The Mitchell Family Series BoxSet 1-4.5 (111 page)

After feeding the boys I sat down on the couch, while Ty tucked in Bella. The next thing I knew, I was being carried to our bed. My husband was sweet like that. He never woke me up and made me walk, even when I was pregnant, he still carried my fat butt to bed. I was still semi awake when he climbed into bed next to me, so I nestled my body against his and fell fast asleep.

Ty and I had to get up with the boys twice overnight. I'd almost converted all the way over to formula. The boys both had teeth and they had a problem with biting me while I tried to feed them. One time last week, it drew real blood.

With Ty working on the farm, he never complained about getting up at night and helping me with the boys. In fact, some nights he would race in and calm them before I could even get out of bed. I never saw a man that loved being a father the way Ty did. I think if he could have been a stay at home parent he would have been.

Since my own father had died when I was so young, some of my favorite memories were of him. I hoped that one day my children would look back and appreciate what a great father they had.

When I woke up the next morning, Ty was carrying the bags from our car into our bedroom closet. Bella was still too young to think about snooping around, but we didn't want her to know what Santa was bringing her. After getting the puppy for her birthday, she had taken things up a notch and asked for a pony. We'd taken the horses to Kentucky, but the stalls and the corral were still intact, so Ty agreed she was old enough to have a small pony.

It just so happened that one of the neighbor farmers had an older pony that had been his daughters. She had moved away after college and nobody played with it anymore. Ty and I both agreed that we wanted her to start out on a pony that was used to being played with and ridden.

When he took me over to the guy’s house to take a look at it, I fell in love right away. The horses name was Scotch, for its obvious brown colored coat. His mane and tail were a blonde shade and it accented his darker body. He was ten years old and had been around little girls since he was just a colt.

I particularly liked how when we went to take a look at him, he walked right up to us and let us pet him. I stuck my hand down at his mouth and he never snipped at me. He didn't have shoes, but his hooves were nice and clean and had recently been treated. His weight looked perfect and I couldn't see a single rib on his body. When we walked away he started neighing at us, like he wanted us to come back.

Ty didn't even have to ask my decision when we left that fellows farm. He was already dialing him as we pulled off his property to tell him he would be by the next day with the money. The guy was thrilled that Scotch was going to be living so close. He said he wouldn't be surprised if his daughter showed up one day to visit her old pet.

Since we obviously couldn't fit a live pony in our closet, Conner was helping Ty hide Scotch out in one of the far pastures until Christmas morning. We did have her saddle and riding gear, which was a dead giveaway that she was getting the pony.

I jumped out of bed and walked over to help Ty hide the saddle. We kept blankets in the closet and hid the things underneath of them. As far as her riding boots, pants and helmet, well we hid them behind everyone else's presents. Ty and I walked out of the closet and he closed the door just as Bella came walking in the room. Her hair was standing in all directions and her eyes were half open. He walked over and picked her up, only to toss her down on our bed. Bella wasn't exactly in the mood to play with her daddy and she started whining. He plopped on the bed beside her and started tickling her. "You better give me a smile." He loved to taunt her.

"Stop it, Daddy!"

"I can't help it. I need a kiss and a smile from my princess right now or I will die!"

Ty stretched his body out on the bed and played dead. At first Bella laughed at him. She waited a few seconds and he still hadn't moved. She took her hands and pushed him. "Daddy, wake up!"

When he still didn't move she pushed him again. "Daddy, please wake up."

With another failed attempt to get her father to move, she leaned over and started kissing him all over the face. I stood there laughing the whole time, while she was really getting worried. Finally, he opened one eye. She put her hands on her knees and smiled and when she did, he opened both eyes. "There's my princess."

She smacked his arm. "You tricked me."

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her head. "One day you're going to be too old to give daddy kisses and I'm just trying to get as many as I can before that happens."

"You're silly. When will Noah be here?" Their special moment had already been forgotten.

Ty rubbed her head. "Maybe next weekend kiddo. It depends on Uncle Colt. If he has to work late they aren't going to come until that Sunday. Grandma will be here tonight though."

"Is Pop-pop John coming too?" Ever since their engagement, my mother had been encouraging Bella to call John pop- pop. They were getting married, so it just made things easier in the long run.

"Of course he is."

"Yay! He said the next time he sees me he would give me a present."

Ty pulled a bag out of the closet and walked over to the bed. "Iz, can you go see if Uncle Conner is awake?"

"He isn't awake."

I laughed a little bit wondering how she knew that. “What do you mean? How do you know?”

"Well, I went in his room first and he said to leave him alone cause last night was a rough one."

I looked to Ty, who shrugged his shoulders, then back down to Bella. "Sweetie, is that what he said?"

"Yup, and he gave me five dollars to get out of his room and not tell anybody." She obviously didn't understand that Ty and I were the people he was talking about not telling.

"Go make your bed, kiddo. Mom and I will make breakfast in a minute."

Ty scooted our daughter out of the room. He shut the door and turned to look at me. "Don't go there, baby. You know it will get ugly and I don't feel like dealing with the drama. I love ya, but you need to save it for another time."

I sat down on the bed and shook my head. "There are some things that can't wait."

"Miranda, I am asking you to back off of your brother. He's an adult. Besides, you don't even know what's going on. If there is something between he and Amy it will come out eventually. For now, you have to believe they are only friends. Give him the benefit of the doubt."

