Major Fireworks (Sugartree Romance #3)

1. Thinking ‘Bout Somethin’

HANSON

1

THINKING ‘BOUT SOMETHIN’

“Are you ever gonna go, Kota?” Ginny tapped a domino on the table, annoyance brewing in her eyes. “Make a move or draw!”

Dakota merely smiled, used to his baby sister’s incessant whining. “Dominoes is a game of strategy, Gin. One you’d understand if you actually won a game or two.”

Caroline and Griffin snickered but returned to their own private conversation, leaning far too close into each other's personal space for Dakota’s liking.

Lake reclined further back in his chair and whistled loudly, resting his arm around Georgia’s back and pulling himself closer to his wife. “Here we go…”

“What do you mean, here we go?” Ginny asked, huffing at Dakota as he laid down a domino—one that blocked the three combo he suspected she wanted to lay down.

“He means,” Georgia elbowed her husband playfully and rested her hand on her swollen belly, “you and Dakota always seem to bicker the most when both of y’all are losin’ to me in dominoes. Honestly, its exasperating.” She took a deep breath, winded at even the smallest of speeches, and turned her bright doe-eyes on Lake. “Babe, would you mind getting me that bag of circus peanuts? I’m gettin’ antsy.”

Lake gave her belly an affectionate rub then jumped from his chair, grabbing circus peanuts, a Costco-size jar of peanut butter Georgia never seemed to leave the house without these days, and a glass of milk filled to the brim.

Dakota still couldn’t quite believe his sister was going to have a baby or the insane cravings she claimed to have.

She just had to have a Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit doused in honey, everyday?

Doubtful.

Regardless, when Lake and Georgia had first told the family their news, Dakota had found it difficult not to fall on his knees and weep with happiness. Instead, he’d jumped up and down squealing with his sisters—like any respectable man and soon-to-be uncle.

Now, after months of hearing about the joys and, seemingly, equal woes of pregnancy, Dakota was still just as excited but was sure he could live a lifetime without hearing one more thing about Georgia’s pregnancy gas, heartburn, lack of sleep, or how she’d begun to wear Lake’s clothes. And he certainly would never understand how his brother-in-law found Georgia so attractive in the first place, let alone in her current state. Gas and all.

Nope. Georgia was forever and always frozen in Dakota’s mind as his eleven-year-old big sister. Just a little too lanky. And a lot awkward with her big buck teeth covered in metal braces and wild, curly hair looking like a rat’s nest one hundred percent of the time.

He assumed this was a normal, brotherly response as he never could quite look at his second eldest sister, Caroline, without thinking about the way she used to chase their golden retriever, Buddy, around the yard in nothing but her underwear and usually with a baked good in hand, offering the poor guy a treat in exchange for snuggles. And as far as Ginny was concerned, whoever ended up with his baby sister would have to overlook her crazy head of hair and the oversized helping of sass that went along with it.

“Alright, I figure we’ve got ‘bout thirty minutes before Georgia eats herself into gas-station-candy oblivion and is ready for bed.” Caroline placed a domino down on the board. “And we’ve got a babysitter for another two hours.” She raised her hands in the air, waving them from side to side. “I love Theo more than life itself, but I will not waste kid-free hours with my husband. Do you understand?”

Dakota groaned, “Ugh. Could y’all just… not. Why can’t we get through one Dominoes Night without all the flirting and PDA and the need to be alone talk? We get it. You’re married now… yada yada yada.” He cringed and spit out his tongue in disgust. “Frankly, it's all just a little repulsive.”

To his utter dismay, Caroline all but jumped in her husband’s lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him full on the mouth in front of everybody.

In Dakota’s house. Where he ate and slept!

Never to be outdone by his sister, Dakota made gagging noises while the others around the table cat-called and cheered until Caroline blessedly released the suction of Griffin’s mouth from her own, brushed herself off, and returned to her own seat.

“How’s that for PDA?” she asked, self-satisfied and not nearly as embarrassed as she should be.

