I closed my eyes and chuckled to myself. Tonight was a rough one for me, but that was part of life when you had kids, and there was one thing I was absolutely certain of, and that was I fucking loved my life, and there wasn’t a thing I’d changed about it.
Not a damn thing.
Part II
ALEC
CHAPTER ONE
Present day...
I woke up that morning to screaming. Loud, terror-filled screaming. I bolted upright and reached for Keela out of instinct, only to find her side of the bed empty. I fumbled with the blanket that covered me and ended up getting my legs tangled, causing me to fall off the bed and land shoulder first on the hard oak floor.
Fuck.
“Alec!”
My heart nearly burst with fear as I jumped to my feet and quickly detangled myself from the bed sheets. On my sprint out of the room, I grabbed the first thing I could use as a weapon as I rushed down the stairs, and that just happened to be a Power Rangers umbrella. I ran down the hallway the second my feet touched the floor and skidded into the kitchen. My arms and the umbrella were raised and ready for battle. My eyes darted from left to right, and when I saw no intruders, my body slightly relaxed ... until I spotted my wife on the kitchen table.
“I thought you were being murdered!” I glared at her. “What the hell is wrong with you, woman?”
“Just kill it!” my wife pleaded. “Oh, God. Kill it.”
Kill what?
I looked at where Keela was pointing, and when I saw the man-eating tarantula gliding towards me, I screamed louder than my wife. I used the umbrella in my hand as if it was a sledge hammer, and I beat the life out of the spider. After a solid minute of blind swinging, I came to a halt and inspected the floor. The spider was there, and it was unmoving.
I exhaled a nervous breath.
“I fixed that problem, didn’t I?”
Keela, whose hands were on her hips, shook her head. “Ye’ did well, husband.”
“I wasn’t even scared.”
My wife rolled her eyes as I hunkered down to examine the spider.
“Aw …” I frowned. “I amputated one of his legs by accident.”
Keela, who was still on top of the table, said, “I wish ye’ had decapitated the little fucker.”
I looked up at her. “It seems pointless now that he’s dead.”
She grunted, clearly disagreeing. I looked back down at the spider.
“It’s not even that big now that I’m close—OH MY GOD!”
A very manly roar rose from my throat when the dead spider came back to life and ran towards me—no doubt with murder on his mind. He was down one leg, but that loss of the limb seemed to fuel him because he was moving rapidly around the floor, zigzagging from left to right as if trying to confuse me. He was waiting for an opening to spring on me so he could strike a death blow. I knew he was because if I were in his position, I’d do the exact same thing. I sprung onto the kitchen counter just to get away from him. I threw my umbrella at him when I had a clear shot, and it hit the little fucker square on and squashed him.
“Ha! Come back from that, asshole!”
Things were quiet for a moment, then side-splitting laughter came from my right.
“I almost died, so what the fuck do you find so funny?”
“You,” Keela cackled. “Ye’ practically leapt onto the counter.”
“He was running at me. Did you see how fast he moved?”
“I thought ye’ weren’t scared?”
“I thought it was dead!” I argued. “Of course, I wasn’t scared when I thought it was dead.”
Keela continued to laugh.
“How did you even get up there?” I quizzed as I jumped down from the counter. “Did you use a chair to step up on?”
“Nah,” she answered as I moved in front of her and lifted her to the ground. “I saw the spider and just hopped on it.”
“Oh, yeah?” I waggled my brows, tugging her body against mine suggestively. “I’ve got something else you can hop on, and it’s a whole lot bigger.”
“Please,” my eldest son, Enzo, gagged as he entered the kitchen dressed from head to toe in his soccer gear. “Don’t make me sick before I’ve even had me breakfast.”
Keela pushed my body away from hers like I was scalding hot coal, and it only encouraged me to grope her further. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around her, pulling her backside tight against me.
“There’s nothing sick about a man loving on his woman.”
“It is,” Enzo said as he searched the fridge. “When the man is me aul’ lad, and the woman is me aul’ one.”
Keela gasped in outrage. “I’m nowhere near old enough to be called aul’ one, ye’ little shite.”