“Thanks, darlin’,” Johnny replied.

“Okay, for right now, just one thing for you,” Addie said, and Toby turned his attention to her to see a small box sailing his way.

He caught it just in time.

“This doesn’t look like an awesome Forrester Girls Club tee,” he muttered.

“You’ll get the one that says, ‘the other one with the dick’ from me on your birthday,” Izzy told him, sounding like she was laughing.

“Obliged,” he muttered, opening his present.

It was another cheap, white jewelry box.

But he was thinking, with Addie, the best shit came in those.

He opened it.

And he was right.

The best shit came in those.

At first, he thought it was a kickass, narrow, brown leather man’s bracelet.

But when he pulled it out, he saw inside it was tooled with the words, She’s Mine.

So far, from him, she’d opened his Sephora gift card and a pair of high-heeled boots he’d seen in the city when he and Johnny were shopping for Izzy that he thought were kickass, and he’d called Iz to find out her sister’s size.

There were two more gift cards under the tree from him to her.

One, considering she’d been looking for office work and had mentioned she didn’t have the wardrobe for it, was for a thousand bucks at Nordstrom. And one was kind of a joke, kind of not, considering they’d be setting up house soon and he wanted her to make it her own—another five-hundred-dollars, this at Crate and Barrel.

Her real present, Johnny and Izzy were supposed to bring over that morning, but with the change of plans, it was now at Margot and Dave’s.

None of that shit was as good as that bracelet.

Except maybe the real one.

His eyes moved to her.

“I kinda dig you, Talon,” she said, grinning sassily at him.

Jesus, shit, he needed to fuck her.

“Do I get time to concentrate today?” he asked.

Her expression changed, and the way it did, he needed to fuck her even more.

“Not until after presents, at least.”

“Right, before you two go at each other through the wrapping paper, let’s get back to it,” Johnny said. “One for Brooks.”

And he got up from his chair to find a present for Brooklyn.

“Come here, Lollipop,” Toby ordered.

She came there.

And when she got to her knees between his legs, his kiss wasn’t closed-mouthed.

After he ended it, she asked, “You like it?”

“Love it, baby.”

She grinned at him and that wasn’t an I-own-your-dick grin.

It was just sweet.

“How much more generous are you gonna be to me and Brooklyn?” she asked quietly.

She’d gotten her Sephora gift card, and the rest was waiting for her, but he’d partially lost his mind at a baby store in Bellevue that had the baddest ass little boy’s clothes he’d ever seen.

So Brooklyn had five new outfits.

And on top of that, Eliza and Margot had given him a Brooklyn List. So there were onesies, socks, jammies, baby bowls, forks and spoons, a bucket with shapes cut out at the top and matching blocks to shove in and a stool with things to roll, open and slide and buttons to push, which played music that eventually would probably drive him and Addie insane.

Only maybe half of this she and Brooks had already opened.

“Moderately generous,” he answered.

“Considering your brother built my sister a stable and bought her an engagement ring that costs as much as a car, I’m not sure the Gamble Men have the same definition of ‘moderate’ as the rest of Earth’s population do,” she replied.

“This is probably an accurate assessment,” he muttered, watching her closely and hoping this wasn’t going to devolve into a thing.

But she just grinned at him and said, “You Gamble Brothers, you love someone, you just can’t help yourself, can you?”

He relaxed, pulled some of her hair over her shoulder, grinned back and replied, “Nope.”

She pushed up and gave him a light kiss then pulled back, turned and sat between his legs on the floor as Brooks chanted, “Jaja, Jaja, praza, foo, foo, foo,” at Johnny.

Brooklyn could say “broke” but he couldn’t say “Christmas” or “present.”

Though he was trying.

Addie had the same train of thought.

“We should probably stop cussing in front of him. He’s talking all the time now and soaking everything in,” she murmured.

“Yeah,” Toby agreed.

She settled back into him as Johnny dropped to the floor, pulled Brooklyn into his lap and helped him open his shapes bucket.

Johnny then yanked open the box and pulled away the packing material, handing Brooklyn a shape.

Brooks looked at it then threw it across the room.

Dapper Dan immediately retrieved it for him.

“Well, if that’s meant to train him for the major leagues, it works a charm,” Addie remarked.

Toby chuckled.

She rested an arm on his thigh then her head on his knee, attention pointed to the action, as Izzy decided, “Another one for Brooks. He’s got about a thousand to get through,” and she said this handing another package to Johnny.

At that, Toby reached for his phone because he had a feeling with Perry’s cell out of service and the fact he hadn’t contacted Addie to give her that heads up or info on an alternate way to get in touch with him that the asshole was history.

So the adults would remember this, but Brooklyn wouldn’t, and there might come a time when he would need all the evidence he could get that his biological father might not have given a shit, but everyone else in his life did.

Though, Toby doubted that.

But he took pictures anyway.

And by the end of the day the selfie he took of him, Addie and Brooks, with her still between his legs, him bent to her, and Brooklyn in her arms landing a sloppy kiss on her jaw, was the wallpaper on his phone.

And by the end of the next week, the shot Izzy took with her selfie stick of all five of them (plus Dapper Dan, Ranger, Dempsey and Swirl) huddled together in front of the tree was blown up and framed, twice.

One was set on the side table by Johnny’s reading chair at the mill.

And one was set on the mantle in Addie’s family room.

For a few of months . . .

Then it was on the mantle at Toby’s.

 

“You didn’t! I hate you! I love you!” Addie cried, turned to him, threw her arm around him to give him a tight hug and kissed the side of his neck before she disengaged, dumped Brooks, who had been on her hip, in his arms, and rushed forward.

Toward the ginger and white, six-month-old kitten that Margot was holding.

Her real present.

Toby adjusted Brooklyn to his own hip and watched Addie take hold of the new member of her family and cuddle her to her neck.

Feeling her eyes, Toby tore his from his woman who was all about her new cat to look at Margot.

Pride.

He never got anything but that from his girl.

Not ever.

“Dang, I wanna name you Chuck Norris,” Addie declared, and Toby looked back at her to see she was holding the cat away and inspecting things. She cuddled her close again. “But that appears to be out.” Her attention came to him and she cried triumphantly, “Barbarella!”