1
Jude
Jude Byrne felt like he was sitting on top of the world. He’d single-handedly changed the trajectory of his family’s end-of-summer fortunes with one phone call. Instead of spending the last week before school started sitting at Fitzgibbon’s pool, watching the kids splash each other while he drank ice-cold lemonade and ate his body weight in crab Rangoon, Jude and the rest of his family were off on one last crazy summer adventure.
To be honest, it was an unsolicited email that got the ball rolling. Usually, Jude wasn’t one for reading his messages at all, but on the particular day it had come in, he was home alone and bored off his gourd. Cope and the kids had gone to the library for story time, and Jude had been napping when they’d left.
Make your next vacation Four Star in every way! Check out our end of the season sale! the headline of the email read. Jude loved the idea of staying in the lap of luxury, dining on caviar and lobster tails. What he didn’t like was paying the hefty bill. The word “sale” caught his attention, making him click the link. For a moment, he’d worried that he’d fallen for a phishing scam, but when the page loaded, he was staring at a gorgeous hotel on Old Orchard Beach.
Jude had heard of the popular southern Maine beach town, but he’d never been. He’d checked out the available rooms and their low prices before sending the info to Ronan and Fitz, both of whom were surprisingly quick to jump on the bandwagon. It hadn’t taken much effort to convince his beach-loving husband to take some time off to spend with the kids before the start of school.
Jace had sprung for a fifteen-person passenger van, which had plenty of room for everyone’s luggage and things to keep the kids busy. It was presently half past one, which put the caravan half an hour behind schedule. Lizbet needed a diaper change, and when Cope was done, all the bigger kids decided they needed one more pee break, which led the adults to do the same. All the kids were belted into their seats. Fitz and Jace sat in the front, discussing the best way to get to the hotel, while Ten and Ronan necked like teenagers in the row of seats in front of Jude. Cope was still in the house, which stood with the front door open. “Christ, we’re air-conditioning the entire neighborhood! Meanwhile, Romeo and Romeo here are practically sucking each other’s faces off.”
“Jealous?” Ronan snipped.
“Bite me, Ronan!” Jude shot back just as Cope ran out of the house and down the stairs before rolling his eyes and heading back up the stairs to lock the door. He dashed back to the van and climbed inside, closing the door behind him.
“Ready spaghetti?” Jace asked.
Cope nodded, throwing himself into the seat next to Jude. He pulled on his seat belt and tried to catch his breath. “Wagons, roll!”
“You okay?” Jude asked. He studied his husband, who was dressed in an aqua polo shirt with grey shorts. His eyes were tired, and he was still breathing heavily. Cope looked like he’d been ridden hard and put away wet.
Cope nodded. “This week has been crazy. Several of my hardest clients came in for readings that didn’t go the way they planned them. I had to finish Wolf’s school supply shopping and then had to get him new sneakers because he’d outgrown the one we bought him a month ago. I don’t even know how that’s possible.”
Jude pressed a kiss to Cope’s cheek. “I’m sorry I wasn’t around as much as I would have been to help you.” Jude had taken turns with Ronan and Fitz sitting with Corny Craig as he was still recovering from his kidney transplant surgery. They’d just wrapped up the Sebastian Stark case and had some free time on their hands. Carson and Cole had been able to get back to work while the detectives stayed with the hopefully rehabbed former con man.
“I get it. Corny wasn’t the easiest patient to deal with.”
Jude snickered. “Oh, he was plenty easy when he was sleeping or I was picking up food from Lobster Charlie’s for him and Destiny.” He had to admit he liked Corny’s pregnant wife. Once she’d realized what was at stake with Corny’s health, her bitchy attitude toward him and the other detectives had changed. Fitzgibbon helping to ease Corny’s legal troubles had also gone a long way to calm the once frantic couple.
“Dad!” Everly called from the back of the van. “We need snacks!”
“Who’s we? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?” Ronan chuckled.
“All of us.” Everly circled her fingers around all the kids.
Ronan reached across the aisle to the cooler. Popping the lid, he grabbed juice pouches, which he passed back to Jude, who passed them back to Everly. Next came little bags of fish-shaped crackers.
“Everly, can you help Lizbet with her snacks?” Jude asked.
“Yup!” Everly agreed. “Here you go, Lizzy B.”
“Shishy!” Lizbet crowed.
“Explain this again, Jude,” Fitzgibbon said from the driver’s seat. “How did you find out about this hotel?”
“I got an email from them,” Jude said. “You know how it goes—you put your name on a mailing list for an innocent male enhancement product, and the next thing you know, every Tom, Dick , and Harry has your email address.”
“Male enhancement product?” Ronan asked, turning around in his seat.
Jude shrugged. “Yeah, you know, the kind of thing that makes you bigger.”
Ronan opened his mouth looking like he had a snappy comeback but, after a whispered word from Ten, shut his lips and turned around.
