Hearthstone Entertainment
40 Family
“YOU ARE THINKING of expanding the show,” I accused Hannah as she snuggled next to me in bed. “I can’t believe how quickly you had a camera running.”
“It’s handy when your cameraman lives with you,” Hannah giggled. “We can’t expand right now. We don’t have the technical capacity. And now that I’m in school, too, we have even less time. We need to get five years further into this right away.”
“Honey, we’re still teenagers. We need to have our lives, too.”
“You won’t be a teenager for long!” Hannah said. “Next weekend is your birthday. You’ll be twenty.”
“Think of that. I won’t even be a legal adult yet.”
“No, you’re an illegal adult,” Rose said, nudging my knees apart.
“We need to get busy on your birthday present,” Hannah said. Whitney snuggled up next to me on the other side.
“How about virgin triplets,” she snickered. “I think Brian got some ‘wood’ today.” We all groaned as Rose crawled between my legs and pillowed her head on my stomach.
I fell asleep with that image in my mind.
“We have news,” Hannah announced to the casa at dinner Tuesday night. “I thought there was something wrong with the numbers when I saw this. We’re nearly double our revenue projections this fall from where Louise and I thought we’d be last month. And guess whose fault it is.” We all turned and looked at Elaine.
“Me?” she squeaked.
“Too narrow a scope,” Hannah said. “You, Brian, and Sora. Our syndicated stations have changed our schedule. WIUB-TV is still showing Chick Chat on Monday/Wednesday, Dance Fit on Tuesday/Thursday, and Young Cooking on Friday. But it’s an exception. KNOY gave us an hour slot each day instead of half an hour. They are showing Dance Fit Monday through Thursday with Young Cooking on Friday followed immediately by Chick Chat Monday through Thursday in the next half hour slot.”
“What are they doing during the next half hour on Friday?” Elaine asked.
“Running a second episode of Young Cooking. People, we are five days a week for an hour!” Hannah said. We were all stunned. “And here’s the killer.” There’s more? “In nearly half our markets we’ve been moved to three p.m. That means we’re getting the after-school crowd. That used to be Debbie Reynolds’ timeslot. In the rest of our markets, we are in the morning slot. If they broadcast The Homemakers’ Hour at nine, then we fill the ten o’clock hour. If they have not picked up The Homemakers’ Hour, we have the nine o’clock slot. WBBT in South Bend has given us the ten o’clock slot. They used to cut to I Love Lucy reruns.”
“We’re not hurting Miss Polly, are we?” I asked. It would be terrible if we were becoming popular at her expense.
“No. In fact, several stations that picked up our shows have picked up The Homemakers’ Hour as well. Anita Perry retired this year. She did a syndicated show similar to Miss Polly. Howard jumped in and managed to sell the slot in nearly half her markets. Some of her appeal was more southern and none of us got in those markets,” Hannah said.
Everybody was talking at once and suddenly we were in a party mood. It was a school night, but I had a feeling we’d be staying up late. This was just too exciting!
“We have a little problem,” Hannah whispered as we lay in bed. Samantha and I sandwiched her between us. Jennifer was at my back and Courtney was behind Sam. I thought about how much the five of us had done together.
“What’s the problem, love?” I asked.
“Instead of thirty weeks, we only have fifteen weeks of programming now,” she sighed. “We don’t have a second half of the season.” My mouth fell open, letting her nipple escape. Oh shit! “For once, you’re not on the line,” Hannah continued. “With our current shooting schedule, we’ll complete thirty more episodes with no strain on you. But somehow I need to break it to Elaine and Sora that we need sixty more episodes from each of them to start at the first of January. Actually, we could call a longer mid-season break and not start second half until the first of February. We could give free re-runs for six weeks. The second half of the season would run from February first through mid-May. That would work.”
“Can we get everyone together and coordinated well enough to do a broadcast that frequently? What about cameras?” Samantha asked.
“I need to go put the schedule on paper,” Hannah said. She started to lever herself out of bed. I hung onto her.
“You’ll think more clearly in the morning,” I said. “Get up when I do and we’ll both put our minds to it. I really need to suck on your toes right now.”
“I should… You really need to?”
“I need to badly.”
“I don’t want to deprive you if that is what you need,” she said. “I can wait a little while.” She was already gasping as I kissed past the front of her hip joint. I was going to drag this out as long as possible. Sam was following my trail down, stopping to kiss all over Hannah’s tummy and across her mound. Jen and Court closed in to play with her nipples. I saw movement and just as I licked from the heel to the toe of her left foot, Rose shoved a nipple into Hannah’s mouth. That muffled Hannah’s first scream, but did nothing to muffle Rose’s.
