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Authors: Tymber Dalton

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BOOK: Kinko de Mayo
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“No, I’m going to take him outside and hose him off. Then he can jump in the pool or the hot tub. You still haven’t told us what you think.”

She was stalling. Their idea was to post a shot of Sean the human piñata on their Two Crafty Bastards Toys website to help celebrate Kinko de Mayo, a totally made-up and nonsensical excuse for a theme to run a special and sell more toys.

For St. Patrick’s Day, Sean had been a victim to Baxter’s Domly leprechaun, bound in green rope while her cat stood over him, dressed in full costume. The story being, of course, that Sean had tried to steal Baxter’s gold, represented by the small Halloween cauldron filled with chocolate coins.

She didn’t even want to think about the Easter picture, which they’d overruled her on and posted anyway after she’d left the house.

“I really wish you guys would let
me
, you know, the actual web designer and website admin, clear these ideas first.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Max asked. “You can do like you did before and place text over the image to cover his exposed bits.”

She felt a headache threatening. “I know I
can
,” she said. “That’s not the point. I have a brand for our shop.”

“Everybody loves Baxter. We’ll take a picture of him in a tiny sombrero and Photoshop it into the scene.”

“That sounds like you’re crossing a line from funny into borderline culturally offensive.”

“What about Easter?” Sean mumbled. “That was funny.”

“I thought you guys promised me you’d
never
mention that again.
Ever
.”

She’d found out about that picture from Tilly’s phone call, where her friend laughed hysterically until she managed to choke out the words that she loved the Easter pic.

Cali had been in the middle of Walmart, shopping, when she’d received the call. She’d immediately ended the call and pulled up their website on her phone.

And let out a horrified shriek right there in the middle of the store.

“You really don’t like this?” Max asked.

“We’ll post it,” she said, giving herself the coward’s out as she turned to leave with Baxter in her arms. “Just…in the future, new rule. You ask me
first
, before you set up these shots. And I get final say over what goes on the website.”

Baxter twisted in her arms, struggling to get down. She released him and he made a beeline back toward the playroom.

Seconds later, she heard a muffled scream, and Max yelling, “Baxter, no!”

She closed herself into the office and tried not to laugh loudly enough for them to hear her.

Let Baxter torture them both.

Serves them right.

 

* * * *

 

Forty-five minutes later, she was watching from inside the living room, staring through the sliders, as out in the backyard Max was hosing down a protesting Sean.

“Stand still, dammit.”

“That water’s fucking
cold
!”

“I’m almost done. Hold on.”

Holy crap, sometimes it was like having a couple of kids. She didn’t envy Essie getting pregnant. Cali wanted several more years with her guys first before going down that road. Clarisse was another reason. Look at what had happened to her, now pregnant with twin girls.

That would be my luck.

She was thirty-three. There were still several years ahead of her before she had to make that decision. Not to mention, having a baby in their line of work would add an extra logistical kink to things, and not the good kind of kink. Meaning they’d have to rent a workshop somewhere. They couldn’t be making BDSM implements and bondage furniture in the same house they were raising an inquisitive toddler.

Nope.

Yes, they’d talked about having a baby…someday. Accompanied by some scorching hot sexual fantasies of how to accomplish the deed. But the more successful their business became, the less sure she was. She’d worked her ass off to help the men grow their business.

Well, yeah, okay, the success with using Baxter as an accidental bondage model had helped there, too, but still, it wasn’t easy work.

Does that make me selfish?

Yes, her men hoped that one day they’d have a baby. They’d already told her that. But they’d also told her it was her decision to make, since it was her body.

She pulled the slider open. “I’m walking down to Essie’s,” she called out.

Max waved at her without taking his eyes off where he was hosing Sean down.

“Please make sure you pick up all that paper,” she called out.

“We will.”

“Thank you.” She pulled the slider closed and headed out the front door. Essie, Mark, Josh, and Ted lived a few houses down from them. She knocked, shave and a haircut, and heard Essie call out.

“Come on in, Cali.”

