Happily Ever After: A Day in the Life of the HEA (Rook and Ronin #3.5)
Read Happily Ever After: A Day in the Life of the HEA (Rook and Ronin #3.5) Online
Authors: J.A. Huss
Edited by RJ Locksley
Copyright © 2015 by J. A. Huss
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-1-936413-99-7
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
DESCRIPTION
Life in Rook & Ronin’s world has been bliss for fifteen years. Rook, Veronica, and Ashleigh are still BFF’s raising their kids together. Ronin, Spencer, and Ford have managed to go legit and stay out of trouble. And they have a pack of kids running around the eight thousand square foot Vail mansion they all share for the holidays—begging for gifts, and fun, and love.
But every HEA has problems.
Five is fifteen and getting ready to go off to college. He’s put it off as long as he could in order to stay close to Princess Shrike, but his stay of execution is over and in three weeks he’s off to Oxford. But Five can’t leave until he gets the only thing he’s ever wanted. The heart of his Princess.
Ford and Ashleigh never had any more children after Five. And now that Kate is sixteen, Ashleigh is out of her head with desire for just one more chance to have a baby in the house.
Rook and Ronin have two beautiful daughters, but Sparrow is growing up too. And she just got a job offer that has Ronin crazed with paternal worry.
And Spencer is the father of a fifteen-year-old princess who looks way too much like her Bombshell mother for his comfort level.
Join the whole Rook & Ronin gang for a Team Christmas you will never forget.
Chapter One
“Five?”
Kate is calling me from the bottom of the stairs. I’m stuck up in the attic bedroom in the Vail vacation mansion with Oliver, as usual. He’s still snoring. Kids. They love Christmas. He was so excited last night, he stayed up talking me to death until three AM.
“Five?” Kate yells again.
I look in the bathroom mirror and smooth an out-of-place hair, then straighten my tie.
“Why didn’t you answer me?” Kate asks, coming up behind me. She’s clearly annoyed with my indifference, because she has one hand on her hip. “I’ve been calling you.” She stops short and covers her mouth as she laughs. “You are
not
wearing that.”
“I’m busy, Kate. I have adult things on my mind.”
When I look over at her she’s just giving me that dumbfounded stare. “I’m older than you.”
“Age is not what makes a person mature.”
“Anyway,” she says, sighing and blowing some of her dark bangs out of her eyes. “Rook is making us all breakfast. Pancakes!” This lights up her face. Kids love their pancakes too. “But seriously, Five. No one wears suits to Christmas Eve breakfast. It’s stupid.”
“It says upwardly mobile.”
“That’s stupid too. No one wants to look like they’re going on a job interview at family breakfast.” She pauses, looking me up and down with a critical eye. “You know she’d like you more if you weren’t so weird.”
“I have no idea to whom you are referring. And I’m not weird.”
Kate snickers. “OK. But she’s my best friend, you know. Rory tells me everything and she thinks you’re weird.”
“She does not,” I say, spinning around so I can look Kate in the eyes. “Princess Shrike is my one true love. She knows this. I know this. And one day, when we are of legal age to marry, the world will know this.”
Kate sighs. “I was kidding. Well, a little bit. She has remarked about the suits though, Five. For real. Don’t wear it. I’m not steering you wrong here. I’m trying to help.”
“I agree,” five-year-old Oliver says from behind Kate, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Lose the suit and put on the snowmen, Rutherford the Fifth. Trust me, I live with her. She likes this stuff. She’s always telling me how cute I am in these.” He points to his flannel character pajama pants.
“First of all,” I say, putting up a finger, “do not call me Rutherford the Fifth. Second, I don’t
have
snowman pants. Third, suits always say normal.”
“Wait here,” Kate says with a sigh.
“Whatever,” I say, turning back to the mirror to check my tie again.
“You should take our advice, Five,” Oliver says. “I’m a girl expert. I have five sisters. I live with them. Rory likes boys who wear t-shirts. Like that Marshall kid in her class.”
