Epilogue

VIOLET

Brodie had done as he promised, giving me the family I wanted. And it turned out that I carried the recessive gene for red hair, thanks to my great-great-grandmother. Because of her, we had a fifty-fifty chance of having the red-haired babies I wished for in my early days with Brodie. And we beat those odds since two of our three children were gingers like their daddy.

The youngest, our only daughter, had the temperament to go with her hair color, too. She also had her daddy and big brothers wrapped around her little finger, so I was the only one willing to put my foot down with her.

“Sorry, sweet pea. I already said no more cookies tonight. You can have some apple slices instead, though, if you’re still hungry.”

Poppy puffed out her bottom lip in an exaggerated pout, widening her blue eyes for added effect. “No more cookies?”

“Nope.” I shook my head. “Which you already knew because I told you the last one was it for the night.”

“But Mom, she’s only four. She doesn’t understand,” Brian defended his sister.

I quirked a brow at our eldest, who apparently needed to spend less time with his Uncle Ash because he enjoyed arguing a little too much and tended to blame it on the fact that he wanted to be a lawyer just like the club’s secretary when he grew up. “How did your father and I teach you that there are consequences to your actions?”

My eight-year-old huffed out an irritated breath. “By enforcing the rules.”

“And did we do the same with Brendan?”

Brian nodded, his shoulder slumping.

“So why should I treat your sister any differently?” I asked.

He pointed at Poppy. “Just look at her.”

Big tears welled in her pretty eyes, and her hands were pressed together in a pleading gesture. “Just one more. Pwease, Mommy?”

“Fine.” I got up and stalked over to the plate of chocolate chip cookies that I’d baked earlier today, choosing the smallest one to give to her. “Here you go.”

“Twank you, Mommy,” she mumbled around the cookie she’d already shoved into her mouth.

“You caved?” Brodie asked, jerking his chin at our daughter as he walked back into the kitchen from the garage with Brendan right behind him. The boys took turns helping their dad take out the garbage each week, and he’d been up in the rotation.

“As if you would’ve been able to withstand the pressure,” I scoffed, shaking my head. “You wouldn’t have even tried to say no the first time around, and she probably would have talked you into a half a dozen more cookies, then woke us up in the middle of the night because she was sick to her stomach.”

He couldn’t argue because that had actually happened a few months ago. Instead, he turned to the kids and announced, “Time to get ready for bed.”

Satisfied now that she’d gotten an extra extra cookie, Poppy climbed off her chair to race out of the kitchen. The boys looked as though they were going to argue for extra time, like usual, but one look at their dad’s face, and they decided against it.

When they were gone, I leaned back in my chair, stretching out my legs before crossing my ankles. “You do realize that the day will come when the tables are turned, and you’re the one feeling my pain while I take Poppy’s side, right?”

“What do you mean?” Brodie asked, his brows drawing together.

I flashed him a mischievous grin. “When she’s a teenager, she’s going to want to go on dates. And you’ll want to tell her that she can’t…not until she’s thirty, or something ridiculous like that, considering I was only twenty when we met.”

“Damn straight, I’m not gonna let my baby girl date until she’s way older than a teenager,” he grumbled, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

“That’s what you say now,” I chirped with a shrug. “But how do you think she’ll react to hearing her sweet daddy put his foot down for the first time in her life? While her teenage hormones are raging, and she has a crush on some boy…”

I trailed off, letting his imagination fill in the blanks.

“Fuck,” he groaned, scrubbing his palms against his face.

I leaned forward to pat his leg. “I know it’s hard to withstand those big, blue eyes, especially when they’re aimed right at you with tears welling in them, and she pulls out that voice of hers. But you need to man up and act like the badass you really are, even if it makes her cry sometimes. Once she learns that you’re going to make her follow the rules too, she might actually stop the fake tears.”

“Maybe,” he conceded with a deep sigh, shaking his head. “But she’ll probably just come up with some other way to try to manipulate us into doing what she wants. And the odds are good it’ll work. She might look like a mini female version of me, but she has your voice and brains. She’s wicked smart for a four-year-old.”

“Which is why we need to provide a united front. It’s the only way we’ll ever defeat her…I mean, successfully parent her.”