Ville stood, closed the tablet, then held out his hand.
“Come on. Let’s get you put back together.”
Chapter 11
Ville
There were things in life I had thought I’d never, ever do and this was one of those.
I was talking to the gate install guy on the far edge of the yard where the driveway started. We weren’t on the driveway, because people were still driving in and out with Jenn arriving home soon and her friends descending already. The biggest reason for needing to be extra safe was currently making baby noises in the carrier strapped to my chest.
“When did you start procreating?” Lombardi asked, smirking a little. He’d been on the property for all of five minutes, not commenting on the baby as we played a game of chicken with who would mention the tiny interloper first.
I rolled my eyes. “This is Emerson Harrington,” I introduced the little boy who clapped his hands at his name, or something else, who knew with babies. “His grandma is on the way homefrom the hospital and it’s all hands on deck as they dash around cleaning the house a bit more. His twin is with his uncle Crew this morning.”
Lombardi was a friend of mine who worked from The Springs. I hadn’t even known he was in Colorado before I’d called him for referrals. I’d still thought he was in Seattle.
“So how are you here?” I asked as I leaned to the side of his SUV as he did something on his tablet.
“Colorado?” At my affirmative hum, he chuckled. “I got so damn tired of close protection. We had a family meeting and everyone said okay. Relocating was easy because the kids are so small. You know Ramon and Monica work from home and Etta was pregnant with our youngest at that point and in between jobs. What she really wanted to be was a stay at home mom anyway.”
“How many kids do you guys have now?” I had lost count, especially because while they didn’t differentiate, with two men and two women in the same poly family, the connections were hazy to me.
“Four. Monica is pregnant though. So it’ll be five soon. We’re leaving it at that. Ramon and I both got snipped in March and let the ladies pamper us and throw us a little snip party after.” He looked thoroughly amused.
I chuckled. “Well, it’s sure easier in every way for you two to take care of that.”
“Absolutely. There’s no reason for a woman to have that sort of surgery when ours is easy and the pain is tolerable. And ours is also more easily reversed if we change our minds at some point. I mean, there are no easy answers and not everyone goes the route we did, but for us, it was the right way to handle the situation, long term.”
“Straight people problems,” I snarked, which made him snort and roll his eyes.
“It’s not as if gay people don’t have kids.”
“That’s true.”
As he started to show me his plans on the tablet while I distracted Baby Em with a small teddy bear toy that clipped to the side of the carrier as a distraction technique, I wondered if Emery wanted kids.
There’d never been a need to talk about that. Not that there was now.
Ten minutes later, Demi jogged across the yard to us.
“Sorry, sorry. I decided to do all their laundry, too,” she explained as she began to extract her son from me.
“Demi, this is Joey Lombardi, he’s doing the gates for us. Joey, this is Demi Harrington, the mother of this one.” I held onto the baby as Demi folded the carrier under her arm to carry back to the house.
“Nice to meet you,” Demi said, smiling and held out her hand for Lombardi to shake.
“Likewise. Emerson is definitely the youngest person I’ve ever had an on-site meeting with.”
We chuckled and I handed Little Em over. “Are they on the way back?”
“Yeah, they should be here any minute now. After that, I think it’ll quiet down a bit. Fern told Mrs. Bailey that the doctor said no guests until tomorrow at the earliest while she was dropping off all that food.”
Lombardi chuckled knowingly.
“That’s good thinking. Do you think there’ll be many people coming?”
“Everyone knows and loves Mom. Mrs. Bailey will spread the word not to bother today, but there might be others who just don’t get the message. Literallyandfiguratively.”
