His face twisted. “Fuck you.”

“You owe over ten K. And hear this, Perry, I got cake, Addie’s inherited huge, we’ll find you anywhere you try to hide.”

“You got so much cabbage, why you need mine?” he sneered.

“We don’t, and you’ll never hear from us again,” he lifted the papers, “you sign. You don’t, you won’t be able to escape us.”

“Courts’d take into account you two are loaded and you’re goin’ after me,” Perry retorted.

“As you haven’t been keepin’ in touch, you don’t know, Adeline’s the secretary to a lawyer now and takin’ classes to be a paralegal. She’s got access to good advice. And we’ve been assured that the courts don’t really give a shit about the financial situation of a mother and a stepfather. They don’t like deadbeat dads. You don’t believe me, wanna pay attorney’s fees and roll that dice?” Toby shrugged. “Up to you. You wanna quit with the hassle, for you, not me, or Addie, all you gotta do is sign your name.”

He didn’t even take a second to think about it.

“Give me that shit,” he muttered.

Toby didn’t give it to him.

He held it up to the brick wall by his side.

Though he did hand him a pen.

Perry signed.

Toby put the pen in his back pocket and folded the document to slide it back in the envelope, muttering, “Obliged.”

He then started to walk away.

“She . . . hasn’t sent pictures,” Perry called.

Toby stopped walking, didn’t turn back, but he looked back.

“Not in a while,” Perry went on.

“And?”

“He, uh . . . look like me at all?”

Toby turned then.

“He’s blond-haired and blue-eyed and beautiful. So . . .” Toby smiled, “no.”

With that, he walked away.

And within a month, Brooklyn’s last name was Gamble.

Because when the Gamble Men decided to stake claim to someone they loved . . .

They didn’t fuck around.

 

Addie was pounding chicken breasts between two sheets of plastic wrap.

She was doing this snapping, “You’re not sleeping on the pullout.”

To this, Dave returned soothingly, “Adeline, child, I’m not lettin’ an eight-month pregnant woman sleep on a pullout. So I’m sleepin’ on the pullout.”

Toby wasn’t gonna let that shit happen either.

They were in a bed or he was driving his woman home.

Dave wasn’t young, but he wasn’t slowing down much either.

And they had a foam thing for the top of the pullout mattress. It was the shit.

His pregnant wife still wasn’t sleeping on it.

“You’re not sleepin’ on the pullout, Dave,” Johnny put in. “Iz and I’ll sleep on the pullout.”

“So you want me to sleep in the bed of a woman who gave birth two months ago?” Dave asked, tipping his head to Izzy, who was bouncing a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms. “That’s not gonna happen.”

“We can set the bassinette up down here,” Johnny returned. “Less disruption for everyone upstairs sleepin’ when we gotta get up to feed Quinn.”

“You can sleep in the bunks with me, Paw,” Brooks offered. “I get the top, you can sleep on the bottom an’ tell me stories. Or you can sleep on the top a’ the other set a’ bunks.” He paused before he concluded, “An’ tell me stories. You don’t gotta worry ’bout fallin’ out. Daddy made sure the top bunks ’av railin’s.”

Dave ruffled Brooks’s sun-streaked blond hair. “Now, that sounds like a plan, son.”

“You’re not sleeping in a bunkbed, Dave,” Addie declared.

“Why not?” Dave asked her. “We’ll make it into a fort, tell ghost stories, stay up all night, raid the kitchen.”

“That sounds great!” Brooks shouted.

Addie looked to Toby. “Tobias, what are you gonna do about this?”

He’d noted he was “Tobias” a lot during her pregnancy.

It was cute.

And it reminded him of Margot.

So he loved it.

“Nothin’, baby. Thinkin’ about joinin’ ’em.”

She skewered him with a look.

He shot her a smile.

“C’mon, child, let’s let your mother cook. We’ll sit out on the porch for a spell,” Dave invited, sliding his ass off the stool Addie picked and walked through the kitchen Izzy redesigned to the living room that Toby refurnished.

Four dogs followed them.

Somewhere in the house, four cats totally ignored them.

“I think I’m gonna miss the grand opening of the new Gamble Garage next week,” Addie grumbled.

“Why?” Toby asked.

She looked again to him. “Because my hormones are screaming at me to murder somebody, and I don’t think you all would do good trade after a Gamble committed homicide on opening day.”

Toby smiled at her again and advised, “Not sure how good the chicken part of the parmigiana is gonna be if it’s paper thin.”

She looked down to what she was doing.

Then she stopped whacking the chicken.

“You’re adorable, Lollipop,” he told her.

“It’s good you’re able to say that in company or you’d have a meat tenderizer sticking out the back of your skull,” she replied.

“Why do you think I said it?” he asked.

“So, tell me,” Izzy cut in. “Toby speaks fluent German, but Johnny and me are the ones who talk it, and I don’t even know it, and you two are Talon and Lollipop and Toby never speaks it at all. What’s up with that?”

“Johnny’s a showoff,” Toby answered smoothly.

“Toby and me are being Toby and me,” Addie said at the same time.

“Toby and you are definitely Toby and you,” Johnny muttered, reaching out to a bowl of mozzarella that Addie had just finished grating.

“Eat some of that, and die,” Addie warned.

Johnny had very recently lived through a pregnancy.

He gave his sister-in-law a warm smile.

And did not eat any mozzarella.

“You can have a carrot stick,” she allowed.

Johnny looked to Toby.

“She’s on a health kick so we’re all on a health kick,” he told his brother.

“Worse things,” Izzy murmured, and Toby looked to her to see her face dipped close to her blinking baby and she was grinning.

“Let’s get out of here before they gang up on us,” Johnny suggested.

“Good idea, men on the porch, out from underfoot and out of the way of flying meat tenderizers,” Addie said.

Shooting his wife another smile (because even pregnant-bitchy, or maybe because she was pregnant-bitchy she actually was adorable) Toby slid off his stool and he and Johnny headed out.

They stopped at the screen door at hearing Dave say, “And that’s what your daddy found, and your Uncle Johnny. What I found in my Margot.”

Dave and Brooks were sitting on the top step of the porch.

Tobe looked to his brother to see his brother turning to look at him.