Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)

“Joe writing?”


She blew out a sharp breath and put her hands on her hips. “No. Joe is pretending to write so I won’t dump Brianna in his lap, but he’s probably playing some stupid game.”

From the other room came a pissed-off howl that Sean hoped was their daughter and not a wild animal foraging for table scraps. “So he’s in his office?”

Keri nodded and waved a hand in that direction before making a growling sound and heading off to appease her daughter. Welcome to the jungle, he mused before heading to Joe’s office. He rapped twice on the door, then let himself in.

Joe looked up with a guilty start and Sean knew his wife had him all figured out. “She knows you’re only pretending to write so you don’t have to deal with the kid.”

“You know what really sucks? Everybody keeps saying to just wait ’til she’s older. Like it gets worse. How can it get worse?” Sean lifted his hands in a don’t ask me gesture. “For years I’ve been writing about boogeymen and the evil that lurks in the hearts of men. I had no idea there’s nothing scarier than a baby girl.”

Sean laughed. “She can’t be that bad. What does she weigh? Ten pounds?”

“Fifteen. But it’s fifteen pounds of foul temper and fouler smells. Trust me.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Joe leaned back in his leather office chair and sighed. “Let’s talk about your life. She still on the couch?”

“Yes, she is.”

“Good. I said you’d last three weeks.”

Maybe, but Sean wouldn’t bet on it. Or he shouldn’t have bet on it, anyway. Especially a whole month. His balls ached just thinking about it. “You guys come up with a plan for the kids for Saturday yet?”

“Yeah, but it’s going to cost you.”

“Not a problem. I’ll just take it out of all the money I’m going to collect from you idiots at the end of the month.”

Joe grinned. “You keep telling yourself that, buddy.”

He was. With as much oomph as he could muster. And he’d probably keep telling himself that right up to the minute he got Emma naked.





Chapter Seven




“If I’d known we were just going to sit around and watch the plants grow today, I would have brought my book.”

Emma jerked her attention from the Columbine plants she’d been checking on and back to Sean. “Sorry. Zoned out for a minute. Did you get the weed blocker done?”

“Yeah. I don’t get why they want the pathway to the beach done in white stone. Don’t you usually walk back from the water barefoot?”

“Not this couple. It doesn’t matter how practical it is. All that matters is how it looks.”

“Whatever. It’s going to take the rest of the day to get all that stone down, so stop mentally tiptoeing through the tulips and let’s go.”

Emma wanted to tell him to shove his attitude up his ass because she was the boss, or at least flip him the bird behind his back, but she didn’t have the energy. Living a fake life was a lot more exhausting than she’d anticipated.

She didn’t even want to think about what it was like trying to sleep every night with her boxer-brief-clad roommate sprawled across the bed only ten feet away, so she thought about Gram instead. Gram who was, at that very moment, on her way into town. The town which had heard the rumors of her engagement, but never actually seen her fiancé.

If Gram returned from town still believing Emma and Sean were headed to the altar, it would be a miracle.

“You look beat,” Sean said, and she barely managed to restrain from whacking him with the shovel. He, of course, looked delicious with his muscles rippling and a light sheen of sweat making his tanned arms gleam as he shoveled stone.

“The couch is shorter than I thought. But I’m getting used to it.”

“There’s room in the bed.”

She forced herself to keep shoveling stone into the wheelbarrow. If she didn’t look at him, she didn’t have to see on his face whether or not he was serious. If he wasn’t, she might whack him with the shovel after all. If he was…

“That’s a bad idea.”

He laughed. “So is filling your wheelbarrow so full you can’t move it, but you did it anyway.”

“Crap.” She’d mounded the stone so high she’d have to dump half of it out to budge the damn thing.

“I’ll wheel it down for you.” He winked at her. “This time.”

Her mouth went a little dry when he stepped between the handles and hefted the wheelbarrow as though it was a sack of groceries, but she followed him down to the area he’d already prepped with weed-blocking fabric where she’d be spreading the first batch of white stone chips. And she managed to make most of the walk without ogling his backside.

“How have you managed to do this on your own for so long?” he asked once he’d set the wheelbarrow in place for her.

“I don’t usually fill the wheelbarrow all the way to the top.”

Shannon Stacey's books