ísa’s expression changed. “Then why are your eyes so sad?”
He ran his fingers through the glory of ísa’s hair. “Things changed when I was five.” Sailor never talked about this, didn’t like to remember how desperately that five-year-old boy had hoped, but he could do no less when ísa had trusted him with her own family. “The man who fathered Gabriel and me walked out on us. Just left one day and didn’t come back. After cleaning out all the accounts.”
ísa’s anger was a magnificent thing. “How could he do that to his own children?”
“Because he’s an asshole.” And a man in whose footsteps Sailor would never follow, not even if it killed him. “It was always grand plans and no follow-through with Brian.” Sailor remembered enough to understand that. “That’s why the only man I acknowledge as my father is Joseph.”
Sailor felt his lips curve. “He and my mom met a year after the asshole walked out, and to hear my dad tell it, she treated him like a piece of stinking dead fish at first. Every time he asked her out, she’d say no, she was too busy, she had to clean the toilet.” Sailor’s shoulders shook. “So one day he turned up with a toilet brush and said he’d clean her damn toilet for her every week if that was what it took.”
ísa giggled with him. “It must’ve been hard for her to trust another man. Especially with having two young children.”
“Yeah, but Dad… He knows how to love, and he does it without flinching.” Breathing in the warmth of ísa’s scent, he told her the rest. “It took Mom months to trust him enough to even introduce me and Gabe, but when she did, he repaid her trust a thousand times over. He’s the man I want to be.”
“You love him very much.” ísa’s hand stroking his shoulder and arm.
“He put so much love into me, into Gabe, that we had no choice.” Never had they not felt as much his sons as Jake and Danny. “The tattoos on my body? They’re traditional Samoan designs, given to me piece by piece as a gift after I turned eighteen.”
No gift had meant more in his life. “Dad drew each and every line, and his brother inked them. Only reason I’m a Bishop instead of an Esera is because Brian refused permission for a legal adoption when they tracked him down to ask.” A pathetic attempt to hold on to the family he’d thrown away. “Gabe and I were gutted, but Dad sat us down and told us nothing would change the fact that we were his boys.”
Tears shimmered in ísa’s eyes. “I think I’m in love with your dad.”
Kissing her… letting her hold him, cuddle him, Sailor said, “Don’t try anything funny though. My mother’s a little possessive.” He dropped a kiss on the tip of her nose… and his stomach growled again. “That’s enough deep emotional stuff.” He felt as if he’d run sandpaper over his soul. “I need food.”
ísa kissed his lips, then his cheeks, then his nose.
He was grinning by the time she got to his ears.
Finally separating several minutes later, they took turns using the bathroom before dressing in their wrinkled clothes from the previous day. As tidy as they could be, they crept out into the kitchen. It was now five forty-five, and the birds were tweeting up a storm outside the windows.
Tiptoeing around, they checked out the fridge and pantry.
“Want blueberry pancakes?” Sailor whispered to ísa. “I saw fresh blueberries in the fridge.”
Bright eyes. “Do you know how to make them?”
“I’m an expert,” he bragged. “There’s bacon too. Why don’t you fry some while I whip up the batter?”
They had the pancakes going and the bacon sizzling when the light came on in Catie’s room. The teenager stumbled out a minute later, her hair sticking up like a baby’s and her prosthetics nowhere to be seen.
“Is that bacon?” she whispered, as if she’d smelled ambrosia from heaven.
“Bacon and pancakes.” ísa pointed a spatula at the teenager, her volume low in deference to the sleeping Martha. “You know your doctors don’t like you doing the knee-walking.”
“I know, I know.” Catie turned back around, hustling as fast as possible. “Give me time to put on my legs, then I’m coming out to eat all the food.”
“Why not the wheelchair we used last night?” Sailor asked after the teen disappeared back into her room. “Wouldn’t that be faster since she’s obviously hungry?”
“Catie hates using the wheelchair. Obstinate runs in the Rain line.” It was an affectionate statement. “She got very good at walking on her knees for a while, until her physiotherapist drummed it into her head that she might cause flexion contractures.” ísa bent her knee to demonstrate. “It’s where the muscles kind of lock and the knee won’t straighten out fully.”
“Got it. Bad for a runner.”
ísa nodded. “She only forgets now and then, not enough to harm her.” A quick grin. “But she ordered us all to tell her off when she does.”
Catie returned as ísa was pouring her a glass of orange juice. The teen had washed her face and brushed her hair back into a ponytail but remained in her pink pajamas dotted with tiny blue stars, the pants short and the top long sleeved with buttons down the front.
Thumping her fists lightly on the counter after scrambling up onto a stool, she whispered, “Where’s my food, minions?”
A mini-spitfire, Sailor thought, taking in those dancing eyes. “Here you are, Your Majesty.”
Already stuffing her face, Catie nodded at the fridge, mumbling something that had ísa opening the fridge and searching within. “Got it.” She put a pressurized can of whipped cream next to the syrup she’d already found, and Catie went to town with it, smothering her pancakes in the white goop.
Sailor was more of a purist while ísa stuck with syrup.
“You guys are going back today, right?” Catie said sometime later, her plate bearing evidence of a pancake massacre.
“There’s no rush.” ísa took a sip of her coffee. “I can stay as long as you want.”
“The Dragon will eat you.”
“Apparently I’m indigestible. She keeps spitting me back out.”
“It’s okay,” Catie said with a laugh she muffled behind one hand. “I really am fine. I was just being a baby last night, that’s all.”
ísa ran her hand down Catie’s back. “Hey, as far as I’m concerned, you are a baby. I remember changing your diaper five minutes ago.”
“Ugh, total embarrassment!” Despite the outraged statement, Catie leaned over to kiss ísa on the cheek, the two sisters sitting side by side on the breakfast stools with Sailor next to ísa.
“Thanks for coming, Issie.”
“Always, Catiebug.”
The love between the two was a banner, their relationship clearly as tight as Sailor’s with his brothers. A point of commonality he’d highlight to ísa at the first opportunity. He had a feeling she wasn’t yet convinced about the wisdom of this relationship, that if he wasn’t careful, his skittish redhead might yet run.