Page 31 of Night of the Living Manny
“Daddy!”
“Hey, baby girl.” Liam swung her up into a hug. “I came home for supper.”
Her smile faded. “Just for supper?”
“Nope. I have to go back in late tonight, so I won’t be home at breakfast, but I’ll be here to listen to you read to Moose and tuck you in.”
“Yay!” She hugged his neck. “Brenden is making pot roast.”
“I can smell it. Yum. Do I also detect cake?”
“Yep.” Brenden winked at Britt. “Peter got to choose.”
“Ah, Boston cream pie, then.” Liam nodded sagely. “Where is he?”
“He’s supposed to be homeworking.” Brenden chuckled. “I imagine he’s gaming.”
“Susanna is here too, Daddy.”
Liam turned to him, frowning. “Is something wrong?”
“Her choir teacher was sick,” Brenden said, checking the pressure on the Instant Pot. “About an hour until supper.”
“They almost hit a homeless man on the way home!” Britt said, eyes dancing at the fact that she was the one to tell the tale first.
“Homeless? Weird. I’m going to go change, so I’ll ask her about it.” Liam set Britt back in her chair before nodding toward the main room.
Brenden followed, hoping he wasn’t in trouble or something. When Liam grabbed his hand, his breath whooshed out. When Liam kissed him, Brenden thought he might never get it back.
He wrapped his arms around Liam’s neck, then took another kiss. Then another.
“Brenden! Moosey is scratching at the back door.”
They broke the kiss, and he smiled at Liam. “Go change, huh?”
Liam squeezed Brenden’s ass. “Okay, but mark our place.”
“I will. Coming, Britt!” He hated that he had to leash Moose to go out, but that damn raccoon….
He harnessed up Moose to take him outside, knowing Britt would come with him. He checked the yard quickly before they went out but didn’t see anything, which relieved him.
Liam had come home for supper, and Brenden wanted to have the best night possible. Perfection wasn’t possible, especially with three kids and a big drooly dog, but doing his best was totally in the cards.
He totally wanted to earn more kisses.
“BOSS!Thank God you’re back.” Emmy came running over to Liam when he entered the lab, and his lingering happy from a tiny make-out session with Brenden faded completely. She looked utterly hysterical.
“What’s up?”
“The escalation cycle is off the charts.” She thrust a pile of printouts at him.
“Okay, so we tell the brass it’s absolutely not ready for distribution.” There was something going on he didn’t know about. Steven had been super-secretive man, still pushing him but not making any of the kind of big-pharma statements he usually made to speed the process.
“I know. I mean, I have, but you need to talk to them. This isn’t going to stop sepsis. It’s going to eat it, and everything else.”
He blinked. No one had ever stated it that baldly except him and Diana, back when they’d first started working on the project.
“I need all your data. Has anyone seen Greg?” The man had simply disappeared. That was ominous as hell, and no one had any new information.
