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—”
“The Ariel ones?” Maggie pipes up.
“Those, I think I forgot.”
“No, Daddy, no!”
Chuckling, he bends down to swoop her up into his arms. “Of course I remembered your Ariel goggles. They were the first thing I packed.”
“You’re good,” I say.
He turns that smile on me. “I know.”
The kids lead the way down the hotel’s long hallway to the pool deck.
We’re in San Diego for the first leg of a two-week trip to California that’s part business, part pleasure.
Bellamy Brooks has grown by leaps and bounds, and we’re stopping at stores and suppliers up and down the West Coast for meetings and trunk shows galore.
We’re also making stops at places we know the kids will love: San Diego for the sun and sand, Santa Barbara for the zoo, Big Sur for the whimsical vibes.
Is it going to be manic? Yes. Will it also be a ton of fun? Absolutely.
Case in point: the kids literally scream with delight when we head outside to the hotel’s enormous pool, which glitters beneath a wide-open sky. The sun is warm on my chest and shoulders, while the breeze is just cool enough to keep the temperature pleasant. There’s not a whiff of humidity.
“Can we set up a third Bellamy Brooks headquarters here?” Duke grunts as he sets down the beach bag that weighs about as much as our two children combined. “What was the temperature back in Hartsville yesterday? A hundred and eight, I think Cash said?”
“A hundred and nine, actually. Mollie told me her shoes were literally melting onto the pavement downtown.”
Duke turns his head to flash me a wide, white smile. “Not sad we’re missing that.”
“Not a bit.” My heart squeezes at his handsomeness. His joy. “I do miss our people, though.”
“They’ll be there when we get back.”
My entire being lights up when Duke straightens and pulls off his shirt. My husband still cowboys part time on the ranch back home, so he’s as thick and strong as ever. The server passing by does a double take, both of us devouring Duke’s sculpted arms, wide chest, and narrow waist.
“He-hi. Hello.” The server’s voice cracks. “Would you be interested in any food or beverages?”
“Pina coladas!” Robbie shouts as he helps Maggie press her goggles to her face. “Please, can we have one? Please, Dad?”
Maggie throws up her arms. “With extra cherries?”
Laughing, Duke nods. “Sure. Two virgin pina coladas with extra cherries, and two regular pina coladas with extra rum.” He looks at me and shrugs. “It’s five o’clock back home.”
I give him a playful shrug. “It’s actually ten a.m. in Texas.”
“Exactly.” He grabs my wrist and pulls me in for a peck on the lips. “In ranch time, that’s basically five o’clock.”
“If you say so.”
We head into the pool with the kids. Thankfully, it’s heated—we’ve learned the hard way to always make sure the hotel we’re staying at heats their pool. At first, I was a little annoyed that our kids were such water bugs, because it meant I always had to get into the pool too.
Now, I don’t mind it one bit. Somewhere along the way—probably in high school—I stopped going in the water, whether it was the ocean, a lake, or a pool.
I was just too lazy, or maybe too self-conscious, to jump in, so I’d just sit beside said body of water and scroll on my phone.
But having kids forced me to get back in the water, literally and figuratively, and it made me remember just how fun it is.
Setting our pina coladas on the lip of the pool, Duke, Robbie, Maggie, and I start with a game of Marco Polo. The kids howl with laughter when Duke runs into the steps with his eyes closed, pretending to stub his toe.
“Can we do a cannonball competition?” Maggie asks.
I smile. “Only if I win.”
“Bet you I’ll win,” she replies, then takes off toward the ladder.
Maggie does her cannonball first, followed by Robbie and Duke. When it’s my turn, I take a running leap into the pool—much to the chagrin of the lifeguard—laughter bubbling up my sides as I pull my knees into my chest and land in the water with a satisfying splash.
“Mommy!” Robbie screams when I come up for air. “You win! That splash was epic.”
I laugh harder. “Since when do you know what epic means?”
“Since he realized how epically hot his mom is.” Duke loops an arm around my waist.
I lean in to give his neck a quick bite. “That’s not weird at all.”
“It’s just facts, Blue.”
My heart flutters. The nickname still hasn’t gotten old after all these years.
“You’re pretty hot too.” This time, I’m the one kissing him.
“Ew, can you guys stop kissing so we can go to the beach now?” Maggie asks.
Robbie has a disgusted look on his sweet little face. “You guys kiss a lot.”
Duke slips his tongue inside my mouth. “Yup. And that ain’t changing, so you’d best get used to it.”
We grab some towels and head out to the wide, flat beach, careful to avoid a volleyball game in progress on one of the courts in the sand. I gather seashells with Robbie. Duke and Maggie race to the water. Watching them laugh together has me feeling short of breath.
Could this day be any more perfect?
Could this life be any more perfect for us?
We dip our toes in the ocean—“too cold!” according to Robbie—then take a walk to look for dolphins and/or sharks. We work up an appetite playing volleyball when we’re invited onto a court, and then we demolish lunch by the pool.
I don’t know if it’s because of the sun, the time change, or all the activity happening, but the kids end up conking out in the room later that afternoon.
While they nap, Duke and I run through a checklist for an upcoming trunk show, and then we shower—together, because why the hell not?
—before waking up the kids and heading into town.
They’re eager little explorers, ducking into shops and nibbling on appetizers we order as we progress from one cute restaurant to the next. They get into a spat over a stuffed whale at a store, and we have to separate them, but the whale is quickly forgotten when we encounter a frozen custard shop.
Scooping my peanut-butter-and-chocolate custard into my mouth, I nudge Duke with my shoulder. “Did you ever think you’d be having a blast doing such wholesome things?”
He smirks. “Not everything we’ve done today has been wholesome.”
“So, it’s been the perfect day, then.”
He takes a big bite of his cheesecake custard. Ever since he had that Blizzard at my place ages ago, it’s become his favorite flavor.
“Every day with you is the perfect day.” He squints, watching the kids devour their treats on a nearby bench. “But yeah, today’s been pretty epic, as Robbie would say.”
“He is so dang cute.”
“Just like me. You happy, Mama?”
“The happiest. And no, I still refuse to call you Daddy.”
He chuckles. “We’ll see what you’re saying later tonight when I got you—”
“Are you talking about kissing Mommy again?” Robbie pulls a face. “Gross.”
I grin at my husband. “Not gross at all.”
My body warms when he ducks his head and kisses me for the five thousandth time today.
“We’re doing it, Blue. This is a dream, yeah? The dream.”
I nod. “Dreams do come true.”
“Cheeseball.”
“Yep. And I’m not sorry about it.”
His grin makes my stomach dip. “Good. I’m not either.”