She opened the door. Her friend was seated on the couch, feet up, hand resting on her growing baby belly as she watched TV.

“You alone?” She’d suspected as much from all the work vehicles not parked in their driveway.

“They’ll be home in an hour or so. They’re supervising a small hoarding job this morning.”

“Ah.”

She muted the TV. “What’s up, girlfriend?”

“You ain’t gonna believe this.” Cali sank down onto the end of the couch and told her about Max and Sean’s latest exploits.

By the time she finished, Essie was laughing as she hauled herself up and off the couch to the powder room. “Hold on,” she said through her laughter. “Now I’ve got to pee. That’s almost as good as Easter!”

“I told you not to talk about that!” Cali groused.

When Essie returned, still giggling, she said, “Well, you have to admit, it’s never boring around your house.”

“No, boring isn’t a word I’d used to describe either of them.”

Essie’s smile faded. “What’s bothering you? Seriously.”

“I’m not sure I want to have a baby. Not right now, at least.”

Essie frowned. “Are you pregnant?”

“No.”

“Then I’m confused. What’s the problem?”

“We’d talked about maybe having one. Now, with the business and everything, I’m not sure.”

“Then don’t get pregnant.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Says the woman who was on birth control at the time she got knocked up.”

“Well, that’s true. There is that.” She stroked her belly. “Be glad it’s not contagious.”

“Yikes. Don’t even suggest that.”

“So why the sudden change of heart?”

“It’s just that now I feel like I really have a great life, everything I wanted. I’ve got the guys, a business that’s doing well, and I’m worried adding one more complication to that will throw things off-kilter. Life won’t be the same.”

“Kind of the point.”

“I’m afraid to rock the boat. I’m not even sure if I’d be a good parent.”

“Go babysit for Clarisse with her two kids,” Essie said. “Or better yet, wait until she pops the girls out. Think about those odds, four against three. They’re outnumbered. At least we’ve got the odds in our favor.” She smiled. “Four against one. I think we’ll be okay.”

“Don’t be so sure about that.”

“In our line of work, it’s a little different. You know, you could always hire someone to take over the manufacturing part. And work on the website while the mini-you is asleep.”

“Yes, because that works sooo well for people. I’ve heard the stories. Not exactly how it happens. You can take your baby to work. Well, at least to the office.”

Essie and her men ran a commercial cleaning and disaster recovery business, in addition to doing hoarder clean-up jobs. Some of which were filmed as episodes for a show on the
gO!
Network.

“Why is this something that’s weighing on you right now? Why the sudden urgency to decide one way or the other?”

“I don’t know. Just seeing Sean swinging from the bondage frame this morning, covered in paper-mache, drove home the fact that we don’t have a child-friendly home, much less a childproof one.”

“And again I counter with, why decide right now? If you’re happy with the way things are, why change them?”

“Because the last time I didn’t do some forward thinking and advanced planning, I ended up kicked out of my house while my boyfriend ran off with someone he met on FetLife.”

“Aaannd?”

“And what?”

“And then you eventually ended up with the two hunks you have now. Had Shane not been a dick, you wouldn’t be with your guys.”

“Yeah, but I would have preferred a more direct path to happiness, bypassing the bullshit. Why does it feel like everyone else has their lives figured out far better than I do?”

“Think of it as giving you a better appreciation for the riches you now have. And what do you want me to bring to the party tonight?”

“Just yourself. And your guys.”

“Want me over there early to help out?”

“No, I think we have it covered. As long as I can get the Bobbsey twins to focus. Sometimes they’re like a couple of ADHD squirrels.”

“They wouldn’t be as much fun as they are if they weren’t.”

“I think you derive entirely too much pleasure from my misfortunes.”

Essie laughed. “What else is a bestie for, bestie?”

 

* * * *

 

By the time Cali returned home, Sean was de-piñata-ed and grabbing a warm shower.

“Tilly called,” Max said. “They’re going to get here around five with the loaner furniture.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He put out a hand, stopping her before she could walk past him to the office. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Then why do I get the impression you’re not?”

