Total pages in book: 116
Estimated words: 114068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114068 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
I don’t know what. Fear? Defiance? For the first time ever, I can’t read my brother’s expression.
“What are you doing here?” Ryder asks.
Squinting against the morning sun, Colt spits out, “Care to tell me why I found your pocketknife on my sister’s nightstand this mornin’?”
Order Ryder, the next sizzling Lucky River Ranch standalone, here
Bonus Epilogue
Sun & Sand
Wheeler
Five Years Later
“Mommy! Mommy mommy mommy!”
Tucking my feet into my flip-flops, I grin at my daughter’s high-pitched call. “Yes, lovie?”
“Come see!” That’s Robbie. I can hear the smile in his voice. “We look cuuuuute.”
“As a button!” Maggie cries.
“Two cute little buttons,” Robbie singsongs. “Ready for the beach!”
Maggie giggles. “I love the beach. There’s dolphins there.”
“And sharks!” Robbie is obsessed with great whites thanks to Finding Nemo, his current favorite movie.
“Maybe I like the pool better.” Maggie sounds slightly less enthused than her twin brother about the prospect of encountering wildlife at the beach. “We can play in the pool too, Robbie, right?”
“Of course we can! We’re on vacation!”
I turn my head and meet eyes with Duke, who’s brushing his teeth in the sleek hotel bathroom. He grins, his eyes crinkling at the edges.
“We’ve created two little monsters,” he half-whispers around a mouthful of toothpaste.
My grin broadens into a smile. “That’s kind of inevitable when you get a passport at three weeks old.”
“Don’t regret it for a minute.” He turns on the sink and ducks down to cup his hand underneath the faucet. My pulse skips a beat at the way his shirt draws taut against his shoulder blades. The back of his hair sticks up every which way. We may have snuck in a little quickie this morning before the kids were up, and it ended up being a bit more, er, enthusiastic than I think either of us anticipated.
Not to brag, but we’ve kind of mastered the art of hotel sex. We’ve had lots of practice since the kids were born five years ago. We traveled a ton when the twins were really little—Duke wasn’t joking about the kids getting passports as soon as they were earthside—right up until they hit the terrible twos, when we hit pause for a minute. But for the first year or so of their lives, we put them in their carriers and made a point to take them on the road with us as much as possible. We hit up Montreal in the summer, Florida in the winter, with stops in Mexico and Grand Teton National Park in between, where Duke and I got married when the twins were just shy of six months old.
Once they turned three and got a little better about sitting still in a car or on a plane, we really went for it. Over the past two years, we’ve been across the world: Paris, Prague, Japan.
Has it been easy? Not by a long shot. But it’s always (well, usually!) worth it. The kids know the gig by now, and they love experiencing new places with us.
Gathering my hair in a clip, I reply to my husband, “I have no regrets either.”
Then I hustle through the doorway into the adjoining hotel room, gasping in the most exaggerated way possible when I “stumble” upon my children. They’re busy admiring themselves in the full-length mirror inside the closet.
“Y’all really are the cutest.” I mean that. My heart swells taking in their matching little swimsuits and sun hats. They even went so far as to smear sunscreen on each other’s faces, zinc whitening their noses and cheeks.
We’ve only been in California for two days now, but already freckles are popping out on Robbie’s cheeks, and Maggie’s strawberry-blond hair looks lighter.
She jumps up and down, making the back of her bathing suit ride up. “Can we go to the pool now, Mom? Please? I pooped and everything.”
“She did.” Robbie nods solemnly. “Right after I did. That’s the rule, right? You have to poop and put on your swimsuit before you go in the pool.”
Laughing, I bend down to help Maggie with her wedgie, but she wiggles out of my touch. “Don’t fix it, Mommy. I like it like that.”
“With your cheekies hanging out?” Duke groans from somewhere behind me, his footfalls quiet on the carpet. “Lord save us.”
Maggie shimmies her bottom, making the ruffles there dance. “I like my cheekies.”
“They are the most delicious cheekies ever,” I reply, giving her bathing suit a quick tug. “You’d better put them away before I eat them for lunch!”
She lets out a peal of laughter. “Don’t eat my cheekies, Mommy, please!”
“I’ll do my best to refrain.”
Duke puts his hand on the small of my back after I straighten. “Beach bag is packed. Goggles—”
“You packed my Bluey ones, right, Dad?” Robbie asks.
Duke’s face splits into a smile. “Yes, Robbie, I packed your Bluey ones, and the Paw Patrol ones, and the ones with the sprinkles on them, and—”