Page 29 of Inked Devotion

Brenna narrowed her gaze at the three purses on the entryway table that belonged to her sisters, but quickly schooled her features when her mom looked around.

“I didn’t realize my sisters were here.”

“They wanted to be here with you. Your brothers are here too, but none of the spouses are.” Teresa looked over at me again. “We’re a lot all at once, and we didn’t want to overwhelm you if we started adding spouses and the babies. All of my children are having babies and just growing up, and it’s so wonderful, but the house gets quite full.”

She walked away, heading toward the noise from the living room, and Sam followed her.

I looked over at Brenna, who just shook her head. “Well, this is going to be fun.”

“Is it always like this?”

“Remember how I used to say that the way that your father treated you about work reminded me a lot of my family? Well, it has nothing to do with work, but all about my childbearing years.”

“But you’re planning on having a baby,” I whispered, doing my best to talk as quietly as I could so the others couldn’t hear.

She cringed. “I don’t know if my family is going to get on board with the whole doing that on my own thing, but we’re not going to talk about it with them, okay?”

“Of course not. You can trust me.”

“I know I can. It’s just, things got weird.”

We were standing alone in the hallway, and I didn’t think Teresa had even realized we hadn’t followed them, and it was tough to think when I could feel the heat of Brenna near me, the scent of her.

“Brenna? Benjamin? Where did you go?” Teresa asked.

I shook myself out of whatever I’d wanted to do.This was Brenna.Yes, we had had sex, but it had been a one-night stand, drunken sex. Drunk and consensual sex meant we were never going beyond what we were doing just then. It was never going to happen again, and I was never going to think about having sex with her again. Except all I could do was imagine how she had felt under me and the fact that I knew what that felt like. This trip was going to haunt my dreams forever. Fuck, it was going to haunt my waking memories.

How was I supposed to concentrate when she was just right there looking sexy as hell, and all I wanted to do was lean down and capture her lips with my own?

“Brenna,” Teresa called out, her voice a little harsher.

“Come on, we’re late,” she muttered, and I followed her towards the kitchen area. The house was an open concept, not unlike some of the floor plans that we built with Montgomery Builders, with a Garrett family touch to everything.

The kitchen looked well used, the appliances a little older, but the top of the line when they were bought.

It was a kitchen that people used, and since there was an extensive group of people standing in it, and in the nook beside it, I figured this is where people congregated often.

And here they all were, looking at me—most of them with Brenna’s eyes.

I didn’t realize how disconcerting that could be for others to see so many family members at once—people with their own memories, inside jokes, and connected lives.

How the hell had Brenna so easily melded with the Montgomerys? Because I knew we were probably a thousand times worse.

“Okay, you’re finally here. I’m sure you two just needed some privacy in the hallway,” Teresa said with a wink, and I knew Brenna was once again holding back a groan.

“Everybody, this is Benjamin. Benjamin, this is Joseph, Ellis, Carson, Josie, Connie, and Amelia,” she said quickly, rattling them off as if she had done it a thousand times. And she probably had.

“You’re never going to remember that.” If I remembered correctly, that was Josie. I knew she was the eldest daughter, the second oldest kid since the family primarily alternated boys and girls. She had four kids of her own and was pregnant again. Everyone looked pregnant, and now that I thought about it, Brenna had mentioned that the guys’ wives were also pregnant.

The amount of hormones was going to be ridiculous, but I wasn’t going to think about that.

Brenna also wanted a baby. As did my ex-girlfriend.

The themes of this weekend were babies and pregnancy. And I needed a fucking drink.

“Nice to meet everyone,” I said, not sure what else to say at all.

“You’re Beckett, right?” one of the girls said, and I heard Brenna curse under his breath.

---