“You know a lot about twins.”
“Because I have a pair myself,” she grinned. “Girls. Now five. They’re in Kindergarten with your son Jake, and both have crushes on him.”
Jack chuckled softly. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard that. Apparently quite a few young ladies fancied his sons, though thankfully, his boys were still in anti-girl stage. Kathleen often said that as the boys got older, they would be forced to install motion sensors and trip alarms around the private living quarters to keep their boys safe from all the adoring females.
Just then, a mob arrived at the door. Kathleen’s parents arrived with his crew. “Can we come in?”
“Sure,” Jack nodded, but Kathleen’s sleeping.”
“I’m awake,” Kathleen mumbled sleepily.
“Good Lord. Are they all yours?” the nurse asked as she took in Kane, Jake, Michael, and Ian. Scrubbed clean, with their hair parted smartly to the side and dressed neatly, Jack almost didn’t recognize them. Clearly Kathleen’s mother had spent the better part of the morning fussing. Having only girls, the woman either didn’t know or care that boys were typically not as concerned about their appearance. Judging by the irritated scowls on their faces, they weren’t too happy about their grandmother’s makeover.
“Yep, all ours.”
“God bless you,” the nurse said to Kathleen, patting her hand. Looking directly at Jack, she added, “You might consider making an appointment with Dr. Valdez before you leave.”
“Who is Dr. Valdez?”
“He does vasectomies on an outpatient basis,” she smirked.
Jack paled, making the nurse laugh as she left the room to resume her rounds.
The thought stayed with him, though, long after everyone else had gone home. Kathleen’s parents were keeping the boys overnight, and he sat beside Kathleen’s bedside, contemplating the idea.
“Don’t even think about it,” Kathleen whispered, reading his thoughts. She had the uncanny ability to see into his heart and mind, to know what he was thinking or feeling, even when he didn’t realize it himself sometimes.
She disengaged a now-sleeping Shane from her left breast, exchanging him for a slightly fussy Sean at her right. The nurses told her she was crazy to attempt to breastfeed twins, but Kathleen was adamant. And when Kathleen set her mind upon something, there was no stopping her.
“We wanted six. We have six. And I don’t know if I can go through that again,” he told her honestly.
He was still quite shaken by the events of the last forty-eight hours. Unlike the previous births, Jack had been there this time. Seeing Kathleen in that amount of pain for that long wasn’t something he enjoyed; he would have much preferred handling his own physical pain to witnessing hers.
She laughed softly. “It’s not so bad. And this,” she looked down at her newborn son, her eyes filled with fathomless love, “this makes it all worth it.”
“You are an amazing woman,” he murmured, leaning down to brush a kiss across her forehead. Not a day went by that he didn’t love her more than the one before. “How did I get so lucky?”
She smiled at him then. “Mo croie beloved,” she whispered, “luck has nothing to do with it. ‘Tis Fate.”
“I love you, Kathleen.”
“I love you, too, Jack.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
October 2015
Pine Ridge
“Just make yourself at home,” Michael shot at Sean, who was reclining back in Michael’s chair with his size fourteen boots planted right in the middle of Michael’s neat and tidy desk.
“Did,” Sean smirked, lifting his blue eyes from his smartphone. “Everything go okay?” he asked, looking past Michael to Jack.
“Aye.” After spending most of the morning undergoing one test after another and answering dozens of the same questions over and over, Jack had just finished up his six-week follow-up with Jimmy Yim. According to the cardiac surgeon, everything was looking good.
Sean’s eyes went to Michael for confirmation. Jack found that especially irritating. If he said everything was okay, then it was, damn it. Despite his assurances that he hadn’t been openly courting a heart attack, he still saw the doubt in their eyes sometimes, as if he’d been deliberately tempting Fate. That irritated him, too. If there was one thing life had taught him, it was that Fate would have its wicked way with all of them, good intentions be damned.
“It’s all good,” Michael confirmed.
Satisfied, Sean stood abruptly. Like all of his sons, Sean was a large man. In terms of physical appearance, he and Shane looked nearly exactly the same, but their personalities were as different as night and day. Sean was more abrupt, more impulsive, more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, while Shane was quieter, preferring to thoroughly analyze a situation before committing to a course of action.
“Ready to go?”