“Marshall?” I squint at myself in the mirror, my mind whirring to try and place a kid named Marshall. “Who is Marshall?”
“Quarterback for the varsity team,” Oliver says. “She went to the library with him last week.”
“Hmmm.” I hate not being in the same school as her anymore. She’s at a charter school in Fort Collins and I’m commuting to University of Denver twice a week. Why do I have to be so smart?
“Yeah, Marshall something. Do you want me to find out his last name so you can hack into his email like you did the last boy she was talking to?”
“Jesus, Oliver. You have some imagination. I don’t hack things.” I do hack things, but I’m not allowed to hack things, so Spencer’s big-mouth son needs to keep his mouth shut. “But I’ll take that last name if you can get it.”
Oliver gives me a conspiratorial wink just as Kate comes bounding up the attic steps again.
“Here,” she says, thrusting a present at me. “You’ll have one less thing under the tree, but it’s more of a Christmas Eve gift anyway.”
I take the gift bag filled with bright red tissue paper and peer inside. Pajama pants. “No,” I say, handing it back to Kate.
“Seriously, Five. You’ll look cute.” And then she reaches up and messes up my hair. “Girls like that too. And you should stop shaving those three stubbly things growing on your chin. Girls like a shadow.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about, Kate. I know what Princess likes. Me. I don’t have to wear weird pants or look like a vagrant. I just need to be me.”
“I saw her staring at Marshall when he was at football camp last summer,” Oliver says. “Princess was at the cheerleading camp across the field and—”
“What?” I was at Stanford all last summer. “She went to cheer camp? Cheer camp with football-playing boys?” I almost can’t take it. “I thought she was riding all summer?”
“See,” Kate says. “You don’t even know her anymore. I’m sure you were best friends back at Saint Joseph’s, Five, but she’s grown up a lot since seventh grade.”
“She’s only in ninth grade now, Kate. It’s not like I missed much.”
“Marshall is in eleventh grade,” Oliver says through a sleepy yawn.
“What? What the hell is wrong with Spencer? How can he allow his daughter to associate with an older man?”
Kate shakes the bag of flannel pants at me. “Put them on. She does like that guy, Five. He asked her to Winter Formal, but we were going out of town that weekend to talk to those horse catalog people, so she had to say no.”
I just stare at the bag. “Flannel?”
“And a t-shirt,” Oliver says. “Shrike Bikes, if you’ve got one.”
“I’m telling you,” Kate says. “She likes you, Five. She’s always liked you. But you’re moving on without her. It’s not her who’s leaving you behind next semester. Oxford is a long way away. You won’t even recognize her when you come back in the summer.
If
you come back.”
“If?”
“Please, Five. You’re smart. You know that you’ll love it there. You know you’ll get involved in all sorts of nerdy academic things and coming home might not be a priority after you get settled. You’re going to be living the life of an adult. Rory is a freshman in high school. She’s not interested in growing up so fast. Not like that, anyway.”
I don’t ask what
that
means. I know what it means. She’s going to do all her teen things without me. I’m going to be thousands of miles away all engrossed in computer engineering, and she’s going to be thinking about football games and Marshall. It’s research labs and college life for me and dances and note passing for her.
I take the bag of pajama pants from Kate and close the bathroom door to change.
When I get downstairs Princess is laughing and joking with Sparrow and Kate as they eat their pancakes sitting at the kitchen island. Rook is flitting around filling plates and the little kids are sitting at the kitchenette table near the window where there is a clear view of the ski slopes.
I feel self-conscious in this new outfit. I want to hide behind my suit and tie. I want to hide behind the facade of normal so the only girl I’ve ever wanted won’t see too deep inside me.
But when she turns and takes me in I know that Kate was right. My new look delights her. I can see it in her bright blue eyes.
“Five.” She laughs. But it’s not a laugh that says ‘you look ridiculous.’ It’s a laugh that says, “You look…” I wait for it. “Cool. I dig the penguins.” She looks me over, taking a full two or three seconds to do it. “And the bedhead.” She giggles. “It suits you.”