Marco stared down at Dylan, as did our son Jarrod, who was reaching out his short little arm for his brother with no hope of obtaining his goal. Dylan helped him out by reaching back and clasping his hand. “Only for a while,” Marco said. “Your grandma Elodie has made lunch, and you’re going to sit with the family and eat it.”
“That goes for you too.” Adam, my brother-in-law, stepped out into the hall from the sitting room.
His son, Will, who was only a few years younger than Dylan, grinned back at him. “Okay.” He shrugged. It was becoming more apparent as the years went on that he’d inherited his easygoing nature from my sister.
Dylan nodded too and then followed Will upstairs.
“I thought I heard voices.” Mum appeared beside Adam with five-year-old Braden in her arms.
I strode over to kiss her cheek and then steal Bray from her. “And how is this wee man?” I asked him.
“Fine,” he said, chewing on a now soggy brioche roll my mum had probably given him. “Hungry.”
Jarrod made this cute little grunting sound as he tried to push away from his dad to get to Bray. When it didn’t work, he immediately burst into loud tears. For whatever reason, my son had decided he liked Bray the most out of all of his cousins. Unfortunately, Bray was too concerned with five-year-old boy things to care much for the attentions of a two-year-old.
“Oh dear.” Mum smiled. “Let’s put Jarrod in the playpen in the sitting room.”
“Where’s Will?” Bray asked.
“Upstairs.”
“Down, Granny,” he said.
Mum let him down, and he hurried upstairs as fast as his wee legs could take him.
“Hannah, sweetheart,” Dad said, getting up from his chair to hug and kiss me. “How are you?”
“Good, Dad. Stressed with school. Nothing new.” I smiled.
“Teaching.” He grunted as he took Jarrod into his arms. My dad would know all about the ups and downs of teaching. He taught at university level. “Marco.” He nodded congenially at my husband and then looked around us, frowning. “Where’s Dylan and Sophia?”
“Dylan is upstairs with Will, and Sophia…” I glanced over my shoulder as Ellie walked into the room carrying my daughter in her arms. “Ran straight toward the kitchen.”
Sophia adored her aunt Ellie and apparently had some kind of psychic radar for finding her.
Ellie came over to kiss me on the cheek, and Sophia buried her head against her aunt’s chest, clearly stating, “I am refusing to budge.” My eyes laughed into Ellie’s. “How are you?”
“Good.” She smiled. “We booked our family holiday this morning.”
“Ooh, where are you off to?”
“Disney World,” Adam answered, coming up behind his wife. He looked pained just at the thought of it. “Florida.”
Ellie was grinning from ear to ear. “It’s going to be fantastic.”
“Fantastic,” Adam murmured, making a horrified face behind her back.
Marco coughed, trying to cover a laugh, but he was fooling no one. Ellie shot him a sideways glance. “Is my husband making faces behind my back?”
Marco straightened his face. “Absolutely not.”
“I don’t believe you.” She looked over her shoulder at Adam. “You are going to enjoy the magical kingdom, Adam Sutherland, end of story.”
He stared at her and then turned to us. “The kids will love it – that’s what matters. Even though I think Bray is still too young for it.”
“Then we’ll go again when he’s older.” Ellie shrugged.
Adam paled. “I need a drink.”
“I’ll get you one,” Mum offered. “Alcohol, right?”
“I really love you, Elodie,” he said.
She laughed. “I’ll go get you a lager. Clark?”
“Yes, thanks, sweetheart.”
“I’m just going to the loo,” I said, brushing a hand over Sophia’s hair as I passed her and Ellie.
I’d just finished up in the upstairs toilet and had opened the door to come out when I was blocked by Marco. He gently put a hand to my stomach and pushed me back inside, closing the door behind him and locking us in together.
“What is it?” I stared up at him in surprise.
In answer, he slid his hands across my stomach and down onto my hips, gripping them so he could tug me in to him. My own hands smoothed over his chest as I stared up into his beautiful eyes.
“Baby, what is it?” I repeated, growing more concerned by the anxious look in his eyes.
“You’re not upset?” he said.
“About what?”
“About all the talk about Disney World?”
Realization suddenly hit me. I shook my head emphatically. “No. I’m not.”
Although we both had full-time jobs, as a young couple living in a four-bedroom house in central Edinburgh, it wasn’t financially easy. Of course we’d had a better start than most because my pseudo big brother Braden had gotten together with Ellie and they’d bought me a gorgeous flat in New Town. I’d sold the flat to put down a hefty deposit on our four-bedroom house, but we still had a sizable mortgage to pay as well as three kids to clothe and feed.
Expensive holidays to Disney World weren’t exactly in the cards for us right now.
“We’ll pick up a bargain and take the kids to Spain or something,” I reminded him. “And even if we can’t do that, we’ll just take them on day trips around the country.”