by Celeste, B.
Fletcher’s eyes go to my shirt before his lips quirk up after I open the door. “Morning.” He gestures toward my pajamas. “Like your shirt.”
Dominic holds up a plate of cookies covered in saran wrap. “We brought you cookies! My mom made them.”
My eyes go from Nicki to his dad when Fletcher explains. “Trace wanted to say thank you for always helping out with Dominic at school. She’s sad she keeps missing you. Surprised she hasn’t just shown up here, to be honest.”
The mother of his child just randomly showing up at my doorstep? That’d be… I don’t know how I’d feel about that. “Oh.” Hesitantly, I accept the plate and smile. “They look good.”
“Mom is a great baker. Not like Dad.”
Holding in a laugh, I see the amused look on the man in question’s face. “I’ve been known to burn a few cookies here and there.”
“And brownies,” Nicki adds. “And my birthday cake that one time.”
Fletcher sighs.
I can’t help but smile. “It took me a while to get things right,” I tell the youngest Miller, who’s looking at something in the house. Admiral is sitting beside Fletcher, nose pointed toward the plate, head cocked as if he’s waiting for me to feed him something. “Tell your mom I said thank you for the cookies.”
The little boy’s eyes go up to me before quickly darting away again. “I need to use the bathroom.”
Fletcher puts his hand on his son’s back, shaking his head. “We’re almost home, bud.”
“But I need to go really bad now.”
I look between them, my eyes focusing on the man when I say, “I don’t mind. I’ve got a bathroom right off the kitchen he can use.”
He gives me a nod before I show Nicki where to go, Fletcher and Admiral walking in and closing the door behind them. It’s the first time he’s been inside since I put up my Christmas tree, a cheap find at a store that looks like I found it on clearance. There are gaps and missing needles and sadly strung lights around it. Most of the ornaments were on sale too, except the ones of mine that my parents collected over the years.
“It’s not much,” I note when his eyes go to the single stocking hanging off the TV stand. Then to the few cards I’d gotten from friends and family that are taped to the archway between the living room and dining room. “I thought I’d be more in the spirit since this is the first time I’ve really decorated a place by myself, but…” I shrug.
It’s the first house I’ve ever owned that I could have decorated any way I wanted. When I was little, I’d always beg my parents to let me start putting up Christmas decorations the day after Halloween. Dad would usually crack, helping me string up lights and put window decals up on his enclosed porch, but Mom would make me wait until after Thanksgiving.
“I could have helped,” that rumbly voice cut in, eyes coming back to me. “I’m sure I wouldn’t have needed to twist Nicki’s arm as much as I would yours.”
I fidget with the saran wrap-covered plate, glancing at the various treats beneath. “You’re probably right. It’s fine, though. My friend Vickie came over and helped a little. And when Bex was here, she did too.”
We’re quiet for a while.
So, I ask, “Did you and Dominic have a good holiday? Did Santa bring him everything he wanted?”
Fletcher’s lips twitch. “Santa may have gone a little overboard, but it produced a happy kid in the end.”
“That’s what matters.”
“Got to see some family, so it was nice,” he adds, eyes going in the direction of the bathroom before turning back to me. “What about you?”
I tell him about my Christmas. The food, the presents, and Vickie coming over and getting slightly drunk and arguing with my dad about which football team deserves to go to the Super Bowl while Mom and I watched with wine.
When Nicki comes back out, he stands by Admiral and pets him. “How come you live by yourself? Don’t you get lonely?”
Fletcher stares down at his son. “Nicki, we don’t ask people things like that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s rude.”
“How am I supposed to get to know people unless I ask them questions? It’s a big house. I’d be lonely here all by myself too.”
He makes a valid point. “I do get lonely sometimes, but it’s not so bad. I have friends and family who visit me, and I go see them at their places. I’m never alone for long.”
From the corner of my eye, I see Fletcher’s jaw tick.
Nicki cocks his head. “You should get a dog.” He keeps petting Admiral. “Or a cat, but I think dogs are way better.”
“Yeah?”
He nods enthusiastically. “I can help you choose one! There’s a pet store in town that Dad won’t let me go into because he says we don’t need any more animals.”
Fletcher grumbles, “We don’t.”
Nicki tugs on his dad’s arm. “But Ms. Foster does! She’s lonely.”
I wince despite trying to hold it back.
“Dominic—”
“Please, Dad?”
I cut in. “That’s very sweet of you to offer, Nicki, but I don’t think I’m quite ready for an animal. They’re a huge responsibility.”
“If I can do it, you can,” the child responds with confidence that reminds me a lot of his father. “I’m autistic, but I own a dog, and I feed him and take him out and play with him. So, you can do that too because your brain is wired right.”
Fletcher’s hand curves over his son’s shoulder and squeezes once. Quietly, he says, “I told you before that there’s nothing wrong with your brain.”
“I’m not like other kids.”
“Doesn’t mean you’re not normal,” Fletcher tells him firmly.
“You’re a great pet owner to Admiral.”
The dog barks in acknowledgment.
