Page 82 of The Beta's Heart

“Mr. Barlow!” Ty bawled, wrestling to get out of Dad’s hold.

“It’s Dad now, love,” Mom laughed. “We’re chuffed to bits that you’re Peri’s mate. Welcome to our family!”

She’s what?Ty linked me as he hoisted Dad up—Dad, who was built like a bear and three inches taller than Ty!—and held him in his arms like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold.

It means happy,I told him with a grin.You’ll get used to her funny sayings.

“Where do you want him,Mom?” Tyler teased her with a wink as Dad spluttered with wide eyes.

“The pool sounds brilliant!”

Next thing I knew, Dad did something that sent them both to the floor, where they wrestled around like two pups in a mudhole, laughing and grunting as they each tried to pin the other down.

That, of course, attracted my younger brothers like moths to a flame, and Archer, Wayne, and Wade jumped into the pile, screaming like banshees, as Mom hurried to move the coffee table out of the way, muttering about her furniture being destroyed again as they wrestled.

“Us, too!” William called as he and his partner in crime came running over, but Wesley grabbed him as I caught Winnie under his arms and swung him up high in the air.

“The big boys are being too rough right now,” I told them both when they whined.

“Youwestle us, Sissy!” Winnie squished my cheeks between his palms. “Wes, Sissy, westle us!”

I exchanged a long-suffering look with Wesley, who was no more into “westling” than I was.

“How about a visit from the tickle monster instead?” I offered and tossed Winnie on the couch.

“Not tickle monst-ah!” he shrieked.

“Oh, yes, and here she comes!” With an evil cackle, I descended on him, earning streams of giggles before my fingers even touched his soft little belly.

#

After we recovered, the boys helped Dad and Ty carry my packed boxes out to the vehicles, and Mom motioned me into the kitchen.

“I have something for you.”

“You guys have given us more than enough already,” I tried to protest as she rooted around in the cupboards.

“Oh, poppycock.” She turned around and held up an empty plastic container that was about two feet tall and shaped like a bear. “The lads finished off the biscuits yesterday, so I gave it a wash and set it aside for you.”

Over twenty years since she moved here from England, and she still calls cookies biscuits,I linked Dove, who snickered.

“I don’t really have a use for it,” I started to tell her, but she interrupted me with a rather ruthless glint in her silvery blue eyes.

“Of course you do, love. It’s your very own swear bear!”

“Oh. Well, thanks, I guess,” I said without enthusiasm.

“Can’t have our first grandpup spouting profanities before he can walk, now, can we?”

“But Ty doesn’t have a potty mouth,” I protested.

“Not. For. Him,” she said very slowly and precisely.

Then she gave me The Look. The one that sent grown men—including my big, burly father and brothers—running, and since I was no braver, I grabbed my new swear bear and hightailed it out of there.

#

Tyler

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