Our house is also brimming with people, which seems more than strange since I haven’t spent a summer here in years. Usually when I visit, it’s the off-season and it has always been just me and Pop. We have three guest rooms, which are perfect for the Stone family. Katie and the baby took one, Trixie and Alex took the bunk beds in another, and Gabby took the third. That left me in a cold, lonely bed. But I am okay with that, since I know Katie is snug as a bug in a rug right down the hall from me. She is safe and warm and within my reach. Now I just need to reach out and grab her.
The cabins on the lake are all rented out, and people started arriving about five weeks ago. There has been a never-ending chorus of “I need this” and “I want that” and “Can you fix this” from the people who occupy the cabins. Honestly, I don’t know how Pop kept up with it all for as long as he did, particularly since he has been alone since I got out of the police academy.
It takes me and him both to keep the place operating. I have no idea what he will do when I go home.
Katie and I haven’t shared so much as a kiss since that night at the hospital. Pop says I’m a chickenshit. Maybe I am. She has a brand new baby, three kids, and a threat hanging over her head. Maybe she’s not ready for anything new with me.
But maybe she is. I won’t know until I ask, will I?
“You wouldn’t happen to want to babysit tonight, would you?” I ask Pop, wincing as I say it because I just know he’s going to throw something at my head.
He heaves a sigh. “I’ll let the ones who can wipe their own asses make my dinner.” He gets a gleam in his eye. “That big one is a decent cook.”
“Her name is Gabby, Pop,” I remind him.
He waves a hand through the air as though my words don’t matter. “Oh, who cares what her name is. She makes a mean grilled cheese. Plus, she owes me a rematch so I can win my money back.”
Pop has been losing to Gabby at cards all summer. The kid is going to go to college on the money she’s made off Pop.
“So you’ll babysit?”
“Don’t they have grandparents right down the road?” Pop grouses.
“Pop,” I say. “C’mon…”
Pop gets up and goes to the bathroom without answering me.
Dan and Adam spend a lot of time with the kids during the day, but at night, Katie likes to have them close to us. She says it’s too hard to keep up with them in the dark. She’s right, and every minute they’re gone, I worry about them.
The central security alarm I installed goes off with a quiet little beep when the front door opens. Katie walks in carrying a car seat. She goes to the fridge and gets a bottle of water. Then she walks over to me and grins up at me, setting the car seat down at my feet.
“Hi,” she sings out. She sets the water bottle on the end of the counter.
A grin tugs at my lips as she grabs the lapels of my shirt and pulls me so my body meets hers as she falls against my chest.
“Whoa,” I say. “I could get used to this.” I let my hands rest at her waist. “How was your doctor’s appointment?”
She nods. “It was good. I passed with flying colors.”
“There was a test?”
“Yes,” she says. She drops her voice down to a whisper. “The is-her-vagina-all-recovered-from-pushing-out-a-baby test.”
“Oh.” I pull my head back and look down my nose at her. “Am I supposed to ask you about your vagina?” I feel like I’m walking through a field filled with explosives. One wrong step and BLAM! I’ll blow my own dick off.
“I totally think you should,” she whispers.
The door alarm bings again and Alex streaks around the corner.
I kiss Katie on the tip of her nose. “Hold that thought, okay? I want to talk about your vagina some more later, preferably when we’re alone. Like maybe over dinner?” I arch my brows at her and wait like a kid who’s asking out his first date.
Her face scrunches up. “Dinner?”
“What’s for dinner?” Alex asks as he streaks back into the kitchen. He tosses the football up again and again, and a puddle is forming below him on the floor.
“Clean that up,” Katie says, and she throws him a towel out of the drawer.
“I’m taking your mom out,” I tell him.
“Oh, cool,” he says as he wipes up the last of the water, and then he streaks out the door again.
“Dad must have taken them swimming,” Katie says. Adam escorted her to the gynecologist’s office.
I nod. “He came and got them after lunch.” I reach down and unbuckle the littlest of the Stone children from his car seat and hoist his wiggly little body into my arms. “And Pop said he’d watch them tonight so I can take you out on a proper date.”
She purses her lips. “And just what would a proper date consist of?”
I pretend to think about it. “Dinner…”
“And?” She stares hard at me.
“And dessert…”
She punches her fists into her hips. “And…”
“And maybe making out in the front seat of my truck.”
She smiles. “Oh, now we’re talking.”