Untamed (Thoughtless #4)(7)
I gave her a sympathetic smile, even though it didn’t sound like a big deal to me. “It will be fine. This place is huge; you’ll barely see them. They’ll probably spend most of the time at the pool anyway.” The house had an indoor Olympic-sized pool with a ten-person hot tub right next to it. A selling point for me.
Anna didn’t look moved by my argument, so I added, “And you won’t be sleep deprived…you just listed off about a dozen babysitters. We could go on vacation if we wanted.”
“I’m not leaving my newborn infant with your family. Not even for a month in Cabo.” Her expression told me that she really meant it. So did her next words. “You need to call him back and tell him they can visit for a weekend, but that’s it.”
“A weekend? Babe, they’d barely get to see the newest Hancock. How about a month?”
Anna turned to face me with her arms crossed; she had her game face on. I knew what that meant. Negotiation time. “The offer on the table is five days after the baby is born. What’s your counter?”
I thought for a second. “Twenty days.” Anna cringed but didn’t object. That was the rule for negotiations—Person A had to accept Person B’s offer without complaint, and vice versa.
“Okay,” she muttered. “Game room.”
Spinning on her heel, she sauntered out of the room. With an eager laugh, I followed her. Anna and I had come up with a completely fair way to solve disagreements. Fair, and fun. Personally, I thought we were geniuses for thinking of it, and every married couple should follow our example. Maybe Anna and I should market the idea and sell it. Yeah…we could be marriage counselors. We were awesome at this shit.
We walked down a hallway filled with gaudy works of art. The more ridiculous something was, the more I liked it. There were statues of pissing kids, dog-faced fish, and flying monkeys. My home was filled with portraits of gigantic asses, which Anna swore were pumpkins; a Monty Python–like rendition of God in the sky, who kind of looked like me with a beard; and my favorite piece—a dog dropping a deuce in the crapper. Anna made me tuck that one away in my office. I thought it would be more appropriate in the bathroom. I mean, come on! A dog on the toilet above the toilet? What could be more awesome than that? I’d lost that negotiation though, and once a winner was declared, there was no getting out of it. Negotiation results were set in stone. Literally. I had them written down on a boulder in the backyard.
The “game room” was on the other end of the house, and it took a few minutes to get there. I almost reminded Anna that we were running late for rehearsal, but I didn’t. I loved this game. Sometimes I disagreed with Anna about stuff just so we could play. The game room was kid paradise. We had a movie theater–style popcorn machine, so the room permanently smelled amazing. We had a half dozen old-school arcades, Frogger included. We had a ball pit for Gibson, which is where we usually found her when she disappeared on us. We even had an indoor batting cage and a boxing bag. But what Anna and I used to settle disputes was in the center of the room: the Ping-Pong table.
Anna started setting up while I set Gibson down by the ball pit. She squealed and made a beeline for the colorful plastic balls. With a mighty jump, she belly flopped on top of them and started swishing her arms and legs like she was making a snow angel. I almost wished the pit were bigger so I could join her.
When I headed to the “negotiation” table, Anna already had ten cups set up on her side, forming a pyramid, and was working on setting up the ten cups for my side. Anna’s cups were filled with seltzer water, since she was preggers and couldn’t drink. It took some of the fun out of the game, but it couldn’t be helped. Baby Hancock would have to wait at least fifteen years to play the real beer pong. Anna had won that negotiation too.
I helped Anna fill up my cups with a tasty chocolate stout; it was more like dessert than alcohol, but I had a massive sweet tooth. Once everything was set up, we flipped a coin to see who went first. “Heads,” I told her with a smile. If given a choice, I always chose head, although tail wasn’t bad either.
Anna tossed the coin up, caught it, then smacked it on the back of her hand. When she lifted her fingers, we both leaned in to see who would be first. Predictably, it was tails. “Me first,” she said with a grin.
“Not a problem. I prefer going second anyway.” I pinched her butt. “Ladies should always come first.”
Anna laughed in that low seductive way that made my dick twitch. Then she grabbed her ball and lined up her shot. “Here’s to a short visit,” she said, before she let her ball fly.
It expertly splashed into one of my cups, and I nodded in approval. My girl had skills; it kept the game interesting. “Game on, babe. Game on.”
Chapter 2
The Day Awesome Died
It was official. My family was staying for twenty days. Anna had accepted the outcome of our game, but she wasn’t happy about it. A deep frown was fixed on her face as we packed Gibson into our “family” car—a bright yellow Hummer; I wanted people to see us coming a mile away. For safety reasons, of course.
Anna glared at me as she buckled Gibson into her car seat. “I can’t believe you made that last shot,” she murmured.
Still feeling buzzed from the game, and my admittedly lucky toss that had won me the argument, I huffed on my knuckles, then rubbed them against my shirt. “Never doubt the master, babe.”