“What do you mean, I’m doing it wrong?”
Against the table in the kitchen nook where we were working, he leaned in closer. Place looked like an entire craft fair had exploded in here. So maybe the kid and I had gotten a little carried away at the store.
Sue me.
“You’re putting the ear on backwards.”
“Crap,” I muttered under my breath, and he cracked up. I rustled a hand through his hair. “Where’s your grandma when we need her?”
Dark, dark eyes widened in my direction. Full of mischief. “Good thing not here, because she’d be rollin’ her eyes.”
My jaw dropped in feigned offense.
The kid was a little whip. Testing just how far he could take that sarcasm at every turn. Couldn’t help it. I thought it was the cutest damned thing in the world.
“I’ll have you know, I made that bear…all by myself.” I pointed at the ratty, mangled thing he still refused to give up. “It’s been lastin’ for years. How’s that for someone who has no clue what they’re doing?”
“You got lucky?” he shot back with a lift of his brow.
“Oh, dude…you’re so going down for that.”
He was grinning, getting ready to run, when my girl’s voice came floating through the heavy wooden door separating the kitchen from the rest of the house. “Knock, knock.”
Guess most wouldn’t describe it as sweet, considering it was throaty and sexy as all fuck, just the sound of it raising chills. But that didn’t mean it didn’t land on me like honey.
“Don’t come in,” Brendon yelled, slanting me a wry grin.
“Are you still not finished?” she called back.
“Nope,” he shouted.
I could hear her exaggerated sigh, almost see her smile. “All right then. I’ll just be out here…lonely…waiting…by myself…all alone.”
“Someone’s feeling a little overdramatic,” I playfully said with a wink at my son, and Brendon snickered quietly.
“Think she just likes us,” he said a little innocently.
But fuck.
Yeah.
Guess I got lucky enough, that after everything I’d done, that gorgeous girl did.
“Here, buddy, why don’t you weave this one through?” I suggested as I fed a piece of pink ribbon through the eye of the needle.
Tongue darted out to the side, Brendon finished weaving the last bit through the bear, then helped me sew in the eyes and mouth with black thread.
“You think she’ll like it?” he whispered.
“Think she’ll love it.”
Both of them.
“You ready to give it to her?”
He scrambled down. “Yep.”
He hid it behind his back as we made our way across the huge kitchen. It was a little country, done as a throwback to Savannah where we’d met, the cabinets white and the island sage, countertops gray. Felt homey. Lived in.
Really, the entire expansive place felt that way.
Warm.
Home.
Never really thought I’d get one.
Never thought I’d deserve one.
Thought I’d messed up too many times. Ruined too much good.
And somehow…somehow I’d gotten it all.
I followed Brendon through the sweeping foyer. Night pressed in over the windows—the city resting below—twinkling through the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in the living and formal dining rooms.
We passed by and ducked into the den that seemed to be Tamar’s favorite spot in the house. Cozy with a fireplace and plush carpet. Walls covered in big blown-ups of some of her favorite shots she’d taken over the years. Some of lightning. Others of us and the rest of our families and friends.
A ton of Brendon.
As I rounded the corner, my damned breath caught in my throat.
Didn’t matter how many times I saw her. It was always a violent jar to my senses. She was bold and brash, a flash of a million brilliant colors shimmering in the night.
Erotic and seductive.
Pure and sweet.
Angel with a little demon woven in between.
So maybe I didn’t mind it all that much when Red came out to play.
Tamar West was all those things.
This perfect contradiction who would always hold me in the palm of her hand.
She was sitting crisscrossed on the floor, her huge belly resting in the well of her legs, wearing a black tank top that hugged all her curves, mouth curving up as she saw us walk in.
Well, I was walking in. Brendon was running. He slid onto his knees on the floor beside her. “We finished your surprise!”
She pushed her fingers through his locks of dark hair. “You did, huh?”
She slanted me a glance that sent a ripple of affection through me.
Gripping my heart.
Filling me with joy.
Couldn’t quite explain what it did to me to see her with my kid. Seeing the way she loved him wholly, took him on as a part of her because he was a part of me, as shocking and sudden as his emergence into our lives had been.