Page 21 of Nothing to This (Nothing to… #8)

“Broke up with him?” Brenna asked from her place on the couch. “Give me details. You broke up with him? Like it’s over?”

Sitting on the floor at the coffee table in JD’s office, she divided the various food items they’d picked up from the market.

“I don’t know,” she said, nudging her friend’s knee with her elbow, glaring up to silence her.

Brenna rolled her eyes in apology as the office door opened. JD came striding in with Greg behind him.

Noticing them, the men stopped.

JD crooked a brow.

She smiled and licked her fingertip. “Conference room two is free.”

“So is my office,” he said and headed for his desk. “Or it’s supposed to be. What are you doing in here? I thought you ate with the kids every day.”

On reaching his desk, he pulled out the chair and two little roaring people leaped out from underneath. Doing his fatherly duty, and probably because he was a little taken aback, he put a hand to his chest and gasped, pretending they’d really terrified him.

Sky laughed.

Kye jumped up and down. “Did we scare you, Daddy? Were you scared?”

“Terrified, Sprout,” JD said, picking up his boy while Sky climbed into his seat. “How are you doing today?”

“This is a big office,” Sky said, pushing against the desk to spin the chair.

“Sweetpea, stop spinning, you’ll get dizzy,” she said, shifting onto her knees to reposition the paper plates on the opposite side of the table. “Come over here and eat, please. Daddy has to work.”

JD caught the back of the chair to stop it from spinning and put Kye down. Their son ran across the room, seeking his plate.

Sky climbed up to stand on the chair to reach for her father. Picking her up, JD pressed a kiss to her cheek. When he tried to put her down, she locked her arms tighter around his neck.

“Daddy, who is that man?” Sky asked.

Damn, talk about tenacious. Their daughter’s feisty spirit would get her into trouble one of these days, especially if she aimed it outside of the family. But her confident little girl would stand her ground and get herself out of any messes she got herself into; Sky’s wits were impeccable.

“That’s Daddy’s friend Greg,” JD said.

“Is my daddy your boss?” Sky asked.

Brenna laughed out loud; she tried to be more discreet about enjoying Greg’s obvious discomfort. Reaching over the table, she straightened Kye’s plate and gave him a napkin.

“Uh, yes,” Greg said. “Your dad is everyone’s boss, honey.”

“He’s not the boss of Mommy.”

Brenna laughed even louder and slapped a hand onto her shoulder. “That’s right,” Brenna exclaimed. “We know who wears the pants in their household.”

Greg didn’t know where to look or what to say, poor guy.

She pushed up, bracing her hands on the coffee table to sit on the couch.

“Sky, that’s enough. Come over and eat with your brother, please.”

She pressed a long, sloppy kiss to her father’s cheek as he put her on her feet. JD was too polite to wipe the slobber from his face, though there was probably a part of him that liked bearing his daughter’s mark.

Sky came over to get her lunch plate. She ignored her daughter’s grumbling about the salad and gave her a napkin. Leaving the kids with their aunt, she carried a plate and a napkin to JD’s desk. She put the sandwich down and moved in close to wipe away Sky’s kiss with the napkin.

“I liked that there,” he said, resting a steadying hand on her waist.

Smirking, she was careful not to rub too hard. “It’s inappropriate for the CEO to wear young women’s kisses in the middle of the day.”

“Really?” he asked and slid his other hand onto her waist. “When is it appropriate for him to wear them?”

“At home,” she said. “At night.”

“She goes to bed kinda early.”

“Then, I guess you’re out of luck,” she said, tossing the napkin to the desk.

With a tighter grip, he pulled her closer. “Isn’t there some rule of substitutes in your apartment?”

One side of her mouth rose as her head tilted the other way. “Are you flirting with me, Mr. Dawes?”

“Greg,” Brenna declared. “Would you like a sandwich? Come and sit with me here on the couch. It seems polite for us to entertain ourselves with our backs to those two while they strut around each other.”

“We are not strutting,” she said, pushing away from JD, who pinched her, stealing her focus once more as she moved away from him.

It could’ve been her imagination, but it suddenly occurred to her that her hips moved with a little extra swagger. Did they? Why would she be doing that?

“Really? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure the windows just steamed up,” Brenna said. “And why did we choose to come up here to eat?”

Greg sat beside Brenna on the couch, as he’d been directed to, so she went to the opposite couch and sat behind her daughter, monitoring both kids as they ate.

“Because Daddy has asked to eat lunch with the sprouts,” she said, opening Sky’s sandwich to put the lettuce back inside as the little one tried to push the salad off to the edge of the plate.

“Momma!” she whined.

Leaning back, she cleared her throat, and fixated on the other side of the room, over Brenna and Greg’s heads.

“Daddy likes his sandwich,” she said, projecting her voice, forcing JD’s attention from the papers on his desk.

“Huh?” JD asked. She eyed Sky, who was probably blinking at her father in wonder. “Oh, yeah.” Grabbing up the plate she’d put on his desk, he took a huge bite from his sandwich and made noises of delight, getting a laugh from her and the kids. “It’s amazing. Love it.”

Sky grabbed her sandwich and tried to take a bite as big as her father. Rubbing her back, she didn’t want their little one to choke.

“Take your time, sweetpea.”

JD came over and dropped onto the couch beside her, taking another bite. “Don’t eat too fast, I want the rest of yours,” he said around his food, making a show of leaning over Kye to examine his plate. “Leave that tomato, I want that.”

