Becoming the Storm
67 Karma
I COULDN’T BELIEVE Sugar left Leon with us as she, Lamar, and Sarah flew up to Landover, Massachusetts for the first round of the NCAA tournament. As it had been for Whitney, every game now was potentially Lionel’s last. They needn’t have worried Friday night as the Hoosiers took out Ohio University 84-72 in the first round.
Since we had Leon and Xan, we decided to make it a children’s weekend at the big house. Theresa brought Ellie and Leslie. Doreen brought Matthew and her tummy.
The two babies, of course, were mostly being held. The three younger kids played together on the blankets we had spread out. We all had things to do at different times during the day on Saturday. Farm and garden work, show planning, getting ready for school to start again on Monday, and just general home maintenance. You wouldn’t believe how much laundry a household of fifteen adults and a baby produces!
As we got ready for dinner, though, I noticed that no one except the babies had a stitch of clothing on and everyone was just fine with it. The triplets still looked phenomenal when you saw the three of them together. It was clear to everyone which one was Dani now, but even with her facial scar, she was every inch as beautiful as her sisters. Dawn and Theresa were as comfortable as the other women. I’d always appreciated Dawn’s shape and Theresa was… well, hell. I just wanted to go suck on those big nipples with Leslie. When Larry came in and stripped at the door, he did exactly that. To both Theresa and Dawn! George was the only guy who had any real problem keeping his dick down, but that was because it seemed like Debbie and Dolly were doing their best to keep it teased upright.
Sandy, Doug, and Rhiannon had been out on a mysterious shopping trip all day, so they arrived just before dinner. Sandy had hardly any clothes to strip out of. She never wore a bra and I suspected she didn’t usually wear panties either. She was very much appreciated. Of course, Rhiannon… Well, I guess George was no longer the only guy suffering from tumescence.
After dinner, Casa de los Caballos kissed us all soundly, gathered their children, and headed home. Dolly and Debbie dragged George off to reward him for being such a good boyfriend. Casa del Agua, though, stuck around. Jennifer and Courtney got up off my lap and circulated to a different part of the room. Rhiannon and Sandy took their places.
“Hello, amiga,” Rhiannon said just before laying a very long and sensuous kiss on me. It left a boner sticking up between Sandy’s legs that she immediately began stroking. I turned to kiss her as well and the boner got bigger. Sandy is, in my humble opinion, one of the two best kissers in the clan and the other one had moved 200 miles away to Columbus, Ohio. I felt two hands on my cock instead of one and found Rhiannon smearing my precome around the head.
“What’s going on, you two?” I asked. “I thought we weren’t messing around these days.” Rhiannon pushed my face down to her nipple. I remembered the first time she’d let me touch her breast when we were freshmen in high school. It was still just as exciting.
“Just because you and I aren’t having intercourse, doesn’t mean I don’t want to be intimate with you,” Rhiannon whispered. “And Sandy is feeling neglected by you. She described in great detail what it felt like to have you moving inside her for the first time. I came just listening to her.”
“And from having Dor suck on your clit,” Sandy giggled. “I know you have a lot of… obligations… to fill, Brian, but I’d love it if you could fill me occasionally, too.”
“Why have you decided to do this tonight, here, instead of when I visit over at your house?” I asked. I couldn’t really see what was going on in the rest of the room with my face buried in their tits.
“Liz has been feeling a little neglected lately,” Rhiannon explained. “Doreen and Doug needed to spend some time with her and we just couldn’t seem to get it to happen at our house. I think Liz always feels she’s in competition with us when she comes over.”
“Doreen? Liz isn’t into girls,” I said.
“And Doreen doesn’t have sex with Doug,” Rhiannon added. “But motherhood has changed Dor more profoundly than we expected. She isn’t sexual with Liz, but Liz will curl up on her lap and go to sleep almost the same way you and Dani do. She loves to be held. But where we girls love each other and make love to each other, Liz has only you and Doug. I mean, sure, she gets help from Josh sometimes and I know she’s played around with a couple of the other guys, but you two are the only ones she has sex with. We don’t want her to feel left out. The truth is, I’ve had a soft spot for Liz since we were kids. Not necessarily sexual, but just always happy when she’s nearby. That’s probably why I was so willing to let her and Doug get involved. Liz was always my best friend among the five of us.”
“Sometimes I’m sad that we moved over to the village,” Sandy said. “We needed the room, but—I don’t know—the extra hundred yards between our homes seems like we moved across the country sometimes.”