“I need their class schedules,” Hannah said. She sat at the kitchen table with a calendar and her clipboard in front of her, making notes. “April already said she was ready to work on Elaine’s show as soon as we get a second camera operator. Since you won’t be using Jess regularly on Redress, I can hire him. We still need to hire two cameramen and a director/mixer for Dance Fit. What do you think of having a sorority provide all the fitness dancers for a week? They can handle the scheduling. That way all I need to do is get fifteen sororities lined up. Are there fifteen sororities on campus? The Wood sisters said they do all Sora’s workouts. Maybe we could get the volleyball team to do a week.”
Usually, I used our special time together in the morning to talk to Hannah. I would process the things on my mind while she either sat quietly and listened or continued to sleep and tell me I was tickling her head. It was a new experience for me to mix the bread dough while I was listening to my pixie girlfriend talking aloud. Is that what I sounded like? Asking questions that I didn’t expect to be answered. Sorting through possibilities. Organizing my day.
“We can do it. I’m not worried about Elaine. We’ve already got fifteen monologues taped. I think we’ll keep recording them at the rate we currently are. I need to call Nikki. Then I need to organize guests and audiences for her interviews. I need someone to just focus on that. Do we know anyone who could do that and would be willing to? I might have to advertise. Could you work with the triplets as your prep team for Saturdays? They said they’d do anything to work on your show. Do you think that’s what they meant? Mary and Cassie might like this kind of work. In fact, I’d bet Josh would, too. I wonder how people would respond to a man scheduling guests for a women’s talk show. Kind of a nice reversal of roles, don’t you think?”
I carefully laid out peach slices and folded dough over them. I really needed to get a good croissant dough recipe. My sweet bread dough was okay, but I’d never try to sell these turnovers on the open market. Still, my hearthmates all seemed to like them. I kept listening to Hannah. We were both lost in our own world.
“I’ve got it!” Courtney shouted from the computer room. She wandered into the kitchen. She’d been spending every available moment on the computer, preparing for the hacking challenge that was coming up this weekend. She’d gotten up when Hannah and I came downstairs this morning.
“What did you get, Courtesan?” I asked. Hannah glanced up and smiled at Court but went right back to her figures.
“A worm. There are going to be at least a dozen hackers trying to find that Easter egg this weekend. The one thing none of them is going to expect is that they’ve been hacked,” Courtney said, rubbing her hands together like a mad scientist. Damn! If all those old movies featured naked mad scientists that looked like Courtney, I’d watch them over and over. “I have a worm that I’ll use to infect each of their computers. Once planted, it will simply display on my screen the direction any other hacker is taking. If any of them gets close, I can jump in front of them by just executing their code. They’ll never know what hit them.”
“Is that fair, sweetheart? To use someone else’s work?”
“It’s a hacking challenge, Brian. The objective is to beat the others by whatever means necessary. As long as it’s on the computer. I can’t just go knock them over.”
“What if someone does that to you?” Hannah said. Courtney nodded. She was deep in thought.
“I only have two more days to get ready,” she said. “I need to inoculate myself against someone attacking me. That’s good thinking, darling.” Courtney took the cup of cocoa I offered her and went back to the computer room muttering something about putting up her own firewall—whatever the hell that is.
“We’re quite the family, aren’t we?” Hannah grinned. “May I have more coffee, please?”
“It was so nice of you to make me sandwiches and a thermos of hot chocolate,” Courtney said as I walked her to the computer lab after my calculus class. “At least for the first night, I’ll be healthier and more alert than everyone else.”
“I’m not comfortable with you being locked in with all those guys,” I said. “Maybe I should stay with you.”
“You have taping tomorrow and it’s your birthday. Oh, Brian, I’m so sad we’ll miss your birthday. I promise we’ll make it up to you next week. I want you to spank me and bump into my bottom. Please? I’ll be wet all night tonight, just thinking about it.”
“We?”
“Oh. Jen felt the same way. I got permission for her to monitor the session just like Dr. Hanratty is. She’s coming over as soon as her last class is over in two hours. Nothing will happen before that. We aren’t even in lockdown until three-thirty. She’s bringing her books and a whole ice chest full of goodies for us. Don’t worry, Brian. We’ll be fine.”
“Courtesan, I always worry about you. Call as soon as you can get free.” I patted her on the butt and she went into the room. I headed for the car to go home.
