Chapter 4
RACHEL
A birthday party was not the time for losing her shit.
“Everyone’s outside. Have fun.” Rachel shooed the latest kiddo into her backyard to contain and entertain them until their parents showed back up in two hours to remove them from the premises.
The party had started. Gavin hadn’t shown up.
Again. As his wedding inched closer, the slacking on his dad duties had gotten worse. He was practically becoming Travis. Rachel was so done with covering for him.
See, Gavin was Rachel’s ex for lotsa reasons, all of which had become abundantly clear when he had two additional live beings hand delivered to her front door. Without. Asking. First.
This was the second time that had happened.
The first, the twins, was also her fault. She’d consented to the activities that led to their conception—even if she hadn’t meant for that outcome.
But no one even tried to give her an orgasm before twin puppies showed up at her front door.
Gah, there were puppies in her house. Puppies that were now hers to tend.
God, she wished someone would read her sign and bring her some freaking margaritas. Don’t get her wrong, she adored dogs. Was, in fact, totally a dog person. Her family had always had a pup or two living with them during her childhood.
But there were six kids in her family, and a mom, and a dad, and the dogs they brought into the home were from rescues—older, with adequate bladder control.
So, yes, she loved dogs. However, there were no hours left in the day for her to manage two more living beings under her care. Keeping them fed and watered, veterinarian appointments, picking up after them…
Puppies were an exponential exercise in both adorable bouncing and what-the-hell-have-I-gotten-myself-into?
She needed sleep and she needed the two months she’d been counting on to focus on her business.
Her to-do list last night hadn’t shrunk.
Even with Travis and Dane taking pity on her—or maybe just sticking around to prevent her from flying to Boston to cause bodily harm to their brother—she’d made only minimal progress on her to-do list.
The dogs were up like four times each. Add to that her Down Under client’s emergency wardrobe malfunction on YouTube needed Rachel’s immediate help to fix the video, and Brady woke her with a tummy ache.
So she hadn’t had over sixty solid minutes of shut-eye before something, someone, or some canine needed her attention.
All of that probably contributed to her lack of fucks left about Gavin’s feelings when he was late to his kids’ birthday party.
This was their birthday and it would be goddamned perfect.
Perfect after she got everything finished up.
She had an eight-year-old mad scientist party plan, and that plan included watermelon slices shaped like the number eight.
By God, she’d serve this watermelon in eight-shaped slices, unless she gave in to her baser desires and beat the shit out of it while pretending it was her ex-husband.
Her puppy-delivering, twin-producing, going-to-Boston-sans-children ex-husband.
“It’s Rachel,” Evelyn said, like she did every single time she walked up to her former daughter-in-law. She popped into the kitchen like a Meemaw fairy godmother. “Can I help?”
Oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes.
“Can you tie the ribbons on those?” Rachel nodded toward the gift bags she’d stayed up until two a.m. packing make-your-own slime kits, DIY rock candy, and all the necessities for a marshmallow catapult. That last one wasn’t really a mad scientist thing, but it looked super fun on Pinterest.
“Of course.” Evelyn started tying ribbons. “What else do you need?”
“I need to see if one of the uncles will supervise the games outside, someone needs to add the figurines to the cake, punch needs refilling, puppies need let out to do their business—supervised—and the watermelon needs cutting into slices that look like the number eight.” Somehow, she said all of that in one big breath.
Evelyn’s expression didn’t change, thanks to her latest facelift, but she did not start tying ribbons. Instead, she threw open the door to the backyard and called, “Bob. We need your help.”
Bob was one of Rachel’s favorite Franks because he smiled all the time, respected that she and Gavin would never reconcile, and sometimes brought her chocolate. He strode through the door to the kitchen and didn’t even get to say hello before Evelyn had him tying the bows.
“Which do you want done next, dear?” Evelyn asked.
Um.
“Punch bowl.” Rachel decided on the spot.
“Of course.” Evelyn went right to work.
Huh, this was new. Evelyn hadn’t mentioned Gavin or his whereabouts or how he’d spent the week before telling her all about Rachel and the boys and what they were up to.
“The party can start,” Dakota announced, stepping through the foyer, Gavin on her heels. “We’re here!”
“I dislike that woman,” Evelyn said, not under her breath, as she scurried out the door with the punch refill pitcher. She didn’t even turn to acknowledge Gavin or Dakota.
Now, this? This was odd.
