Page 60 of No Cap

Quincy’s mom smiled. “It’s totally okay.”

I picked up the little boy, and loved the way he immediately leaned into me and laid his head on my shoulder.

“Usually when I see cute little kids like this, I’m making them mad,” I admitted a bit sadly.

“Why is that?” Quincy’s mom asked.

I walked toward them both, but it was Quincy who answered his mom. “Hollis is a rad tech in the hospital. The first time I met her, she was squishing this little boy into this hollowed out tube.”

I chuckled, unsurprised that he remembered exactly what I was doing at the time.

“Rad tech is a radiology tech,” I explained when the woman stared at me with curiosity. “My name is Hollis Aue. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Hollis. My name is Garnett Carter. It’s nice to meet the woman my eldest son invited to dinner.” Garnett smiled.

“Garnett Carter is also a forty-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department, and has a soft spot for her grandkids,” Quincy mused quietly. “You just cemented your place in her heart by picking up this hellion.”

Quincy then tickled said hellion, causing him to squeal in delight and laugh himself sideways.

Luckily, I had a strong grip on him, or he would’ve tumbled right out of my hands.

A made a mental note to always hold onto him tight, because I didn’t want him to go launching himself headfirst into some gravel.

Quincy jerked his head toward the open front door, and I dutifully followed into… chaos.

That was the only way to describe the amount of people all in one room.

We were in the door all of three seconds when he placed the little girl on the floor, and she ran toward a man in the corner of the room who caught her with laughable ease. As if he was used to doing it every single day, even in the middle of conversations like he was having now.

I followed suit with Tex, and he took off running, not toward who I assumed was his dad, but toward the kitchen where I could see an older, but just as sexy, version of Quincy in the kitchen fiddling with something on the counter I couldn’t quite see.

My eyes stayed there long enough for it to be awkward to everyone else in the room.

“Mom, Dad,” I heard Quincy call out. “Where’s that…”

“Here.”

I looked up to find a man very similar to Quincy holding out his hand, an opaque bag extending toward him.

Quincy took it, then turned to me, bag in hand.

I stared at him, wide-eyed.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me to everyone?” I blurted, not sure I wanted to see what was in that bag, but knowing he was going to force me to take it.

“Sure,” he said. “Along that outer wall right there,” he pointed at the wall that held the longest couch. “That’s Atlas and Gable sitting down. Auden is standing up but leaning on the couch. Then,” he pointed at the next wall with a smaller couch, “that’s Quaid and Quinn, the two and three of our triplet pair. The one in the kitchen is my dad, Germaine. The one outside peeing off the back porch is Garrett. He gestured toward the man and woman from earlier. “These two are Keene and Ande. Ande is my sister. Keene is the extra.”

“The extra?” Keene chuckled. “I guess that’s not a bad thing to be.”

“Unless it’s an extra thirty pounds,” Gable called out, his eyes fixed on me. “Am I right?”

I nodded with commiseration.

“Okay, time to rip the Band-Aid off,” I heard Quincy mutter.

Then he pulled out a box from the bag he was holding and handed it to me. “Before you freak out on me, I’m not going to give this to you. You can make payments, or whatever you need to do. I just got it because I saw the relief on your face when you saw you got a computer. My sister, Ande,” he pointed at a gorgeous curly-haired woman in the corner with the toddler on her hip. “Stopped by the mall on the way here and grabbed it. It’s exactly like the one your sister got.”

“Wait, what?” The woman came forward. “Your sister?”