He was a charmer if I’d ever met one.
“Georgie,” I said, gaining my niece’s attention. “I love you.”
She smiled at me, and it made us laugh because her bare gums showed... or her almost bare gums.
“I can see the tooth you mentioned, Bee,” I said as I lifted my hand and placed my pinkie finger in Georgie’s mouth so I could feel it.
“Branna, don’t!”
“Ow!” I cried and snatched my hand away. “She bit me!”
Georgie laughed and so did Ryder and Dominic.
“I tried to warn you,” my sister winced. “She bites everythin’ now. Every. Thing.”
I rubbed my thumb over my throbbing finger.
“That’s the last time I put me fingers near your mouth,” I said to Georgie and playfully narrowed my eyes.
“She’ll learn not to put her fingers near your mouth either,” Dominic mused.
I looked at him. “Why not?”
“Your surname is now Slater, but you’re a Murphy at heart, and Murphy girls bite.”
“That’s true.” Bronagh chirped. “Georgie is a Slater, but she’s a Murphy, too. She’ll be every bit like us.”
“Heaven help me,” Dominic said teasingly.
I snickered. “Oh, give over. We’re harmless.”
“When you’re sleeping,” Ryder commented.
I gasped. “How dare you!”
“My mistake.” My husband smirked. “You still have some bite in you even when you sleep. I’ve the marks to prove it.”
“It’s your own fault for wakin’ me up for sex; you know that never ends well for you.”
“Bullshit.” Ryder laughed. “Nine times out of ten, I get what I wake you up for.”
I cocked a brow. “But there’s still a chance it can go very wrong.”
“It’s worth the risk.”
I tried not to smile but epically failed.
“You’re both so cute that it’s actually makin’ me feel sick.”
I looked at my sister. “Maybe you’re just pregnant again.”
Bronagh hissed. “Don’t jinx me!”
“What’s wrong with you being pregnant again?” Dominic asked, his tone displeased at his fiancée’s obvious hiss of anger.
“Georgie is only four months old,” my sister said in duh tone.
“So? Jax is ten months old, and Aideen isn’t far off her due date with her second baby,” Dominic countered.
“Aideen is a machine,” Bronagh deadpanned. “I’m not.”
“I want another baby, though,” he said, no trace of humour in his tone.
I shared a look with Ryder who shook his head at me, silently telling me not to get involved. I mentally grunted because I was still learning to keep my nose out of my sister’s relationship especially when an argument occurred in my presence.
“You can’t make a baby here,” I said, hoping to break the tension. “We’re still present.”
Dominic’s lips twitched, indicating he’d heard me, but he didn’t look away from Bronagh as he awaited her response. She was gnawing on her lower lip, her nervousness showing.
“But I’ve only got six pounds to go to get back to me pre-pregnancy weight.”
If I heard about her weight or her diet one more time, I was going to kick her. It was all she talked about, and if it was grinding my gears, I could only imagine how much it peeved Dominic.
“Babe, come on. You had Georgie four months ago, and you already have the body of wet dreams,” he said and pulled her against his chest. “You know I want five kids, at least, and you were the one who said you wanted them to be close in age.”
Bronagh narrowed her eyes. “Don’t use me own words against me, Fuckface.”
I playfully gasped as I reached over and covered Georgie’s ears. “Language!”
Dominic grinned at Bronagh when she cringed as she looked at me and said, “Sorry.”
I looked down at my niece when I removed my hands and said, “Your Mammy has a sailor’s mouth.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Dominic said then grunted when I guessed Bronagh socked him one in the stomach.
“Four more,” he rasped. “That was the deal.”
“You made a deal on how many kids you were both havin’?” I asked on a snicker.
“We talked about it midway through me pregnancy with Georgie,” Bronagh said with a grunt. “Dominic and the brothers have this weird thing about the number five. There are five of them, so they each want five kids.”
I remembered Keela calling Alec and asking him about that a couple of years ago, and he mentioned the same thing, but I thought it was just a joke.
“Well, I’m not havin’ five kids,” I firmly stated. “I’m thirty-three and don’t plan on spendin’ the rest of me thirties pregnant.”
My sister instantly looked at Ryder.
“You’ve gone and done it now,” she said then grinned at me when I glared at her.
“Why not, Bran?” Ryder asked me, stepping between me and my sister to force my focus on him.
I shrugged. “‘Cause it’s a lot of kids.”
“Yeah,” Ryder agreed. “It is, but it’s a good number.”
For him maybe.
“We’re both thirty-three, if I have four more after this one, it’ll take years to pop them all out. That’s not addin’ in the time it would take to get pregnant. We got lucky on this baby, but it doesn’t always work out like that. Sometimes tryin’ can take a long time.”