Apparently, Gavin and Dakota were both in the doghouse.
Rachel would say Dakota wasn’t so bad, but she had clearly been part of Operation Puppy 2.
0, so she was not on the list of Rachel’s favorite people at the moment.
Actually, she wasn’t even on the list of people Rachel would tolerate today, and after one puppy peed in the hall for the fourth time, Dakota was very close to being put on the list of people who were not getting a Christmas present.
She’d already decided that Gavin wasn’t on the gift list. Rachel gave excellent presents. Everyone said so.
Sometimes, she even helped others shop for presents—she was that good.
“Dakota, Gavin, so glad you could make it.” Rachel slashed the watermelon, cutting it clean in two with one quick slice of the butcher knife.
“Rach, hi,” Gavin said as he and Dakota moseyed into the kitchen holding two giant gift boxes.
Travis came through the back door and tipped his paper cup toward the boxes the two lugged into the kitchen.
She got co-ed Travis today with a black and gold University of Colorado T-shirt and twill cargo shorts.
He seemed to have been wrestling with the kids in the grass, given the bits of her lawn falling from his hair and the grin attached to his mouth.
“There better not be anything alive in there.” He gestured to the box in Gavin’s hands.
If whatever was in those boxes was alive, Rachel might have to lock herself in her room to scream.
“Mom said you need help,” Travis said, turning to Rachel, more of her lawn falling to the floor. “Somethin’ about taking the dogs out?”
Rachel nodded, giving a chin jerk to indicate the dining room. Travis went to spring the puppies from where they were sequestered away from the chaos of the children and the science experiments Rachel wasn’t entirely sure were puppy safe.
“What else can I do?” Evelyn asked, and you know what? Rachel decided right then that she liked the woman after all. Two presents this year for her holiday season.
Sure, Evelyn may have had unhinged hopes of a Rachel-and-Gavin-kiss-and-make-up fiesta, but she also offered to freaking help and didn’t offer to just hire someone to do it.
Rachel gestured to the fruit and vegetable baskets she kept near the fridge. “Would you—”
“Puppies!” Molly shrieked, cutting straight through Rachel’s request. Apparently, she’d caught sight of Travis with a puppy under each arm.
The sight of Travis with two puppies? Whooo boy, it nearly dissolved the solid mad Rachel had been nursing since the canine arrival. Nearly. And she was definitely not going to evaluate that further.
“Evelyn, would you hand me that zucchini?” Rachel pointed at the zucchini on the counter next to Gavin.
The zucchini looked mighty comfortable nestled in a brown wicker basket filled with other produce.
Rachel didn’t need a produce aisle to make her point on this one.
She had her ex-husband, a girthy vegetable, and a knife.
Without a question, Evelyn extracted the zucchini and handed it over to her. If she didn’t know better, Rachel would’ve thought that Evelyn knew what she planned to do with the vegetable. Knew and approved.
Huh.
Travis handed one of the dogs over to Molly. “Let’s take these guys outside and let the weird vibe of the kitchen continue on without our presence.”
Rachel held the zucchini in her hand, inspected it, set it carefully on the cutting board next to the watermelon, and made eye contact with Gavin.
He looked to the produce, then back to her. “What’s going—”
She slashed through the zucchini with the knife, quick and with precision.
For the first time in a long time, Rachel felt a little better. Not quite so wound up. Maybe she should take up zucchini chopping as a stress reliever.
Oh, or there was that place where she could go and throw axes. That could be fun, too.
Already feeling lighter, she deftly continued chopping until the entire vegetable was well and truly diced.
Gavin stood unmoving, totally pale. He did break their locked gaze, his moving to the sliced zucchini before sliding it back to her.
Bless her heart, even Dakota’s mouth opened the tiniest of inches.
Good. Rachel had made her point.
“You and I are going to chat.” Rachel hung on to Gavin’s gaze a moment longer.
Gavin took a step toward her. “Rachel, I know you’re upset—”
“What did he do?” Molly apparently hadn’t made it outside before Rachel’s zucchini slicing demonstration.
Rachel glanced at her best friend, who was covering Pete’s eyes with her hand.
“What are you doing?” Rachel asked.
“I didn’t want him to see the massacre,” Molly whispered.
“Come outside and I’ll tell you all about what Gavin did.” Travis held the door open for Molly.
The party was hopping in the backyard, Kellan, Brady, and all their friends bouncing on the trampoline Gavin had bought for them last year.