Dakota threw popcorn at her face and returned to his tiles. He probably wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye for the next week.

Caroline pointed to each of her siblings again before ending her warning. “Y’all are on borrowed time. Got it?”

Georgia and Ginny both giggled and nodded—mischievous students, temporarily obeying the teacher.

Then Caroline stuck her finger in Dakota’s face one more time. “And not another word outta you, Dakota Major. One day ya might get a clue and take part in some PDA of your own. Then you can apologize to me, alright?”

Looking back over at Griffin—who hadn’t fully recovered from her sudden burst of affection and also still hadn’t quite caught on to the speed in which the Remillard siblings demanded dominoes be played—Caroline reached across, took a very quick glance at his collection, then placed a domino from his stack onto his train.

Griffin merely shook his head in amusement and gestured for Lake to take his turn.

The siblings had carried on with their weekly Dominoes Night, including Lake after he and Georgia were married the previous year, then allowing Griffin to join soon after he and Caroline had come clean about their secret elopement

Dakota couldn’t complain about adding his brothers-in-law to the mix, even if they did spend too much time ogling his sisters. After a lifetime of living, breathing, sharing bathrooms, and mutually existing with three sisters, he would have celebrated his two new brothers by throwing them a party if the girls hadn’t beaten him to it.

On Griffin’s first official Domino Night, Dakota’s sisters had served up cake, ice cream, and a light hazing for both the Lovett brothers—forcing them to wear train conductor hats, vintage Domino's Pizza t-shirts, and insisting they blow train whistles every time they laid down a tile.

They took it all in stride, of course, and Dakota happily settled into a little added testosterone around the game table on Saturday nights. He could do with a little less canoodling between spouses in his small living area, yes. But overall, he looked forward to game night more than most anything else in his life.

Sometime after his college graduation, Dakota had begun to feel like he’d slipped into a season of complacency. He knew he’d been blessed, finding a great engineering job outside the city and—the third Remillard sibling to do so—living rent-free in the loft above Good Start, his family's long-running coffee shop in the center of Sugartree. He had friends, hobbies, a career, and a space to call his own, yet he felt aimless. Like he wasn’t sure what he was working for or moving towards.

Part of it could have been that he was still living in his hometown. Sure, he’d grown up as a military kid, moving from place to place in his early childhood, but his parents had decided to settle down in Georgia when Dakota was still fairly young. So he’d lived the majority of his life in Sugartree, only moving away for college then straight back to small town life and the loft. And his proximity to Good Start also meant almost daily encounters with the coffee shop’s spirited manager, a slow form of torture, in itself.

Whatever the culprit, Dakota felt unsettled. That is, until Saturday nights when he could tease his sisters a bit, laugh with their husbands, eat junk food, feast on mutual competition, and forget about how—ninety percent of the time—he didn’t quite know what he was doing with his life.

Dakota placed a tile down, double-tapping the final one in his hand to signify it was his last. Ginny rolled her eyes, studied the board, and laid her second to last tile down, also double-tapping so she wouldn’t be penalized with more dominoes.

Amidst minor chit chat and the inevitable trash talk, turns were taken slowly around the table until almost making it back to Dakota. But just before he could play—and win his first round of the night—he was interrupted by the sound of hurried feet running up the stairs, the door to his apartment flinging open, and a certain frustratingly beautiful Good Start Coffee manager breezing through as if she owned the place.

“Hey, y’all! Who’s winnin’?” Sadie marched right to the table and, looking over Dakota’s shoulder, inspected the tile in his hand.

Dakota slammed his domino on the table more forcefully than necessary and glared at Sadie. “Don’t you know how to knock, Edwin?”

“I sure do, Dakota Remillard. It was the first thing I learned in Remillard Refining School. Right before How to Greet a Woman Appropriately and a class called Do You Kiss Your Mama With That Mouth?”

