“You’re welcome, see you around.”
“Is Aiden okay with you for a minute?” Audrey asked him. “I need to help Piper get her things.”
Tate nodded. “Yeah, no problem.” Aiden had crawled into his arms earlier that evening and nodded off.
“Okay, I’ll be right back to get him and put him to bed.”
“No hurry,” Tate said. Audrey smiled sweetly down at the two of them before turning back to her friend and helping Piper to the house.
As Tate sat alone with Aiden sleeping in his arms, he couldn’t help but think of Matilda again. She was only fourteen when the wreck happened and her life was cut so short. But that wasn’t the moment he was thinking about. He could picture her when she was nine, with all her top front teeth gone and two on the bottom also missing, grinning up at him after his hockey game. Her eyes were always so bright and full of life. Those were some of his favorite times. Matilda was loving and always cared about everything he did. Tate grinned, and swore he could still hear her screaming for him when he was in goal. She was his second biggest fan, his first being his parents.
Just as his chest started to ache and his eyes pooled with tears, a cab pulled into the driveway. It didn’t take long before Audrey and Piper were making their way down the steps and toward it. Piper had told him that she was not big on drinking and driving, which was a good thing since he saw she couldn’t hold her liquor at all. The couple of beers they’d had with s’mores earlier went straight to her head. Taking in a long steady breath, Tate forced the thoughts of Matilda away. He watched as Audrey put Piper in the cab, reassuring her that she would bring her back to get her car tomorrow after the party. Tate remembered then that he had Shelli Adler’s first birthday party tomorrow. He couldn’t wait.
Not.
Audrey made her way toward him, the cab pulling off as she reached him. She clapped her hands together and looked down at Aiden, a loving smile on her face.
“Well, this has been fantastic, and it looks like it wore my little punkin’ out. Can you hand him to me, please?” she asked, her hands stretched out.
Tate shook his head, standing up quickly and efficiently, as if he wasn’t holding a sixty-pound child. “I’ll carry him in for you.”
Audrey paused for a moment, then nodded, leading the way into her house. Tate followed, his eyes drifting to the sway of her spectacular backside. He loved her curves, they drove him mad, but what he really liked was the curve of her ass. It was easy to say that those jeans were probably the luckiest things on earth. He would do anything to get the chance to hold on to Audrey’s ass again.
Anything.
Upstairs, he followed her into a room to the left of the stairs. When Audrey opened the door, she glanced back at him.
“This is the closet we are redoing. It still has a bed for Aiden, but it will be moved out once Lucas gets back and finishes.”
“Okay,” Tate said with a nod.
Audrey pushed the door open and Tate went into a bare room that was the length of the whole condo. Everyone wasn’t joking when they said Audrey had a lot of shoes. They were everywhere. Tate had never seen anything like it. Since he noticed she was embarrassed by the number of shoes she had, he entered without commenting and headed for the bed. After he laid Aiden down and Audrey tucked him in, the two of them left the room.
Audrey shut the door and then leaned against it, glancing up at Tate.
“Thanks for bringing him in.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “No big deal.”
Awkward silence filled the space between them, and Tate hated that. He wanted this to be relaxed; he wanted her to be comfortable. He cleared his throat, causing her to look up into his eyes.
“What do I need to do to make this less stressful for you, Audrey? I don’t want this to be awkward between us.”
She narrowed her eyes, curious. “I don’t know what ‘this’ is.”