Hold Him Like Gravity (Lombardi Family #4)

Rico - 3 years

“You’re not going to break her,” Renzo told me as I hesitated to lift our grumbly daughter out of the incubator in the room while Lore helped Kick in the bathroom.

“She’s fucking tiny,” I said, watching as she wriggled hard against the tight straight jacket thing she was stuffed inside of.

I’d been close to her, had run a finger down her face, had stuck my finger in her little hand. But I hadn’t held her yet.

I tried to make it sound like it was because she needed to be close to Kick for feeding and shit like that. But the truth was, I was terrified to pick her up, sure I might crush or drop her simply because I had no idea what I was doing.

“Here,” Renzo said, scooping up my newborn, giving her a little rock to settle her, then pressing her against my chest, giving me no choice but to put my arms around her.

She weighed nothing.

I was pretty sure Evander was twice her weight, easy.

“Finally,” Kick said, making me look up to see her coming out of the bathroom taking shuffling steps with Lore holding her arm. “I was starting to worry she was going to think her Uncle Bass was her daddy.”

Yeah, I had to give Bastian credit, he had no fear.

He’d walked in a few hours after Kick delivered the baby, scooped her up, and started to tell her all the ways the two of them were going to make her parents’ lives more difficult. It was a plan that began with toys that sang and ended with a drum set. And, potentially, an entire litter of puppies.

I had no idea where his ease with kids came from since he, arguably, had spent less time with them than I had. But I was going to have to take a page out of his book and get comfortable with the delicateness.

Lore and Renzo excused themselves, having their own family to get back to, and I brought the baby over to the bed with Kick to nurse.

“She’s perfect,” Kick said.

“She gets that from you,” I said.

“I’m sitting here with ice panties on and two-day-old greasy hair,” she said, scrunching her nose up. “I’m far from perfect.”

That was where she was wrong.

Because lying there in the bed with our baby, I was pretty sure she’d never been more gorgeous.

Kick - 20 years

“Groin, knees, eyes, and nose,” Rico said.

“And it only takes six pounds of pressure to rip an ear clear off of the head,” Bastian piped in.

“Throat punch is always a good idea too,” Rico said.

“Mom!” Joss, our eldest daughter, yelled.

“What’s up?” I asked, pretending not to know what she was so annoyed about. Because while I empathized with her for having to deal with Rico and Bass at their most concerned, I had to admit that their overprotectiveness toward the girls was one of my favorite things about watching them around the girls.

Sure, that was probably me projecting since I’d never had anyone to try to protect me from a literal abuser, let alone just a first date with a boy who may or may not be respectful enough.

I felt for Joss, I did.

She was a young lady who’d had a healthy amount of boy craziness the past few years. And, being she was the prettiest thing, the boys were interested as well.

But she had a father who could and would literally rip off the arms of a boy who put their hands on her.

Not to mention her uncles.

And, perhaps worse yet, her aunts like Saff and Cinna.

“They’re doing it again,” Joss said, waving to Rico and Bass.

“We’re just reminding her the best ways to defend herself,” Bastian insisted.

“Uncle Bass, I’m literally a black belt. I could beat you up,” Joss said with a cocky little chin lift.

“You have your pocketknife and your mace, right?” I asked, glancing at her tiny purse.

“Really? From you too?” Joss asked, sighing.

“I want you to be safe,” I told her, tucking some of her brown hair behind her ear. Which she immediately untucked.

“I’m going to be at a coffee place in front of dozens of witnesses. And, I’m sure, Daddy will have half a dozen of his soldiers stationed from here to there.”

The way Rico reached up to rub the back of his neck told me that was true.

“Okay. Alright. We will leave you alone.”

“Do you have enough money?” Rico asked, reaching into his back pocket to hand her a wad of cash.

“You already gave me money,” Joss said. “And I have my own money,” she added, pulling her shoulders back.

Since school was out, she’d been working at the plant shop to make her own cash. Despite the fact that Rico was constantly throwing money at her.

“Well, here’s some more. For a cab,” he said, holding it out until she took it.

“This is two-hundred dollars. Where am I taking a cab? To Jersey? Oh, God,” she grumbled as Rico’s eyes widened. “I’m not! I’m staying right down the street.”

“Baby, go,” I said, waving toward the door, “before your father insists on chaperoning you.”

Joss rushed off, giving me a nervous smile before walking out into the hall.

“I don’t like this,” Rico declared.

“No stupid fucking eighteen-year-old boy is good enough for her,” Bass piped in.

“I mean, you have to give the kid credit for agreeing to take her out even with you two lunatics breathing down his neck, just looking for a reason to toss him in the Hudson,” I said.

“You’re not gonna date, right?” Rico asked as our middle daughter came walking into the living room, knocking her leg into an end table because she wouldn’t look up from her book.

“Boys in books are better,” Della said before dropping down on the couch in her cow-printed wearable blanket, hood up to cover her hair and half of her face.

“That’s right,” Rico said, nodding.

I went ahead and didn’t remind Rico what some of those boys in books and the girls in the books got up to in private moments.

But Della was a couple of years away from those books.

I hoped.

I had to make sure Saff wasn’t corrupting her yet.

“Daddy!” our youngest called, a sweet little cherub-faced eight-year-old. Stassy was our whoopsie-baby when we thought we were done having kids. Suddenly, I was even more thankful for her. She would help her father come to terms with Joss and Della growing up when he still had her innocence to cling to.

“Hey, Stass,” he said, plucking the painting from of her hands. “What’d you make me now?” he asked, turning the picture a few times, trying to figure it out for himself.

A mini-Picasso, she was not. But Rico always acted like she was a little savant.

“Joss’s wedding,” Stassie said, beaming at her father, no idea she’d just shot him through the heart.

“Stass,” Bastian said. “How about I take you and your sister out for some ice cream?” Bass asked.

“Yes!” Stassie cheered.

“Go get your shoes, baby,” I said, running a hand over her flyaway hair.

The promise of ice cream even got antisocial Della out of her wearable blanket, into shoes, and out the door with her uncle and baby sister.

“Dunno how he got over the whole Joss thing so easy,” Rico grumbled, staring at the closed door.

“Ah, Rico,” I said, walking over to run my hands up his stomach and chest then wrap them around his neck. “The ice cream shop is right across the street from the coffee place Joss and her date went to.”

“Oh, he’s a genius,” Rico decided.

“You’re gonna have to be okay with your girls dating,” I told him.

“No fucking way.”

“They’ll find their right people.”

“No such thing for my girls.”

“I found the right person,” I reminded him.

“You coulda done better too,” he said, giving me a little smile.

“No,” I said, leaning up to press my lips to his. “No, I really couldn’t have.”

XX