He looked the shattered pieces scattered on the floor. “Crap.”
Tyler hurried inside. “What happened? I heard a crash?”
“Hurricane Tommy strikes,” Nevvie said with a smile. She helped him pick up the pieces and they tossed him. “I guess if there was anything important, they’ll call us back.”
“Speaking of hurricanes,” Tom said, “I’ll start getting the shutters down tomorrow.”
* * * *
Nevvie was never so thankful to crawl into her own bed as she was that night. She didn’t miss the hopeful looks on both men’s faces.
“Boys, feel free to play without me,” she said. “I’m wiped out.”
“Are you sure, love?” Tyler asked. “We wouldn’t want to leave you out.”
“If I change my mind, I’ll be sure to let you know, don’t worry.” Even if she was too tired, she still enjoyed watching. And it wouldn’t be the first time that watching her men together overrode her being tired and got her fully in the mood.
Tom pounced on Tyler. “You heard the lady.” Before Tyler could answer, Tom kissed him deeply, driving whatever response Tyler had intended out of his head, apparently.
Nevvie curled on her side and watched with a smile. Tom grabbed Tyler’s hands and pinned them over his head as he continued ravishing him with his mouth. Both men’s cocks, when she could glimpse them, were rigid and ready.
Tyler tried bucking his hips against Tom to get friction against his cock, but Tom used his body to hold Tyler in place. Tom nipped and kissed and licked Tyler’s lips and neck, stoking his passions until he begged Tom for relief.
“You want it, buddy?”
“Please, blast you!”
Tom changed positions, swinging a leg over Tyler’s head but pinning Tyler’s arms down with his legs so he couldn’t move. Then he dangled his cock just out of reach of Tyler’s eager mouth. “You want it, you have to work for it.”
Tyler strained, trying to reach Tom’s cock with his mouth. “You know I do!” Nevvie suppressed her giggle at the sight as well as the desperation in Tyler’s voice.
“Oh, all right,” Tom said. He lowered his hips. Tom’s cock disappeared between Tyler’s lips.
Tom grunted with pleasure. “Yeah, that’s it. You know what I like.” He worked his hips, fucking Tyler’s mouth, his balls bouncing against Tyler’s nose at the bottom of every stroke.
Tyler moved with him, doing whatever he could to keep up with Tom’s strokes. From the sounds Tyler made, Nevvie could tell he was enjoying himself just as much as Tom. And the fact that his cock practically stood straight up was another clue.
“That’s it, Ty,” Tom said. “Keep it up, buddy.” He dipped his head and sucked Tyler’s cock into his mouth.
Tyler let out a passionate moan around Tom’s cock even as he bucked his hips against Tom. It was a beautiful sight to Nevvie, watching her men together. If she hadn’t been so damned tired, she’d be more than happy to join them and play.
Tom used one hand to reach between Tyler’s legs and cup his sac. Tyler moaned again, louder, more deeply, around Tom’s cock.
That was when Tom exploded, fucking his shaft deep into Tyler’s throat. After a moment he lifted his hips and began focusing his attention on making Tyler come. He worked his mouth up and down Tyler’s cock while playing with his balls. He wrapped his fingers around the base of Tyler’s cock, gripping it firmly, as he worked it over.
Tyler frantically thrust his hips in the air, but Tom refused to rush. He kept at it, holding Tyler’s release back until, finally, he went deep one last time. Tyler muffled his low, passionate cry against Tom’s leg.
Tom rolled off Tyler and both men lay there, catching their breath. As Nevvie drifted to sleep, the men snuggled around her.
Life is good.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tyler was pleasantly pleased with how the book was coming along. There were only a few things he wasn’t sure about, which would take some research. A week after their return from the trip, he told Nevvie his plans.
“I want to take a concealed weapons license class.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t mind guns, Ty. You know that. But I would prefer not to have any in the house with the boys being so young.”
He shook his head. “No, love. For research.”
Her other eyebrow joined the first in a positive expression. “Good progress on the book?”
He smiled. “I think I’ll have it finished in plenty of time. But in all seriousness, I want to take a class.”
“Then do it. Call around and find a gun shop that offers them.”
“I think I might actually get my license as well.”
“Why, if you’re not going to buy a gun?”
“If I’m going to spend the money on the class, then why not?”
She shrugged. “Okay. You’re the writer, Evil Genius.” She leaned in and kissed him. “Have fun.”
By that afternoon, he’d found a gun shop in Tampa with a class going on the next night. And they told him over the phone if he came in early, the instructor could work with him on a private lesson with a firearm so he could gain experience shooting. The next day, he headed over, excited and with more than a little nervousness. He’d never fired a gun before, although he had better than a layman’s knowledge of guns from prior research for his books.
“Time I ‘nut up,’ as Nevvie would say,” he muttered to himself as he got out of the car. He’d always resisted firsthand shooting experience, but in this book, he’d found it was an integral part of the character’s life. He needed more than just being able to recite brands, models, and calibers from a gun manufacturer’s website. He needed to learn how to clean one, how to break it down and reassemble it. And while he could get the facts from a book or YouTube video, it didn’t give him the visceral sights and smells and sounds of the actions that would give his writing the verisimilitude he preferred.