I wanted to know what was going on between my brother and Amy. They'd been sneaking around for months, claiming they were only friends. Since they both had problems I really did try to stay out of it, but I could tell it was something more. He was playing with fire and I was sure he was going to get burned. I decided to let it go before my husband got all mad at me over it. "What's in the bag?" It was the lingerie bag and I was wondering if he expected me to start trying the things he bought on.

Ty got that look on his face, the one where he was up to no good. "Promise you will take my side?"

I was more than a little confused. "Your side? What the heck are you talkin' about?"

"What I have in this bag is what we're going to wear for the Christmas picture."

I heard what he said; it just wasn't registering in my mind. "Tell me you're jokin'?"

"Nope!" He laughed as he pulled out the red fabric items. He spread them across the bed so I could see everything he bought. The first thing I noticed was three pair of men's briefs that were red velvet. The next thing I saw were two ladies outfits. One was a two piece and the other was a one piece.

"Please tell me the one piece is for our pregnant cousin, because Ty, if you think she is going to go for this at all, there is no way in hell she will wear that two piece."

He started laughing at me. "I was going to ask her which one she preferred."

I smacked him on the ass. "You're so bad!"

He leaned down and kissed me softly, letting his lips linger over mine. "You love it." His kisses could still take my breath away, even as the baby monitor started blowing up with screams.

"The C.B.s are up!"

"Must you continue to call our children Cockblocks?"

We started walking toward the boy's room. "I can't help it. They have some kind of radar that goes off whenever we have any kind of physical contact. It’s like they have an armed guard on your tits."

"Guess they don't want to share."

He turned around and held his hand up. "Hold up! They were mine way before they came along. If anyone is sharing, it's me."

He was so dead serious that I just pushed him out of the way and walked past him. The boys were both sitting up in their beds with real tears running down their cute little cheeks. "Oh my goodness, real tears?" I picked up Jax just as Ty picked up Jake.

Jax had soaked through his diaper and I could tell because my shirt was instantly wet as I held him against me. Ty mimicked my actions and began changing Jake. "This is way more fun than getting naked with my wife." His sarcasm made me laugh. I knew he was kidding, but I think a part of him was just a tad bit disappointed that our love life was always our last priority, but we had sex a lot more than other married couples. I thought that waiting actually made it even hotter when we finally got opportunities to be together.

Chapter 6

Ty

The next week went by way too fast. Between the decorating and wrapping of presents, we were wiped out. Bella was becoming more anxious by the second and I could hardly wait to show her the pony we had hiding on the other side of the pasture for her. The boys were just boys except I swore they somehow knew that Miranda and I had been extra tired. They kept waking up at all hours of the night for no apparent reason.

Miranda’s mother had been staying with my parents for the past six days and they were a big help with the kids. The one good thing about them living so far away was that when they visited, they wanted to spend all of their time with the kids. We appreciated the break immensely.

From what I could see, Miranda kept to her word about leaving Conner’s business alone. In fact, she hadn’t, to my knowledge, told her mother about what she thought he was up to. We were hosting Christmas and had too much to do to worry about where he was spending his time. He hadn’t come home with the shit beat out of him yet, so obviously he wasn’t in that bad of shape.

Karen and my mother got it in their heads that it was important for us to decorate the outside of the two houses more than we ever had before. Doing that required not only myself, but my dad and John to spend a good half day up in my parent’s attic going through old decorations.

I felt like Clark Griswold climbing up on the roof to start hanging the ridiculous amount of lights that we had decided to hang. Bella played outside watching our every move. She was too afraid she was going to miss us turning them on to go in the house to play.

Colt and Van were due in any moment and we had decided to not tell Iz and let her be surprised. Between Christmas and Noah coming, we couldn’t shut her up for even one second to take a breath.

Colt had gone out and gotten Noah one of those miniature planes. I was kind of jealous, because he had one when he was little and we all wanted to play with it, but he wouldn’t let us. None of us kids understood just how expensive it was back then.

Colt was over the moon excited about Noah getting the plane. He loved doing things with his son and making sure he made up for the time he’d lost when Noah was a baby. Others may have thought he overdid things at times, but the truth was that I would have done the same thing.

Since Conner and I were high on the roof, I knew that I could mention Amy without my wife freaking out. “Your sister keeps drilling me for information about your secret romance.”

Conner stapled another row and shook his head. “There ain’t nothin’ to tell, bro.”

“She doesn’t seem to believe that.” I wasn’t egging him on; I was being quite honest about it.

“She needs to stay out of my business. I love my sister and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I don’t need a babysitter.” He sat down where he was working and waited for my next response.

“This stays between me and you.” I motioned my hands between us. “I think the two of you are cool together. Amy is a nice girl but she’s always been a victim. If you’re being a friend and helping her out, I can’t see any wrong in that. My marriage is important to me, but I know that not everyone has the kind of relationship that I do. She’s needed to leave that asshole for a long time now.”

He nodded but immediately changed the subject. “So, I got this idea that I think Iz and Noah would get a real kick out of. My buddy back home gave me these fireworks and I found a few still in a box in my room on Thanksgiving. I think we should strap some kind of Red plastic to it and make it look like Santa is leavin’ the roof. We can do it from your parents and let the kids look out at just the right time. What do you think?”

I thought it was a great idea if we could fool proof it. “What happens if Santa’s plastic sled catches on fire and we watch him go up in a ball of flames?”

We both started laughing. “Well, maybe we should try it out first before we devastate the kids.”