“I’m just tired, and it’s going to be a long night with everyone here. And then…
that
this morning.”

“You’re not mad, are you?”

“No, I’m not mad.” Why, exactly, was she stressing over this stuff again?

Because I’m an idiot who doesn’t know how to relax and just let life happen, that’s why.

“Oookaay.”

“Seriously, I’m not mad.”

“For someone who isn’t mad, you sure have a mad face on.”

“I’m not mad. You constantly asking me if I’m mad when I’m not, however, is starting to aggravate me.”

Sean walked in, towel-drying his wet hair. “She mad?”

Cali let out a scream of frustration and went to go lock herself in the office for a little while.

Chapter Three

 

Mark made it home first. Essie was in the shower when he stuck his head in through the shower curtain.

“Room for company?”

“Always.”

He quickly stripped and joined her. “Ted and Josh will be along soon.”

“So, how bad is the place?” She hadn’t been out to see the site, her men handling it. Since she got pregnant, they’d limited her visits to clean-up sites out of concerns for her health and that of the baby. Some hoarding sites were downright toxic in terms of biological hazards, depending on the situation. She’d been relegated to office work and logistical organization, or kept outside supervising work crews.

“I’ve seen worse. Mostly a paper hoarder. Magazines, newspapers, junk mail fliers, books. Neatly stacked in every freaking free space imaginable. Rabbit trails all over the place. His son told him if he didn’t clean it out, he’d report him to the county and they’d condemn his house, which of course they would have.”

“Yikes.”

“Well, he’s eighty-two. It’s not healthy.”

“Is he fighting it?”

“Tooth and nail. Every time he tries to pull something out of the toss pile, Ted makes him go through the mental checklist of how long has he had it, is he really going to read it, all of that. At least with the junk mail, with the coupons and ads being expired, he finally quit fighting us on that one. But I suspect once the clean-out is finished, he’ll be right back to hoarding again and his son will have to be over there a couple of times a week cleaning stuff out.”

“Wow. That’s not a recipe for success.”

“It’s not, but his son told him he’d go to court and ask a judge to give him a power of attorney over him if he didn’t agree to this and then sell his house and make him live in an ALF. So it’s going to be an uneasy, ongoing battle for the rest of this man’s life with his son.”

“I hate it when that happens. It’s so sad.”

“So do I, but there’s only so much we can do. His son wants his father to remain as independent as possible. I can’t fault him for that. The man’s wife’s death five years ago triggered this. Apparently she was the breakwater, the one throwing stuff out and holding his hoarding tendencies at bay. ”

Essie knew that all too well. That had been her mom’s role, until her father’s hoarding overwhelmed her, too. It was only his death that allowed her mother freedom, from the hoard and from the stress of trying to hold it back.

He slipped his arms around her from behind, his hands resting on her baby bump. “How’s our little monster doing today?”

She smiled. “We’re still not calling him Bubba. I don’t care what you, Josh, Ted, or your dad says. I’m pulling wife rank.”

Her father-in-law, once he found out he was getting a grandson for his first grandchild, had already started buying everything he could get his hands on that was boy-related and bringing it to them. There wasn’t a sport the child wouldn’t be equipped to play by the time he was born.

And he’d nicknamed her bump “Bubba.”

“Aw. No Bubba Collins, huh?”

“No. There aren’t enough spankings or canings in the world to make me do it, either.”

 

* * * *

 

By the time Mark and Essie finished their shower, Josh and Ted had returned. She pulled on an oversized T-shirt and nothing else, not wanting to get dressed for the party yet when they still had a couple of hours before they had to be down the street at their friends’ house.

Ted looked like he was in anything but a kinky party mood.

“What’s wrong?” Essie asked.

“Just…very disheartened.” He sat on the end of the bed. “I know this isn’t going to end well. Once we get that house cleaned out, he’s going to start trying to fill it up again. His son filed a change of address with the post office so they hopefully won’t be delivering him any mail. That’s only a stop-gap measure for a minor part of the larger problem.”

BOOK: Kinko de Mayo
12.91Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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