Wearing a grin, Kye grabbed the tomato and stuffed it into his mouth.

JD made a sound of horror and Sky grabbed for her cherry tomato to eat it too.

Caught up in the moment, she grabbed the cherry tomato from JD’s plate and sucked it between her lips.

For a second, he just looked at her, stunned.

The kids whooped and leaped up to climb onto the couch with their parents.

“Go, Mommy,” Sky said, stealing the other tomato from JD’s plate to put it in her mother’s mouth.

With half a pack of the fruit still in the store’s bag, they weren’t short of them. Still, the kids seemed determined to remove all from their father’s reach.

“Don’t choke Mommy before she’s signed the life insurance papers, guys,” JD said, patting her on the back.

She swallowed. “If Daddy dies, I get to run his empire until the babies come of age, right?” she asked and turned sultry eyes on Greg. “Want to get together later?”

“Yeah, funny,” JD said, sliding his hand into hers on the seat of the couch. “You pair get down and finish your food. Daddy has a meeting in an hour. My bank manager isn’t much of a picnic guy.”

“That isn’t what he told Rylee last week,” Brenna said, wiping her lower lip with a fingertip and bobbing her brows.

“He wasn’t serious about that,” she said, helping the kids settle at their food again. “And please remember my children are in the room?”

“Tom hit on you?” JD asked.

“Not really. He was being polite.”

Sky was arranging her plate when she asked, “Auntie Brenna?”

“Yeah, babes?”

“Can I be a lesbinum too?”

In less than a second, glee spread on Brenna’s face. She wasn’t sure she wanted to look at JD, Greg was gobsmacked.

“You sure can, babes,” Brenna said. “I’ll show you all the best places to pick up chicks.”

“I don’t like boys,” Sky said, with all the innocence of a four-year-old. She was still arranging her food, opening her sandwich to line up the contents, as she always did before taking a bite.

“I don’t like boys either,” Brenna said. “I think it’s growing up with a brother that does it. Living with them sucks.”

“Yeah, Kye’s stinky,” Sky said and shoved her brother, who was oblivious to the discussion.

“I did not turn you into a lesbian,” JD said. “And stop recruiting my daughter.”

“Oh, come on,” Rylee said. “It wouldn’t be that bad if Sky was gay. At least you wouldn’t have to build a tower for her.”

“Are you kidding? I’d build it even higher,” JD said. “Women are relentless.”

Brenna settled back on the couch, holding the plate against her chest as she picked up crumbs with a fingertip.

“We are that, brother… But I have a feeling it would be your little princess doing the chasing. She knows what she wants.”

“She doesn’t know what a lesbian is,” JD said. True, though Sky didn’t know what heterosexual meant either, or, hopefully, anything about sex at all. “She’s repeating a word she heard… probably from you.”

“Probably,” Brenna said. “There’s no need to be quite so affronted about it. I remember you and me bonding over ogling plenty of hot women in our younger days, placing bets to see who’d get the furthest.”

“When we were kids, Bren.”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do with a woman that you probably haven’t done too, which reminds me…” Leaning forward, over her crossed legs, Brenna discarded her plate to focus her complete attention. “You never told me what this tongue thing was that you like, Ry.”

“Tongue thing?” Greg asked, finally returning to the moment.

Brenna glanced back at him. “Yeah, apparently Jame does this thing with his tongue on Rylee’s pussy that just drives her wild.”

“Okay,” JD said. “I guess I have to say it too: my children are in the room.”

“They don’t care,” Brenna said, looking from one of them to the other and then reaching into the bag beside the couch to pull out two pots of pudding. “Who likes chocolate?”

The kids bounced and grabbed for it.

She snagged the pots from Brenna to set them on the table. “After their sandwiches.”

Sky and Kye glanced back.

“Daddy’s not eating,” Kye said.

Setting her eyes on him, she and the kids waited until he took another bite of his sandwich. After that, the twins returned to their lunches.

“Will you tell me now?” Brenna asked when the kids were occupied.

“I didn’t think you were sleeping together yet,” Greg said, putting his empty plate on the table. “When did that start up again?”

“They’re not sleeping together now,” Brenna said, pausing to make eye contact. “Are you?”

“No,” she drawled like she was talking to one of the kids.

Brenna turned to Greg. “This was something they did on the one night they spent together.”

“And they’re still talking about it now?”

Brenna shrugged and pointed at him. “Exactly.”

“It was that good?”

“Good enough to impregnate her,” Brenna said, gesturing at each twin in turn. “Twice!”

“I don’t think I impregnated her with my tongue,” JD said.

This conversation was getting away from them.

“Can we not say ‘impregnate’ around the children, please?”

“It’s biology,” Brenna said. “They should know about the birds and the bees.”

“Not at four.”

“They’re almost five,” Brenna said.

“I like bees,” Sky said, licking her finger, then wiping it on her daddy’s slacks.

“Bees are for babies,” Kye said.

She held up both hands. “Okay, everyone, let’s finish our food in peace, please!”

Too tired, she didn’t attempt to build another sandwich for herself. Her mind raced. She couldn’t even think clearly enough to put food together. Happy to stay slumped on the couch, exhaustion ran through her veins.

JD swung his plate around, offering her the other half of his sandwich. “Boss has to eat something.”

Straightening, she took the plate. “We’re not at home.”

“We’re with family.” He winked. “You’re the boss.”