“Tell you what,” I proposition the youngest Miller. “I’ll think about it. Okay? Does that sound like a deal?”
Dominic presses his lips together, looks around the house for something before returning his gaze back on me. “Deal. But I get to help pick the pet out, okay?”
“Dominic,” Fletcher murmurs.
My lips waver. “Deal.” I lift the plate. “I appreciate the cookies. Remember to tell your mom I said thanks.”
“I will. Maybe next time she’s here, I’ll bring her over! She keeps saying she wants to meet you, but Jacob tells her that she needs to mind her business.”
I blink. “O-kay?”
Fletcher clears his throat. “Jake is her fiancé.”
Dominic nods. “I’m not going to call him dad, though, because he’s not. But he’s okay, I guess. He wants to teach me how to throw a baseball, but I don’t really want to.”
All I can do is stare and absorb the information they just gave me.
“Come on, bud,” Fletcher urges. He lifts his eyes. “Have a good rest of your day.”
“Bye, Ms. Foster! Hope you like the cookies. And think about the dog. Dad says you’re a good person and that he likes you just fine, so he’ll probably let me go with you to the store without him when you decide.”
A strangled laugh raises from my throat as I take that in, waving to them as Fletcher walks them out. He doesn’t acknowledge what his son just said, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t hear.
Fletcher Miller likes me ‘just fine’ whatever that means.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Want to go for a walk?” The question has me looking up from the pathway I just finished shoveling. I see the furry paws first, then the work boots next, eyes raking up the jeans and jacket I’ve seen plenty of times before at this point.
I smile. “Hi.” Glancing at my work, I lift a shoulder. “Sure, I wouldn’t mind a walk.”
Putting my shovel away, I pull my zipper a little higher up, make sure my door is locked, and my keys are safely in my coat pocket and meet Fletcher and Admiral at the end of the driveway.
He gestures toward the driveway I spent the last
twenty minutes clearing. “I was planning on taking care of that for you after I walked Admiral.”
I shove my hands into my pockets and smile at him thoughtfully. “That’s why I have a shovel. I knew I’d have to take care of it when I moved. No big deal.”
He looks forward as we walk down the sidewalk, letting Admiral guide us as he sniffs around and stops every so often to mark his territory.
It’s a few comfortably quiet minutes of only our boots crunching against the salted pavement, and the sound of a gentle breeze rattling the snow-covered tree branches before the man beside me decides to speak. “You said something a little while ago that stuck with me. That when you’re in love, you feel invincible.”
His eyes remain forward while mine sneak a peek at his profile, curious about why he’s bringing this up now. I barely even remember saying it, but it’s obvious he’s thought about it for almost a solid month by now.
“I never felt invincible.”
I blink. He never…?
Looking down at me, he scans over my face. “Trace and I were never that serious. Hate to be one of those guys who admits that I found someone to have fun with, but that’s what it was, and that’s the kind of guy I’d been. I was looking for casual. Whatever you want to call it.” His eyes go back to Admiral again before glancing around us. I notice his shoulders tightening as they square off. “When she found out she was pregnant, I’d wanted to make it more serious than it was. Settle down. Have a family since it was going to happen either way. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
He got married to her because she was pregnant. That’s…I don’t know quite what to think. It isn’t uncommon. It’s even a little admirable in a way.
“Can’t say we were miserable, but I can’t say either of us were completely happy either. Jacob, the man she’s with now, he makes her smile more than I ever could. I’m not an easy man to get along with sometimes. I like routine and don’t take change well. Doesn’t mean I won’t give it a shot. I’m just…”
“Stubborn,” I supply.
He cracks a smile. “Stuck in my ways.”
“Same thing.”
We share an amused look before he lifts a shoulder in reluctance. “She met Jake when we were still together. Dominic was about three. I could have been angry, should have been furious, to find out she’d been talking to somebody behind my back. I believe her when she said nothing happened between them. Traci’s a good woman. Always has been. She was just thrown into trying to make something work that we should have never bothered with, same as me.”
I wait for a few long heartbeats before I ask him, “Are you sad about it not working out?”
He shakes his head without hesitation. “I think when I realized I wasn’t upset that she met someone else, I knew. In fact, I was relieved that she found Jake.”
My brows go up.
“Pretty fucked up, isn’t it?”
“No,” I reply quickly. “No, I mean, as long as there’s no big heartbreak. I don’t know much about her or you two, but it seems like you get along well enough. If there’s one thing vital in any co-parenting relationship, it’s that type of civility. I’ve seen a lot since starting at Stanton. Heard even worse during my college years when I did teacher observations and student teaching in different school districts. If you get along with Traci, if you’re happy for her, then I don’t think that’s messed up at all.”
We stop when Admiral starts sniffing at the base of a tree on the curb. Fletcher looks at me, head cocked, those impressive, intense, dark eyes narrowed slightly. Half of his lips quirk up like something I said is funny to him. “You don’t swear much, do you?”
I snort unattractively before I can stop myself. “I do, actually, but I try to be good about it. The last thing I need to do is drop an f-bomb in the middle of my classroom with a bunch of fifth graders there to witness it. And I’ve come close.”
