outrageous. They were highly entertaining.
He eyed his brothers. “Remember that night in Kandahar when we were hunkered down trying to stay warm and we made predictions about what we’d be doing when we returned to civilian life?” He glanced at each of the wives, then his gaze slid over the grounds and what they’d accomplished. “None of us predicted this. That we’d each have a beautiful wife and a place we created that’s helping so many of our people.”
“Hooyah,” Dallas said, holding up his fist.
Jack and Noah bumped their fists to his, the three of them saying “Hooyah” together.
Life was good, damn good.