The Reed Security Relationship Manual: A Reed Security Romance - Giulia Lagomarsino (best book club books of all time TXT) 📗

I walked into work, my eye hardly open as I plopped down in my seat at the conference table. The guys all looked at me like they weren’t sure what to say. I was always the logical one. I never said stupid shit to my wife. I was the one everyone looked up to. Now I had a black eye and a stiff back from sleeping on the couch.

“What happened to you?” Cap asked.

“I suggested my wife quit her job so she could take it easy, just take care of the kids and me.”

He let out a low whistle and then pointed to Rocco. “Add it to the manual.”

Chapter Fifteen

Maggie

“Sebastian, can you please get Tucker dressed?”

“He can dress himself by now, can’t he?”

I glared at him as I wrestled Carter in my arms. He was trying to get away from me so he didn’t have to have his diaper changed. “Are you kidding me right now?”

“The kid’s like three years old, isn’t he?”

I glared at him. For someone that wanted so many kids, the man couldn’t keep his kids straight if his life depended on it. “The triplets are a year old.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you already forget that you knocked me up when Tucker was just three months old?”

“Huh,” he said, his brows furrowing. “Are you sure?”

“Remember? The haunted house? I seem to recall you saying that having a baby in a pile of rubble really wasn’t that big of a deal.”

“Now, that I remember,” he said cheerily. “I have a scar as a reminder. And I said that pushing out the baby wasn’t that bad, not the pile of rubble.”

I narrowed my eyes dangerously at him. “And that makes it better?”

He swallowed hard and slowly shook his head. “No, that’s not…I’ll just go get Tucker dressed.”

“You do that,” I said with a smile.

I finally wrestled Carter to the ground and got his diaper changed, then pulled up his pants before he could run off. It was only six in the morning, and I was already exhausted. The triplets still weren’t sleeping through the night, and every time I tried to fall asleep, Sebastian started snoring like a freight train. Last night, I placed the pillow over his head and would have pressed down had he not woken up. But he did, so I pretended like I had flung the pillow on his face in my sleep.

I was just wrapping up the poopy diaper for the garbage when Sebastian came back in, proudly carrying Gunner by the feet as he dangled upside down. “I got him dressed!”

I groaned and flopped my head into my hands. “That’s Gunner.”

“It is?”

He lifted Gunner up by the legs and looked at him upside down.

“He’s three years older than Tucker. How do you not know the difference?”

“Well, there’s so many of them…”

“Gunner can get himself dressed. Tucker is the one running around without a diaper on, probably peeing all over my house!”

“Why’d you let him run around without a diaper on?”

“Go!” I shouted. “Go now, before I throw this diaper at you!”

He raced out of the room, hitting his shoulder hard on the doorframe as he ran. I wasn’t kidding. I would throw this at him so hard if he kept testing me. I got up and threw the diaper away, then made my way into the triplets room and picked Julia up out of her crib. She was my quiet one, never making too much of a fuss. I wasn’t sure where she got it from, but there was something about her that made me think she was going to be the hardest one to deal with. She was always doing things on her own and never really getting upset with the other kids. But she was already asking for sips of beer when Sebastian had one, and he actually gave her a drink the last time he had one. He didn’t realize how those little sips would affect her though, and we ended up with one very tipsy baby at the end of the night. Now she was always grabbing for his bottle. Yeah, as I stared into her eyes, I knew she was going to be my trouble maker.

“Uh, Freckles?”

I closed my eyes and counted to ten. That was not a good ‘Freckles’. I slowly turned and glared at him. “Um…I have this meeting, and I really have to go.”

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing major,” he said quickly.

“What happened?”

“It’s just…a small…pea-sized really, bit of poop on the kitchen floor.”

If it was pea-sized, he would have just cleaned it up. “Fine, go.”

Sighing, I resigned myself to cleaning up the ‘pea-sized’ poo first. I set Julia down and went in search of the elusive poo. The rest of the kids were already running amok around the house. I just kept counting them as I passed, hoping I had all of them nearby.

The pea-sized poop turned out to be a giant shit in the middle of the floor, and Tucker was spreading it around with his hands. When he looked up at me, he clapped happily, not caring at all that he was spreading his own shit all over the place.

The dilemma was, did I clean up the poo-covered kid first, keeping him from shoving any of that poo in his mouth, or did I clean up the floor, thus preventing any of my other kids from getting into it? I picked Tucker up and set him outside the ring of poo and then moved chairs in a circle around the offending pile of shit.

Cursing Sebastian for leaving me with this mess, I quickly bathed Tucker in the sink and then moved on to the floor. Luckily, none of my other rugrats got into the mess while I was cleaning him. Then I went on to disinfect the entire kitchen. By the time I was done, I was exhausted, and it was only seven in the morning. The doorbell rang and I quickly ran to the door, hoping for reinforcements. Molly stood there with Marcello in her