Georgia offered her a circus peanut, which she took without batting an eye and then said, “I never had to knock when Georgia and Caroline lived here. I thought it’d be alright to come on in and join y’all.”

“They don’t live here anymore. I do.” Dakota huffed a breath through his nose, feeling more like his nephew, Theo, when he didn’t get his way rather than a grown man in his own home, defending his right to privacy. “And its family game night…”

A collection of feminine gasps sounded around the table.

He knew she didn’t deserve his ire, and that he would likely hear about it from his sisters, but Sadie always seemed to sneak under his skin. The way she just strolled in, interrupting their weekly game. Eating their circus peanuts. Not to mention the way she always seemed to carry with her the scent of freshly brewed coffee and his favorite cinnamon scones, filling every room she entered. Now his apartment would smell like his comfort foods for the rest of time, and Sadie Edwin Mills would take up even more space in his life. He hated it.

And he especially hated that he didn’t hate it at all.

Without warning, like any rational person would provide, Sadie put her hand on Dakota’s shoulder, leaning over him. He felt every inch of her warmth against his back and every point of contact where her hand pressed through his shirt. A tiny, personal heating pad he hadn’t asked for and hadn’t known he desperately needed. He wanted to take a deep breath and lean into that warmth—but definitely did not want to investigate the impulse behind that.

“Dakota has a five-six combo. Make sure ya block him,” Sadie announced before patting his back and pushing away from the table. “I’ll wait downstairs, y’all. Would hate to interrupt a family thing.”

Georgia stood suddenly, her chair toppling behind her, and her husband following suit as if he thought she might topple over herself. “Sadie, no! You do not have to go. Dakota can go!”

His sister seethed at him and wiped tears from her flushed cheeks. All the crying—one more pregnancy symptom he would not miss when his niece or nephew arrived. And every ounce of crazy, mama bear hormones pulsing through Georgia shone intensely across her face, despite the crying.

Dakota shuddered, involuntarily straightening his posture. Was this baby giving her supernatural powers?

“This is my house!” he argued, albeit weakly. “And I didn’t say she had to leave. I just asked her to knock.”

Ginny suddenly stood from her chair. “If she leaves, I leave!”

Caroline stood as well, “Me, too.” She looked at Griffin for approval and, to Dakota’s annoyance, received a suggestive wink from him in return.

All nodding like a brave band of warriors agreeing to do battle, this small squadron of Remillard-Lovett women stood in one accord around his kitchen table defending Sadie’s honor.

Caroline put up a finger, “But do you think we could make our little suffragette meeting kinda quick? I really do wanna take advantage of the babysitter… especially since we’re done here.”

Dakota threw his hands in the air. “Who said we’re done here? We’re in the middle of a game!” He looked around the table, hoping one of his brothers-in-law would come to his defense—Never leave a man behind and all that—but found no aid.

“Nah.” Caroline reached down and played a five-nine combo from Griffin’s pile, effectively blocking Dakota’s move. “I think we’re finished.” She pecked Griffin on the lips and roughly patted Dakota’s back. “Nice goin’, baby boy. See ya later.”

Left alone in the wake of his sisters’ impromptu rally, Dakota, Lake, and Griffin sat silently around the table, and listened to their cackling laughs as the women barreled down the loft’s stairs together.

Dakota imagined them all high-fiving and holding hands with imaginary picket signs. They’d say Girls Rule & Boys Drool and would, undoubtedly, be covered in glitter.

As the chattering diminished, Griffin sighed loudly and took a scoop of peanut butter from the jar. Lake chugged the full cup of milk left in Georgia’s empty spot, then set the fogged glass on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It was annoyingly cool.

“Alright. Enough is enough.” Griffin leaned his elbows on the table. “We’re gonna give you the same talk we gave Theo last week.” Lake nodded, a silent agreement between the brothers, and Griffin continued, “It’s all about why we don’t pull the pigtails of girls we’re in love with, and I think it’s ‘bout time ya heard it.”