I almost miss the snicker. Almost. “Hard to imagine you dropping the f-bomb, honey. I kind of like that about you.”
The back of my shoulders tingle, sending the sensation all the way up my neck and down to my fingertips as I replay what he called me.
Honey.
He said it in such a soft tone that I have to do my best not to make a face or become too confused with the flutters filling my stomach—a feeling I haven’t had in a long, long time.
“Well, sorry to say that I’m known to indulge in more than that. On occasion, I’ll drop other classics like ‘ass’ and ‘damn’ or the big one.” His eyebrows raise in amused inquiry. “H-E-L-L. Or, as the kids like to say, h-e-double hockey sticks.”
The loud, boisterous laugh coming from him shakes his entire torso, and the sound…it does something to me. I’ve never known a laugh could be so attractive because I’ve never reacted to one the way I am with his rumbling. But the way he tosses his head back unapologetically makes me stare in awe, feeling my heart quicken a few beats faster than normal as I watch those broad shoulders shake.
The man who usually looks like the weight of the world is stacked on his shoulders, the soldier who’s always plotting the next move, figuring every way out of a scenario while weighing his options, looks carefree for once. Not one time have I ever seen him like this. Certainly not when I visited Hunter on base or lived there briefly with him and would cross paths with the man in civilian clothes beside me, and rarely since moving here.
His new decorum—looser, eased—is sexy.
There’s no denying it.
No pretending that I don’t find him attractive. Not just in this state, as he chuckles to himself and shakes his head, but in every state he’s shown me. The stoic, stone-faced one, the version that’s closed off, and everything in between.
I don’t know what to do with that realization. That acknowledgment. Because there’s got to be some sort of rule book that says you can’t find your ex-husband’s old boss sexy, much less like him in a capacity more than platonic.
And I do.
God, I do.
Because Fletcher Miller has so many layers to him that I doubt many people see, but I do. He’s let me see them, experience them. He’s shown me kindness and respect, treated me with warmth, helped me when he could have looked the other way. And, sure, there are times his bluntness irritates me, but it shows that he’s been looking out for me from the start.
“What is it?” he asks, his voice calmer now, level again as he studies my face.
I have no idea what my expression must look like, so I quickly collect my thoughts and file them away for now. “Nothing. Just…it’s nice to hear you laugh, is all. You don’t do it very often.”
Whether he believes that’s all I’m thinking or not, he chooses not to call me out on it. “I’m like you with swearing. I do it, but it depends on the situation. Nicki makes me laugh all the time.”
My heart warms even more for this man.
It’s not until we’re walking back toward my house a solid fifteen or twenty minutes later, our arms practically touching because we inched ourselves closer to one another at some point when I decide to ask him something I’ve never let myself think about for too long before.
“When Traci told you that nothing happened between her and Jacob when you two were married, and you said you believed her, did you have any doubt at all?” My voice is quiet, hesitant, knowing I shouldn’t be poking this bear.
“Trace was a lot of things, but she was never a cheater,” he answers simply, firmly.
I nod, my head bobbing up and down slowly as I think about that.
“Fletcher?”
We stop at the end of my driveway, his eyes on my face, mine struggling to stay on his when I want to look away. “I was wondering if…maybe you knew if…” Not able to say the words, I drop my gaze and let hair cascade over my face like a waterfall shielding the emotions building in my expression.
Warm fingers brush my cheekbones, combing the hair gently behind my ear before they tip my chin up to meet his eyes. Tingles linger fr
om the ghost of his touch. He studies me, first one eye, then the other, then my face in its entire frailty over my inquiry.
He knows what I’m asking. “I wish I could tell you the answer, honey, but the truth is, I told my men that what they do is on them. I made it clear that I wasn’t responsible for any of the poor decisions they made, as long as it didn’t impact the team as a whole.”
I swallow, not able to look away because his fingers still have my chin held in a gentle lock. “He told me he never cheated, and I want to believe him. I do. But…”
He waits patiently for me to finish my thought, the pad of his thumb brushing my jaw and raising tiny goosebumps over my skin in the process.
“Sometimes I wish he did,” I admit weakly, teeth grinding and shame taking over where the butterflies had resided only minutes ago. “Because then I could hate him. I would have been able to move on long before now because I had nothing to hold onto.”
Fletcher does what I least expect.
He steps into me, wraps those thick, hard-earned muscular arms around me, and pulls me into his warm body.
A hug.
He’s hugging me.
And even though I tell myself not to, I melt into his hold anyway.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I try not to think about the hug, but I fail on many occasions. When I’m left alone to my thoughts, I think about how one of those big hands had moved to cup the back of my head and thread those long fingers through my hair. He’d brushed the strands with gentle strokes, never pulling, never rushing, as he held me into his body. His other hand, still holding the leash, had made circular motions on my lower back.
My low, lower back. At one point, his knuckles had grazed the top of my butt.
Those thoughts are what have me sitting at Bex’s kitchen table with a cup of warm tea in my hand as she sits down across from me with another small cup for her.