The instructor, Jack, also happened to be the shop’s owner. He left one of his employees in charge of the showroom while he took Tyler to the indoor shooting range they had at the store. Equipped with safety glasses and shooting muffs, he showed Tyler how to shoot several common handguns, both revolvers and semiautomatics.
By the time he’d finished, his hands ached from the recoil, and he kept wanting to sneeze from the smell of the gunpowder. But the instructor told him he wasn’t a half-bad shot.
Tyler smiled. “Thank you, but I doubt I’ll be getting any better.”
“But you said you wanted your concealed carry permit.”
“I do, more for the research value than any actual use it’ll get.” He laughed. “I’ll probably pin it on my wall as a souvenir.”
Jack shrugged. “Well, can’t hurt to have it. You never know when you might want to carry a gun.”
“My wife would kill me,” Tyler said.
“She antigun?”
“No, but we have two small children in the house. If it wasn’t for that, she most likely wouldn’t care.”
“Well, if you ever change your mind, we sell a wide variety of child locks and gun safe options. And we do teach a children’s safety class.”
“I shall keep it in mind. Perhaps even for research.”
The class took several hours and included lectures as well as watching videos. He was surprised how many women were in the class with him. Of the twenty-three students, only four were men. And the women ranged in age from college students to grandmothers.
The next day, he took his paperwork to downtown Tampa, got his picture taken for the license, his fingerprints taken for the background check, and filed everything. He was told the turnaround time was anywhere from two to eight weeks or longer.
With that chore done, he put it out of his mind and returned home, eager to get back to work on the book. The plot that had looked so hopeless before the trip was now laid out before his mental eye with crystal clarity.
* * * *
Once again, Bob came through for
them. It took him a little over a week to track down the information, but Nevvie received a phone call from him one morning while she was out shopping for groceries. Fortunately, she’d left the boys at home with Tom, Tyler, and Andrew.
She was standing in the meat section of Publix, her grocery cart half full, when her phone rang. When she saw it was Bob, her hands started shaking as she pushed the button to answer it.
“Hi, Bob. What’s up?”
“I have that information for you, Nevvie.”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just tell me. Please.”
Bob hesitated, as if unsure, then forged ahead. “They’re still alive.”
She let out a breath she’d been holding. “And?”
“They’re here in Tampa.”
Nevvie felt like she’d just received a punch to the gut. “They are?”
“Yeah. They got married fourteen years ago. I made contact with them. They want to meet you, if you’re up to it. And you have a twelve-year-old sister.”
* * * *
Somehow, Nevvie finished shopping without bursting into tears in the middle of the store. On numb legs, she got the groceries loaded in the car before sitting behind the wheel, engine running and air on full blast.
Bob’s words echoed in her ears. “They want to meet you.”
She managed to hold off the tears. By the time she calmed herself down, drove home, and pulled into the driveway, she felt a little less emotional. But when Tom and Tyler walked outside to meet her with concerned looks on their faces, she knew Bob must have called them as soon as she got off the phone with him.
“What?” she asked as she got out of the car.
Tyler gave her “the look.” The one that said, “You’re not fooling anyone, love.”
Nevvie took a deep, hitching breath. “How soon did Bob call you?”
Tom smiled and pulled her in for a hug. “As soon as he got off the phone with you. He said he was worried about you because of the way you sounded. He apologized for dropping that on you in the middle of the store.”
“I’m okay,” she mumbled into the warm comfort of his shoulder.
“You sure about that, love?” Tyler asked.
“Yeah.” As she pulled away from Tom, she sniffled and wiped her face with her hands. “I’ll be okay. He sent me an e-mail with their info. They’re waiting for me to call, I guess.”
“Sugar,” Tom said, “why don’t you let us handle getting the groceries in? The boys are down for their naps. Dad took a walk with his phone and Harley.” He smiled. “I suspect he’s talking to Momma.”
Nevvie couldn’t help but laugh. “How soon are we heading back up to Savannah?”
“I think he’d talk us into leaving tomorrow, if we could go that soon,” Tyler said with a smile.
“Can I take over the office for a little while?” she asked Tom.
“Sure.”
She left them to take care of the groceries and walked inside to the office, where she shut the door behind her. She pulled out her cell phone and settled in Tom’s desk chair. Pulling up her e-mail, she contemplated the information for a few minutes. Her birth parents lived over in the Town ‘n Country area, south and west of them, on the far side of Tampa International. Depending on traffic, she could be there in about thirty minutes.
Her parents.
She fired up her laptop and logged on to Facebook. After a few minutes of searching, she discovered they both had profiles.
And both of them listed a daughter, Laurie.
Nevvie spent a wistful ten minutes scrolling through posts and pictures on Kelly’s and John’s profiles. When she found pictures they’d posted of themselves in their younger days, Nevvie stopped, amazed. Nevvie looked so much like Kelly, she couldn’t believe it. After staring for a few minutes, she finally looked at her phone again. Instead of calling one of the numbers Bob gave her, she called Karen.
“What’s up, Nev?” She could always count on Karen for a friendly ear and solid counsel.