Taping Saturday morning went smoothly, but we still didn’t get out anywhere near in time to get to the game against Michigan State. The triplets worked with Mary to do the prep work on my pickling demo. We had enough cucumbers in the garden to supply a grocery store. We harvested everything there was on Friday night and then washed and sorted them Saturday morning. The smaller cukes we made into bread and butter pickles. The larger ones we put in brine for dill pickles.
When Lauren and the cameramen left, Mary breathed a sigh of relief and stripped off her sweatshirt.
“I’m so glad that’s over and we can start celebrating your birthday,” she said, giving me a full body hug and a toe-curling kiss.
“Mary, honey, we still have the Wood sisters with us,” I said.
“We do?” She looked around and the three girls came out of the prep area, drying their hands.
“That looks like fun. Can we all play?” Danielle asked.
“Sorry, ladies. We sometimes forget other people are around.” I handed Mary her sweatshirt and she pulled it on.
“What was that about your birthday?” Dolly asked.
“It’s nothing. Really,” I said.
“It sounded like a good reason to celebrate,” Debbie said. She reached for the hem of her shirt and the other two followed suit. Before I could say anything, they’d stripped them off. Thank God they all had bras on.
“Danielle, could you please get everyone dressed again. We’re pretty casual about clothes here, but we’re not into flaunting it in front of our guests,” I said. Danielle giggled.
“I think we’re the ones flaunting it.” Nonetheless, the three pulled their shirts back on. “How do you know which of us is which?” she asked. That was a good question. It had started last weekend. I thought I was keeping track of them by who had what on her apron. But it didn’t seem to make a difference.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I just know you’re Danielle.”
“And…?”
“And these are the other two,” I finished lamely. “Usually I can figure out which is Dolly and which is Debbie, but it takes me a little longer. You’re… different.”
“Uh… We’ll be going now,” Debbie said. I was sure it was Debbie now. “It was great working with you, Mary. Thanks for teaching us what we need to do to… keep Brian happy.” The three girls didn’t stop for a hug on the way out. They fled.
“What was that about?” Mary asked. “I thought they were going to spend the afternoon and then they swoosh out of here.”
“I don’t know. That was weird,” I said. Mary looked around, stripped her shirt off again, and soon had me out of mine.
Somehow, we managed to get a fire lit in the big fireplace before everybody got back from the game and cuddled in a blanket in front of it. We trounced Michigan State 31-0 in cold, rainy weather. People were definitely celebrating, but everyone wanted to get warmed up. I felt bad for Adam when he told me he hadn’t played at all today. Vaughn was so hot he was just tearing up the field on both rushing and passing plays.
Unlike last year, we didn’t make a huge deal out of my birthday. I was told by Elaine that I couldn’t have that kind of surprise every year or it wouldn’t be a surprise. Still, Theresa and Larry had dinner ready for everyone and most of us were only partly dressed. Doreen came over to sit on my lap and I caressed her tummy, playing tag with our baby.
“She does that to you, too,” Doug laughed. If we looked closely, we could actually see a ripple pass over Doreen’s taut stomach as the baby moved inside.
“When did our son become a she?” I asked, as Doug’s hand joined mine on Doreen. Rhiannon and Sandy cuddled up to us.
“Doug says the father determines the sex of the child, and he’s determined it will be a girl,” Doreen laughed. “I didn’t explain about having to plant the seed,” she whispered. “I’ll do that when he gets a little older.”
“Here. You five need some practice,” Theresa said. She pulled baby Eleanor off her nipple and handed her to us. The baby stretched out on Doreen’s tummy and held the bump like she was hugging her unborn clan cousin. She burped and went promptly to sleep.
In bed later that night, Liz finished her climax and, instead of rolling off to go to sleep, hugged me fiercely. My cock still pulsed with a birthday orgasm.
“It always makes me so happy to see you with Doreen,” she said. “I keep thinking, ‘one day, that will be me with our baby in my tummy.’ And you know what? Even the women in the clan that never intend to have a child get that same squishy feeling inside. Did you see how Rhiannon looked at Doug while they patted Eleanor on Doreen’s tummy? And as soon as she put the baby down, Theresa turned to Larry with such a passionate kiss I thought we’d have to get a blanket down so they could make love right there in front of the fire and start their next one. And, of course, Sugar. She took one look at you and just dragged Lionel back out of the barn to go try again.”
“It’s the idea of being a family,” I said. “Children just seem to make us all want to be part of the family even more.”
“Happy birthday, lover,” Liz whispered. “Happy birthday from your whole family.”
She cuddled next to me and soon we were asleep.
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