* * *

Deck

“That is not gonna happen,” Emme declared, and Deck turned his head from watching Chace in his highchair somewhat eating, mostly throwing his food to the black-and-white-diamond-tiled floor, and looked at his wife who was standing in front of her six-burner Viking range.

“I didn’t say it was going to happen tomorrow,” he told her, fighting a grin.

“Of course it isn’t going to happen tomorrow. He’s not even two. But I’ll just point out, honey, it’s not going to happen ever,” she retorted.

“Yeah it is. I’m thinking when he’s twelve,” Deck replied.

She threw up her hands. One had a wooden spoon in it that luckily, with the force of her action, was clean.

“It’s not happening at all!”

Daisy Mae, lying on her belly four feet from Emme, picked up her head and looked at her mistress. Always on the alert, even as often as this happened.

Buford, on the other hand, with more experience, was moving around under Chace and Deck, cleaning up Chace’s mess.

“It’s just a BB gun,” Deck stated.

“I don’t care if it’s just a BB gun. A gun’s a gun!” she shot back.

“No one can get hurt with a BB gun,” he declared, her eyes got huge and she was so damned cute, he was finding it harder to fight his smile.

“No one… no… no one…” she spluttered. Then she slammed her fists on her hips, which wasn’t easy to do with a spoon in her hand and their baby daughter who would come into this world in about a month taking most of the space of her middle, and she hissed, “Haven’t you seen A Christmas Story?”

At this ridiculous question, Deck stared at his wife.

She was very pissed, very pregnant, very beautiful, and very cute. She was also standing in her expensive, flawless kitchen in their rambling no-longer-a-wreck mansion with her dog at her side, her son throwing food and her man in her sights.

He took all that in, he did it for a good long while and he enjoyed every second as he realized, with Emme, the kaleidoscope that was their life just kept on spinning.

Then he burst out laughing.