“I need some advice. Do you have a few minutes?”
“For you, always. Shoot.”
Nevvie outlined the latest developments. When she finished, she said, “So, what do you think?”
“What do I think about what? Calling them?”
“Yeah.”
She heard Karen sigh on the other end of the line. “Nev, that’s your decision. If they want to have contact with you, sure. Why not?”
“Life is so complicated already.”
Karen laughed. “But it’s the good kind of complicated. Admit it.”
“Yeah. That’s true.”
“And by the way, I tried calling Momma about an hour ago, and it went to her voice mail. When I tried again fifteen minutes ago, she used call waiting and told me she was on the phone with Andrew and she’d call me back later.” Karen sounded tickled. “I think there’s love in the air.”
“I hope there is. They deserve it.”
“So when are y’all coming back up here?”
“Hopefully in the next couple of weeks.” She hesitated, then said, “Can you please keep a secret, because nothing’s certain yet.”
“Sure.”
“We’re talking about building a house up there.”
Karen squealed so loud into the phone that Nevvie had to pull it away from her ear. “Really? Are you serious? Girl, do not kid with me like that!”
Nevvie grinned. “I’m serious. We’ve been talking about it. But Tommy wants to be the one to tell everyone, so please don’t say anything yet. We’re going to look at property next time we’re up.”
“Oh. My. God! That is so great! I can’t wait to have you here all the time!”
“Well, we’d probably keep the house here, at least for a while. Tommy still needs to be available to go into the office when they need him. But the plan is to, eventually, live up there full time.”
“That’s fantastic! I promise not to tell anyone as long as you promise to keep me updated.”
“Deal.”
They said good-bye a few minutes later. Nevvie took a deep breath, punched in a number, and waited.
In her ear, the connection rang once…twice…three times. A knot grew in her stomach.
Just as Nevvie had lost her nerve and was about to hang up, a woman tentatively answered.
“Hello?”
Nevvie felt the knot in her stomach tighten. “Um. Hi. I…uh…I’m trying to reach Kelly or John Fleischman.”
The woman’s tone turned cautious. “This is Kelly Fleischman. Who is this, please?”
Nevvie again fought the urge to hang up, but finally spit out the words. “My name is Nevvie Kinsey-Paulson. Um, Nevaeh Barton. My adopted dad was Michael Barton.”
Nevvie heard a gasp, followed by a moment of silence. When the other woman spoke again, it sounded like she was crying. “Nevvie?” she tearfully asked, her voice practically a whisper. “Our Nevvie?”
Our Nevvie. “Yes.”
“Oh my god!” the woman said before she burst into audible tears. “I…the attorney called…we always wanted to find…but I never thought…oh my god! Thank you for calling!”
Nevvie couldn’t help it. Her own tears began to flow. She choked out the essence of what she’d intended to say, even if she couldn’t remember the exact words. “I found Mary and talked to her. She told me about how she and my dad adopted me after I was born. Can I meet with you and…with my father?”
“Yes! Oh, yes, please! When can we meet with you?”
“Um, whenever is convenient for you.”
“Right now?” The woman tearfully laughed.
Nevvie found herself laughing, too. “Yeah, if you’re serious. I’ve been wanting to meet you.”
“Yes, please! John will be home in about twenty minutes. Can you come here? Or do you want us to meet you somewhere?”
“I can come there.” This felt unreal. After confirming their address, Nev
vie hung up and stared at the phone. Then she realized she needed to get moving. She hurried out to the kitchen and grabbed her purse.
“Where are you off to, love?”
“I’m going to meet Kelly and John Fleischman.”
“Who?”
She grinned. “My parents.”
“Ah.”
“I have a little sister!”
“That’s wonderful. I’ll change clothes so I can—”
“No. No offense, Ty, but I want to do this alone, at first. I want to meet them.” She shrugged. “I might not even like them. They might not like me. Who knows? But I want to meet them first. Then we’ll take it from there, introducing them to everyone.” She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him. “I love you, and I appreciate you wanting to stand beside me, but I want to do this by myself.”
“I understand, love.” He kissed her, long and sweetly. “Call me as soon as you leave, right?”
“I promise.”
Tom walked in. With relief, she found he understood, too. He also kissed her and admonished her to call them as soon as she could.
When she was in her car and on the way to Town ‘n Country, she started wondering if maybe she should have had one of the men, or even Dad, go with her.
No, I can do this. I should do this.
They want to meet me!
There was no mistaking the eager joy in Kelly’s voice as they talked. All the years feeling unloved and unwanted, and now Nevvie was about to fit the final missing puzzle piece into place. Kelly even told her that Laurie knew about her and was eager to meet her as well.
She swore at every red light, as if there was some unseen conspiracy by the streets of Tampa to deter her. It felt like every nerve ending in her body was close to exploding by the time she pulled into their driveway and shut off the car.
Before she could even get out, a man and woman appeared on the front porch, both wearing nervous-looking smiles. They walked down the driveway to meet her.
“Nevvie?” the woman asked.
Nevvie nodded, and even though she swore she wouldn’t cry, as the couple enveloped her in their arms, she did.