“Why don’t you guys spend the night with us in the big bedroom tonight?” I said. “Matthew and Leon are already asleep. We have lots of room up there.”
“Um… Rose already said we could,” Rhiannon said. “I hope you don’t mind sort of eating me while Sandy rides your cock tonight.”
I didn’t mind.
The men beat Temple Sunday night to advance to the sweet sixteen. Sugar rushed in to the house first thing Monday morning to claim her son from all the willing nannies in our house. The rest of us had work and school. Life was back to normal. Almost.
“We have an agreement,” Art said as he sat down with us Tuesday afternoon. “It needs your okay and we can sign the papers.”
Rose and I sat with him. We were the principals in this case, so everyone in the clan had signed off on our handling the agreement.
“What are the details,” Rose asked. I let her take the lead in this. I felt like I’d pushed people a lot and giving her control of the meeting was really assuaging my conscience. It showed I wasn’t the only one involved.
“They’ve agreed to a settlement of 1.7 million dollars. In addition, they will print an apology to the clan on the front page and ban all further articles and photos from Chase Sanborn/John Smith in any of their publications.”
“It sounds like they’ve given us everything we wanted,” Rose said.
“Well, almost,” Art chuckled. “I don’t think we’ll be able to compost Smith. But there’s one other detail. They want you to take half the payment in stock.”
“What?” I asked. “Become owners of a sleazy tabloid?”
“Well, have an interest in a sleazy tabloid, and a few other media outlets,” Art said. “We did a pretty thorough investigation of their holdings. The Star is really only a bit of the picture. The principal stockholder is Armand Lockhurst. He is a wily character and didn’t create a media empire by not keeping up with what is what. You might be interested to note that he was quoting your television interviews during the negotiating process. If I were to take a guess, it would be that he is actually a fan of yours. He’s not offering stock in the Star, but in the holding company.”
“You think it’s a good deal?” Rose asked.
“I think it is a very good deal,” Art said. “However, once Lockhurst has your ear, I wouldn’t be surprised if he wants to become involved in Hearthstone Entertainment as well. Possibly to acquire it. This is a move to bring his companies into telecommunications. It isn’t going to give you control over that media empire, and it isn’t going to give him a handle on your company. I’d have to think of it more as a gesture of friendship.”
“It just doesn’t sound like something the Star would do,” I said.
“Lockhurst doesn’t run the Star. But when we named defendants, we ran it all the way up their organization. Think of it as suing the City of Bloomington and having the U.S. Congress as a respondent.”
“Shit!”
“I think you can handle this. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t bring you the proposal.”
We took the deal.
Boston College was the spoiler. They knocked out number eight ranked Washington State in the first round, number one North Carolina in the second round, and number five ranked Indiana in the sweet sixteen. Then they turned around and lost to Florida and became regional runner up instead of moving to the Final Four. Florida predictably lost to Duke in the semi-final, only for Duke to fall to little old Arkansas in front of the President of the United States.
Anything can happen.
“Brian, you’d better call Dawn,” Doreen whispered next to me. She’d been pretty uncomfortable the past few days and we’d moved into the master suite. I roused myself and glanced at the clock. It was a few minutes after eleven.
“It’s pretty late. What do you need, honey?”
“Brian! Call Dawn. I’m in labor, you doofus!”
I rolled out of bed and ran downstairs. We’d put an extension in the big bedroom upstairs, but never thought of getting one in the master. I was going to get a cell phone as soon as we got service out here. I ran into the kitchen and Samantha looked up from where she’d been sitting. She’d been crying. Shit! I needed to make the call. I grabbed the phone and dragged it over where Sam was sitting so I could put my arm around her while I dialed Casa de los Caballos. It would have been just as fast if I’d run over there and pounded on their door.
“Dawn, Dor’s in labor. She needs you,” I practically shouted into the phone. I should have just opened a window. She could probably hear me.
“Okay. Don’t panic. How far apart are the contractions?”
“I have no idea. She just woke me up and told me to call Dawn.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes. Just go comfort her and help her breathe. Don’t let her start pushing yet. I need to find out how far along she is. It’s probably just the beginning.” She hung up.
Crap! Samantha was still sobbing against my chest. I needed help. I saw Hannah at the foot of the stairs coming toward us.
