Page 2 of Bride of Choice

“You dodo, poo face,” Garth grunted out back, careful to keep his voice low as his gaze darted between us.

“He’ll sleep through just about anything,” Rosa insisted, shrugging when I gave her a look.

Don’t encourage them, woman! The look I gave her said.

“And he’ll have the best uninterrupted nap ever with his fabulous, generous, glamorous Cousin-Auntie Joanie,” I stubbornly muttered, giving her another long look.

“Of course.” Rosa tried to look serious for about all of two seconds.

Running up to us from where she’d been prancing through the patches of wild flowers just up ahead, Kehko came stumbling her way to the blanket we were settled on, to dump a butt load of flowers into the middle of it. “Mama! Mama! Looks what I found?!” Kehko practically shrieked.

Wincing, I glanced down to find Zhu-boy still softly snoring away, not a flinch or a flicker of anything.

Huh.

“Wow,” I mumbled, impressed.

It was Garth’s bellow as he began to tussle with two of his sisters, the twins, Onica and Washel, christened Monica and Rachel at birth by their mama, that did the trick.

With a sharp cry and little claws digging into my neck where tiny hands were buried in the hair at my nape, Zhuel came to with a caterwaul to rival the madness that had dared to drag him from his slumber.

“Sleep through anything, huh?” I mumbled, wincing as I unhooked claws from my flesh and prayed my ears would stop ringing.

“Heh. Heh. Just about anything?” Rosa corrected with a laugh as Daisy broke up the dog pile beside us and the two males with her, running around with all the wild littles, came over to give a gal a hand.

Rosa took Zhu-boy from me and handed over Tohkrii. “I don’t suppose you’d like to play with this fancy basket?” I asked the little guy, to a babble of baby talk and wet, furry fingers clapping to my face.

“Suppose not,” I muttered between wet claps, relieved I’d forgone going fully glammed up in favor of saving that kind of fabulousness for a fully done war paint kind of day.

Righty, one of Daisy’s mates, as I’d dubbed him, brought a basket over, joining Yeti-Thing One and Yeti-Thing Two, who’d accompanied Daisy today for this particular outing, Red and her males bringing up the rear, late as usual.

“You almost missed all the fun, Ginger,” I chirped at Red in a perfect imitation of Daisy. Cottontail, who’d just opened her mouth to do just that, huffed, then reached out and flicked me, making me crack up even as I slapped her hand away.

Rosa and Red grinned, shaking their heads at us simultaneously.

Soon food was distributed, the kids settled, and Red and Daisy, as usual, casually broke off to do their own thing. Rosa and I didn’t mind. In fact, we totally got it.

We were replacement peeps, fill-ins for Red and Daisy when they couldn’t hang with each other, and my cousin and I freaking knew it. We may heckle them about this from time to time but we certainly didn’t begrudge them this. Rosa and I were pretty much the same way. I’d admit, it would be nice to have a third buttcheek or two to pal around with, a general group of really tight gals. We’d never really had that before.

Daisy and Red were good to chum around with but they weren’t all inclusive besties. I couldn’t tell them everything.

Damn, I thought, thinking that one over. I couldn’t exactly tell anyone I had in my life EVERYTHING, not really, could I? This paragon of awesomesauce, they didn’t exist.

Couldn’t tell Rosa about Rek because, my god, why torture the woman? And how could I, why would I, do that to her? She absolutely loathed Rek and I understood why. The guilt of my secret little thing with Rek ate at me whenever I thought on it too hard or too long.

Bah dum tss. That’s what she said.

Distractions with humor for two hundred, please, Alex!

Good god, I was a jumbled up mess.

Even Booger, I felt, was starting to tire of listening to me yammer on about the Rek and Joanie Show. Unless I was dying to vent, I kept a lot of my shit largely to myself anymore.

When things were good between me and my bleach-squatch, they were amazing, wonderful, shout it to the moon. When they weren’t, everything sucked balls.

I couldn’t talk to Rek about a lot of stuff because he’d just be a butthead about it…

There was Gopher but I’d yet to really pull him into any of my shit. He was exposed to the periphery insanity but the main bull crap, I did my best to shield him from it.

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