I choked back a laugh. It wasn’t as if I had purposely impregnated her. It hadn’t been part of some nefariousplan.
“You do realize this is between your sister and me, don’tyou?”
Should I be worried if I received a package from Chris in the mail? Given the poisonous spiders and snakes over there, I was going with ayes.
“And you do realize if you do anything to hurt Holly, I will come over and hurtyou?”
Note to self: no opening anything from Australia from nowon.
Guess who then phoned me five minutes later? And yes, the conversation with Simon had been pretty much the same. Only a little morecolorful.
Mark turned off his shower. “My advice is—do everything in your power to make her happy. Gain as many brownie points while you still can. You’ll be cashing in a lot of them over the next year or so. Trust me onthat.”
Sean grabbed his towel from the hook. Drying himself, he asked, “So what’s the vote, guys? Are we letting the rookie here joinHDF?”
“I vote yes,” Marksaid.
Jyri nodded—with what was best described as an evil grin on his face. An evil grin mixed with hope. “Agree.”
“That makes three of us.” Sean threw me my towel as I turned off the water. I easily caught it with one hand. “But you have to agree to the initiation testfirst.”
“Initiation test? What kind of initiationtest?”
They shared a glance, devious smirks on theirfaces.
“You have to babysit Jyri’s twins,” Sean said. “Both Mark and I did it. It’s become atradition.”
I thought about it for a second. “Can Holly help me?” No way was I doing this on my own, even if she knew as much about kids as Idid.
They looked at each other, silently communicating their decision between themselves. “Does she know anything about looking after kids?” Sean asked, clearly the group’sleader.
I shook my head. “We’re both going into this parenting thingclueless.”
Their grins were hardlycomforting.
“Okay,” Sean said. “Your friend can helpyou.”
“And after I join the group, you’ll share your parenting secrets?” I was going on the assumption they knew what the heck they were doing. But I could also be way off base onthat.
All threenodded.
“All right, count mein.”
“I’ll talk to Kari and let you know when you can look after the kids for a few hours,” Jyri toldme.
Was it just me, or did he sound a lot happier than he had a few minutesago?
“I’ll give you a freebie piece of advice. Try to make it to every single medical appointment that you can. Those are easy brownie points. You don’t want to wastethem.”
Oh.Shit.
A memory of last night’s conversation with Holly flashed in my head. Well, not so much a conversation as her mentioning an ultrasound appointment today. In about twentyminutes.
And the clinic wasn’t twenty minutes from here. Not evenclose.
“Dammit!” I rushed from the shower area, the guys’ laughter escorting me. Yep, they had figured out I’d already fucked up my easy browniepoints.
Now, I just had to hope it didn’t cost me toomuch.
