“Rats.”
I walked into Rowan’s room, scooping up a stuffed animal with ease. Hardly any pain at all. I opened her closet, caught off guard. I’m not sure what I’d expected. I mean, they weren’t twins or anything. Hell, they didn’t even have the same mother. Why did I expect them to be in matching outfits? Nothing in Rowan’s closet matched Ophelia’s, and that bothered me, but why?
“What are you doing?” Paxton asked from the door.
Caught off guard, I swung my gaze toward him, his expression wary. Just like mine had probably been when I found out my girls didn’t wear matching clothes. “Helping out. I’m getting their clothes.”
“They’re playing ball. Uniforms. They’re on the couch.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.”
“Are you wearing lipstick?”
“Well, I have a lot of it. I assumed I always wore it.”
“No. Never. Not unless I made you.”
“Oh, well I better go wipe it off, then.”
Paxton couldn’t hide his reaction. He smiled. A genuine smile. I saw it with my own eyes. He strolled toward me, quickly replacing the grin with a smirk. Even in the short time I knew him, I could tell the difference. The smell of his cologne reached me before his body. Intoxicating.
“What’s this?” He indicated the makeshift belt. His fingers lightly slid over the sparkling studs while his eyes lingered on my breasts.
“I borrowed it from another outfit. It needed something.”
“I like it. Glad you’re going to be with me.”
I frowned, perplexed no doubt, taking over my expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, it’s a compliment.”
“Mom! Mom! Rowan won’t give me my shirt. I’m number five. Mom!”
“I’ve got it. Let’s eat. We need to get going,” Paxton said close to my lips, right before he kissed me. Tongue and all. He retreated when Ophelia screamed again.
“You kiss me a lot,” I said, eyes holding his.
Paxton didn’t respond to that. He gave me a peculiar glance and walked away.
I stared after him. Well, mostly his ass. Paxton could wear jeans. Damn, could he ever wear jeans. I shook my head, wondering what the hell was wrong with me—besides the fact that my brain wasn’t right. Puzzling emotions mixed with a longing, and I knew it was for him. There was something there. We did have some sort of pull toward each other, bigger than what Paxton had thought. I didn’t know how I felt about that.
I hung the clothes that didn’t match Ophelia’s back in Rowan’s closet with a heavy sigh and a shake of my head. Day by day. That was all that I could do. That was my only plan.
Paxton and the girls were seated at the table when I joined them. One would think if the husband sat at the end of a six-seating table and chairs, his wife would sit at the other end. Not in the Pierce house. I sat on his right and the girls sat across from me, digging into scrambled eggs and bacon. I had learned my place at the table the first time I ate there. Or that I remember, anyway. All of that was gone. Nothing but a blank brain with little information to go on. What I did recall made no sense. At all. Why couldn’t I remember my life before now? All I had was the here and now with family that I didn’t understand. It seemed hard to believe this was all there was to me. Why was my brain remembering my childhood and not my adult life? I made a mental note to ask Dr. Mirage about that at my next visit.
“What are you doing?” Paxton asked.
I snapped out of my zoning out into space and looked at him, blinking away the vision. I shook my head and spooned a few eggs to my plate, omitting the bacon. “Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“About?”
I tilted my head and smiled. No, it was probably more a smirk, the same smirk that I always got from him. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. What were you thinking about?”
“Okay, fine. I was thinking about my mom and my sister.”
Paxton rolled his eyes and bit into wiggly bacon.
“You have a sister?” Rowan questioned with excitement.
“No, your mother doesn’t have a sister. It’s her head injury talking. Eat up. You have a ball game to win.”
“I’m gonna hit a ball in the hole, Daddy,” Ophelia said while adding her two cents. She wanted the attention, too.
I smiled over at her, biting the corner of my wheat toast. “I think you like golf, Phi. Maybe that’s going to be your sport.”
“Ophelia. Her name’s Ophelia,” Paxton reminded me.
“Yeah, right. The Mayflower.” It just came out. I didn’t even mean to say it, and I sure as hell didn’t mean to flaunt the attitude. Too late.