Page 39 of Daddy’s Little Secret

“Nope, and no peeking, Daddy,” my bossy boy said.

“Take it all inside my cabin,” Momma told them. “We can wrap the gifts in there.” The four of them disappeared inside, leaving Chuck and me outside blinking.

“Wow,” Chuck said. “Should we head into town and do some recon?”

“Good call. There’s no way the shopkeepers didn’t pay attention to them.” Time to go spy on what they wanted but didn’t buy for themselves. Nosy people were sometimes handy.

We loaded up in my truck and headed down the road. Wasn’t long after the texts started. “Guess the boys are looking for us.” Chuck laughed. “Told Tae we are off to do a bit of shopping ourselves.”

“I’m thinking that’s why mine’s blowing up now. I’ll respond when we park.” Sure enough, the first store we went into, the one with the most toys, the attendant Cole pointed out all the items the boys went crazy over but didn’t buy.

“It’ll be nice having Samian around before year end,” Chuck said. “I bet he’ll be hella better at gathering all the tax documents and filing them for us. Beats the hell out of burying myself in the office for days on end doing them myself.”

Not being a numbers guy, the thought of doing that made me cringe. “Hell, I’m gonna have him do mine and Trey’s taxes too.” That’s one job I’ll gladly hand over.

“Do you remember seeing any grocery bags?” Chuck asked.

“No, but we weren’t allowed to peek. Think they forgot the food?”

“I’m about to find out.” Chuck texted Tae and held his phone out to me when he got a response.

“Oops, Daddy,” I repeated. “Looks like that’s our next stop.” Two shopping carts and three hundred dollars later, we got everything on the grocery list and headed back to the cabins. After the groceries were sorted into their respective cabins and dinner was done, Trey and I called it a night since we had to be up early the next morning.

With my boy heavily caffeinated, we headed down the hill to Tempe. When we pulled up in front of Samian’s dorm building, both he and Sasha were waiting outside by a stack of boxes.

“No box truck?” Samian asked.

“Nah, the pictures you sent didn’t warrant it. Let’s get loaded up and head back. Heard it might snow tonight,” I said, and Sasha’s eyes lit up.

“Really? I’ve never seen snow in person.”

“It snows all winter long,” Trey said. “Sometimes only a small amount that melts fast, but there have been big storms too, we were told.”

Between the four of us, we were loaded up and on the road in no time, and when we pulled up at the cabins the whole family was outside waiting.

“We’ve got lunch ready, boys,” Momma said.

“You heard the lady, go ahead and eat. I’ll get the boxes unloaded,” Chuck said.

“Samian and I will help, he knows what goes where,” I replied. Samian, being the smart guy, had marked each box as to where it went. Either in their room or in storage. A few minutes later, we joined our boys for lunch.

“Your tree is naked,” Sasha pointed out.

“Yup, they all are,” Tae said. “We’re decorating them after lunch, together.”

“Tae told me which box of decorations went to which house. It appears he and Trey did all the decoration shopping together and loaded the tubs accordingly,” Chuck notified us. “We moved them to each cabin already, and I started hanging up the outside lights.”

“Excellent. Samian can be the inside ladder guy while we do the outside.” I winked at my brother. “Enjoy.”

As soon as lunch was cleaned up, we got to work. “Trial by fire for Samian?” Chuck laughed.

“You know it. Part of the crew, part of the team. He’ll get the full Daddy effect wrangling three Littles on a Christmas decorating binge.”

It didn’t take long before he came out asking for our help. “Please, Grandma and Momma gave them hot chocolate and now there’s no decorating happening.”

We hopped off our ladders and went inside to complete chaos. The boys were decorating each other, not the tree, dancing around and singing. Chuck let out an ear-buckling whistle and they stopped.

“What did Samian tell you boys to do?”