“Doreen’s in labor. Sam’s crying. I need help!” I said. Hannah spun and bolted up the stairs. I hugged Sam to me.
“What is it, baby? What has you upset?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” Sam said through her tears. “In the morning it will have been a year and I still can’t stop thinking about my baby sister.”
Fuck! How could we all have gotten so wrapped up in what we were doing that we let Sam face this alone? Yes, I’d remembered this morning that it was a year ago. I’d even gone out to the River and met Sly there. But I didn’t want to upset people by bringing it up. Poor Samantha.
Hannah was back in a couple minutes and wrapped Sam in her arms.
“Danielle and Rose are with Doreen. She’ll be fine,” Hannah said. “Sweetheart, did you just remember what day it was?” Hannah asked Sam. Sam shook her head.
“I’ve known all day. Mom and I walked through the River together. But it was eleven-thirty in the morning on the eighteenth. I’ve been thinking all day that it was just a few hours from now. Just a few hours until it was a year since I lost my baby sister. And I still miss her so much!”
“We love you, sweetheart. And we all miss her,” I said. “We shouldn’t have been so quiet about it but…”
“Nobody wanted to upset you or Dani or Courtney or Brian,” Hannah said. “It turns out that everyone was upset in his or her own way. We’re going to have a silent moment of remembrance on the show this morning.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Elaine wouldn’t have it any other way. She demanded it,” Hannah said.
“Don’t tell me we’re bowing to the demands of our talent,” Sam sputtered. She was coming back to us.
“Let’s fix some milky for Xan. You know she almost always wakes up a little after midnight and Dani’s in with Doreen,” Hannah said. “Brian, you should go to Doreen now, too.”
“I love you, Samantha,” I said. “I didn’t forget. And I never will.”
It was after ten the next morning that Doreen started pushing. By eleven o’clock we had a beautiful new baby girl. The triplets had stepped in to do my part of the show this morning so I could stay with Doreen. I was cutting class this afternoon, too. Doug, Rhiannon, and Sandy were all with us when the baby was born. This time, Doug got down between his sister’s knees and caught our little girl as she popped out. Once the cord quit pulsing, I clipped it. We all cuddled together in the big bed with Cassandra Rae Swift.
I think both C-Rae, as we’d decided to call her, and Doreen recovered faster from delivery than any of the other children on the ranch. The childbirth had been completely natural with no drugs and no doctors. We called it in and Dr. Metcalf came out on Tuesday morning. C-Rae was doing fine and Jan was pleased with all the vitals. Not only that, but she was talking about having Dawn come to work for her at the pediatric clinic. I wasn’t sure which way Dawn would jump.
I went to class on Wednesday afternoon and did my show on Thursday.
“Now for the big unveiling!” I said. I held up the first picture Jennifer had taken of C-Rae. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll have my daughters and their mothers as my guests on Young Cooking. If there is anything guaranteed to keep you young, it is having a child. We’re going to talk about how we feed our young mothers and our babies!” There was a lot of applause and, of course, the audience had to be shifted back to Elaine’s side of the sound stage. Several people came up to congratulate me, even though there were a few raised eyebrows over the plurals I used.
Samantha had doted over Xan when she was born. Dani had chosen to name her for Sam’s sister. She’d been conceived the night before the shooting. Now we had a second child and she was born exactly a year after Lexi died. Sam didn’t leave Doreen’s side for the rest of the week.
We stayed around the sound stage while the seating was changed and the members of the WSCS had gathered around Dani, Doreen, and I while they were on intermission. I wasn’t sure exactly what the letters stood for, but I gathered that it was a Christian Service Society of some sort. I was relieved that they didn’t seem to be at all scandalized by the multiple child, multiple mother scenario. I think they equated it with my having had different girlfriends for each episode of my old show.
Nonetheless, I could see that Doreen was getting kind of tired, so I moved my family to the door of the studio. The audience was all back in their seats and I heard Elaine call my name.
“Goodbye, Chef Brian!” Elaine called. Everyone in the audience turned to wave at us and April’s camera was on me as I waved back.
“See you Monday!” I called. I opened the studio door to step outside.
“You God damned fucker!” screamed a guy when I had the door fully open. Doreen and C-Rae ran into my back and I lurched forward a little. “You ruined my life. Now you’re going to pay.”
In front of me was the guy we’d known as Chase Sanborn, former paparazzo.
I saw him.
I saw the gun.
I heard the shot.
But I felt only the fire of the universe.
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