“Oh, you’re a customer of Long Dongs too?” Jude crowed. He’d known all along that the pills were pure bullshit, but he had to give them a try in case they did work. It wasn’t that Jude had a small dick—he definitely did not —but that he was in mourning for his refractory period, which had always been in the twenty- to thirty-minute range. Once he hit forty, it had grown, and not in a good way, to over an hour.
“Long Dongs?” Jace asked, bursting out laughing.
“I didn’t need the long part,” Jude muttered.
“What part did you need?” Fitz asked, wearing a curious look.
“The regenerative part.” Jude sighed. This wasn’t exactly how he planned on his vacation going, with him as the dong of everyone’s dick jokes.
“Did it work?” Fitz asked. “Asking for a friend. The friend is me.”
“Not really. I’ve been struggling with, um—” Jude paused, not really sure he wanted to lay himself bare like this with his best friends, but if not with them, then with who?
“Round two?” Ronan suggested.
“Yeah, that,” Jude admitted, not particularly proud of himself.
“Same here,” Fitz said. “Ever since I hit forty, it’s taken longer and longer.”
Ronan raised his hand in the air. “Me too. Forty was a fucking cruel slap in the face in a lot of ways. My dick being only one of them.”
“What else is there?” Jude asked.
Cope snickered. “Jude’s always been all about the D.”
“No, I meant what else was a slap in the face? Not what else is there in life besides my dick.” Although, if Jude were being honest with himself, his dick was always at the top of the list.
“My knees hurt when I climb the front steps, and I can hurt my back by sneezing too hard.” Ronan grimaced as if he were remembering a particularly painful incident.
“Try hurting your back while sleeping.” Fitzgibbon rolled his eyes.
“What about you, Ten?” Cope asked. “How has turning forty affected you?”
“Bite your tongue!” Ten laughed. “I’ve got a few years to go! But I will say I have noticed a bit of a slowdown with how much I want it lately.”
“You and me both,” Ronan said, sounding salty.
“Maybe if you were a bigger help around the house and with the kids, I wouldn’t fall into bed exhausted every night. I’m cleaning the house, doing laundry, making dinner on the nights when we don’t call out to Greek Life. It’s half past eight by the time I’m done for the night, and you want to get frisky. I can barely keep my eyes open.”
Jude held his breath. The last thing he wanted was to start the trip out with everyone fighting. Division of labor was always a hot-button issue in his house. Cope never thought Jude did enough around the house but also never volunteered to mow the lawn, shovel snow, or to get the oil changed in his SUV. Usually, Jude only found out the car needed service when Cope mentioned that the submarine light had turned on. He had to admit the check engine light looked like a weird little submarine, but that was after he’d sputtered and shouted about why it took Cope so long to mention there was a problem in the first place.
“You’re right,” Ronan agreed.
Jude felt a sense of relief flood his entire body.
“Our housekeeper works wonders,” Jace said. “She comes every morning and cleans up from the night before. She does laundry and changes the sheets on the bed. It might be money well spent for you guys to hire someone like that. It gives Fitzy and I more time to spend with Aurora, and we both have a lot more energy for sexy times after she goes to sleep.” Jace waggled his eyebrows.
“How much does that cost you?” Cope asked.
“About three hundred per week, more or less, depending on how much laundry there is to do. We tip generously too.” Jace grinned. “So, maybe closer to five hundred per week.”
“That’s not bad,” Ronan said. “Would you like something like that?” he asked Ten, his voice barely above a whisper.
Ten nodded and kissed Ronan. Not a quick peck, but something longer and a lot wetter.
“Jesus, take me now!” Jude muttered. “What the hell is up with the two of you being so amorous?” Jude realized, too late, that he might not want to know the actual answer to the question.
“Ten thinks I’m super sexy now that I’ve become a caregiver to Corny.” Ronan snickered. “I still don’t know how the hell the three of us got roped into making that man’s lunch and reading him the morning paper, but if it makes my hubby think I’m a hero, then it’s worth all the pain.”
“What pain?” Ten asked, sounding even more enamored with Ronan.
“Having to help the old man to the toilet.” Ronan shivered. “Sometimes he needs help pulling down his drawers, or worse, pulling them back up after he drops the kids off at the pool.”
“Fucking eww!” Cope cried before gagging.
“It takes a lot out of me to be a hero, babe.” Jude leaned in to kiss Cope.
“You guys are full of shit! Pun intended !” Fitz snorted from the driver’s seat. “I never have to deal with shit and squiggles.”
“Yeah, because you come over in the afternoon. Corny’s all crapped out by lunchtime.” Ronan frowned, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Guys, look! There’s the Maine border! We’re almost there!” Jace sounded ridiculously excited. He pulled out his phone and snapped pictures of the sign welcoming them to Vacationland.
Jude relaxed back against his seat. Crisis averted, he knew this was going to be the best summer weekend of his entire life.