Page 60 of Naughty by Nature

The next table held a wooden chest and writing utensils, as well as a stack of notecards. “Advice for the Mr. and Mrs. To Be…”

“Oh my,” Lora said with a laugh. “This one could be dangerous.”

“We’ll just have to get people to sign the cards before they drink too much,” Cheyenne laughed. “We also have two different games for the kids. One is a scavenger hunt to find fake gemstone rings hidden all around the barn and another to take silly pictures of the guests with disposable cameras. The guests have to be as silly as they can.”

Lora laughed, shaking her head again, then she fell somber. “I have no relatives left in my family, so you have no idea how important all these things are. I will remember this for the rest of my life.”

They hugged again, and shed a few tears, until Chad called her away to look at something else. The two of them eventually headed into the house to see his mom and dad and get dressed.

The entire day rolled out without a hitch. The private bus full of Chad’s friends from work arrived just as some of the neighbors began pulling in and parking on the grass beyond the field. It wasn’t one o’clock yet, the official time of the party, but some people just enjoyed being early.

Cheyenne and Sheridan and Payton and Brock were already dressed and started welcoming people to the party. Chad had given them a little bit of background about the men and women he worked with, but it was a pleasure getting to meet them in person.

Zeke and Ember she loved as soon as she met, and their son Drew disappeared with Grace and Mercy almost immediately. Zeke’s scarred face made her heart ache for him, but he didn’t seem concerned. Ember looked at him with total devotion in her eyes, and Cheyenne could see they were very much in love.

Cat and Preston Harper were a striking pair, but they both smiled when they came in. They had two kids, Tate, eight, and Dillon, fourteen, almost replicas of their parents. Cheyenne remembered the tall, forbidding sniper from the incident with Lora’s ex, but she’d had no idea the man had a family. Or that he could smile. Tate caught up with Grace, Drew and Mercy while Dillon wandered over to the Bubbly Bar where Olivia and Carolyn were already mixing up very fancy Cokes.

Cassandra and Roger seemed newly engaged, but also deeply in love. It wasn’t until they were walking away that Cheyenne noticed that Cassandra was holding Roger’s prosthetic arm.

“I thought John and Shannon were coming as well?” she asked Chad at one point. “I’m anxious to meet them.”

“They’ll be here,” he promised. “Shannon’s twins are due any day now, and she has to be as comfortable as possible, so John was driving his own vehicle down. Easier with the wheelchair, too, because he has a lift on it.”

“Ah,” she said softly.

A huge shiny motor coach rolled in and parked beside the Denver bus. Two couples walked down the steps, the first couple carrying two little ones, and started walking toward the barn.

The very tall blond woman looked incredibly familiar and she carried a darling dark-haired baby boy on her hip. The woman seemed too… urbane for their ranch, dressed in a beautiful peach-colored pantsuit, but she smiled warmly when they were introduced, and seemed genuinely pleased to be there. A big man stood at her shoulder, holding a beautiful little girl in a pink dress. “Please excuse us. My name is Grif Parks, my wife Kendall, our son Jameson, and our daughter Zoe. Kendall doesn’t get out of the office much, can you tell?”

Kendall laughed and swatted at his arm. “Quit it, Grif.” She glanced around the modified barn. “This is stunning. Thank you so much for having us.”

“Help yourselves to the refreshments,” Cheyenne told them.

A dark-haired woman with pretty blue-grey eyes shook her hand. There was a swatch of bright pink in her hair, and she wore a flowing dress that highlighted her little baby bump. “I’m Kendall’s friend Lilly, and this is Diego Ortiz, my fiancé.”

Cheyenne blinked, wondering if the man realized how scrumptious he looked, with the rakish eye patch and the glittering diamond earring. He was dark Hispanic, with a light green eye. Lilly better keep an eye on him or one of the Honeywell women might snag him.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you both. Welcome.”

Then she realized, as she looked at them greeting the crowd, who the women were. Both women had been models at one time. Well-known ones.

“Did you know who they were?” she hissed to Sheridan as the couples wandered away.

Grinning, he gave her that implacable cop nod he had, and she shook her head in exasperation.

As the men and some women trooped in, she was amazed at the diversity and the companionship she saw. It was obvious that some of them hadn’t seen each other for a while as well, because they were laughing and joking, catching up as friends do. Even the forbidding Harper, the sniper, was grinning as he was pounded on the back of the heavily scarred Zeke, the only other man almost the same size.

When a black truck pulled near the barn door, Chad waved at the driver where to park. Cheyenne was curious as Chad walked out to open the passenger side door. A small and very pregnant woman took his hand as she maneuvered herself out of the cab. This must be John and Shannon.

The woman was beautiful and pregnancy obviously agreed with her, but it didn’t with the darkly handsome man in the wheelchair that wheeled around the front of the truck. He watched every move the woman made, and snapped at one of the men to ‘get her a fucking chair’.

The woman laughed at him and turned to Cheyenne, “As if I haven’t been sitting for hours already! Hi, I’m Shannon Palmer.”

Cheyenne was charmed. Shannon Palmer was a doll, so sweet and friendly. “I apologize for my husband. He’s a little overprotective of me and the babies. Right now,” she leaned forward conspiratorially, “I kinda need the little girl’s room.”

Cheyenne guided her back through the barn door and to the room-sized, portable outhouse one of Brock’s men had built just for this occasion. It had been hooked up to a hose outside, so it had running water to flush the toilet and clean with. It was actually quite nice and almost felt like you were in a house, with a tile floor and high-end fixtures. There was a baby changing table in one corner, and a front porch with a chair. It was also completely handicapped accessible. Brock had reasoned that it would be used more than once over the coming months.

As soon as they returned to the barn, John pulled Shannon down into his lap and wheeled her toward the refreshments.

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