“Can I have pancakes?” Bradley asked with a yawn.
Scott set the pan on the stove again with an amused expression. “I’m not alone. I’ve got a squirrel-loving niece and a pancake-eating nephew. Life is good, sis. I’ve got no complaints.” He dropped a kiss on Bradley’s head and said, “How late do you work tonight?”
She wondered if her son and daughter had saved Scott from whatever he didn’t want to talk about and took some comfort in that thought. “I’ve got an early shift,” she answered, wondering if Bones would be helping Scott with the basement tonight. She quickly chided herself for becoming so needy overnight. The man had a life, and so did she. “Nine to five. I was thinking we could grill out tonight. Bradley loves chicken kabobs.”
Bradley confirmed with a nod.
“Kabobs it is. I’ve got to swing by the store to pick up paint for the basement and stop by the carpet store to finalize the installation for next week, but I should be home by six or so.” He raised his brows like he was waiting for her to say something.
“What…?”
“Just trying to decide if I made a mistake or not,” he said too casually.
She set Bradley down. “Go play, honey. It’ll take me a minute to make the pancakes.” Bradley joined Lila by the toys. She grabbed the mixing bowl and said, “What did you do?”
“Yesterday I told Bones I didn’t need his help with the basement tonight in case your date didn’t go well.”
“Oh,” she said, trying to hide her disappointment.
“I can text him.” Scott reached into his back pocket.
“No. It’s fine. I want to finish the curtains tonight anyway. Besides, we have a date tomorrow. We’re taking the kids to his friend’s farm to see the animals before I go to work.”
“Nice. Kid dates are the equivalent to meeting your parents.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t you have physical therapy to go to? Or are you going to stand around here making me nervous all morning?”
“It’s kind of fun to see you all”—he pursed his lips and then spoke in a high-pitched voice as he said, “I’m not secretly wishing Bones were here.”
She shoved him toward the living room, laughing. “Go. Please. I forgot how pesty a big brother could be.”
After Scott left, she fed Bradley and got the kids ready to go to Babs’s house. Nana Babs, she corrected herself. Not for the first time, she wondered about her own grandparents. She couldn’t remember ever meeting them. Her parents had never mentioned them. They’d simply acted like they didn’t exist. She’d always wondered if that was because they were nice, normal people who wouldn’t approve of how they were treating Sarah and Scott, or if they were as bad as her parents had been. She pushed those thoughts away, glad her children had nice women who cared for them and treated them like family.
As she gathered her purse and keys, she realized she didn’t worry about Babs, Red, or Chicki shedding their skin, and she wondered what that said about her. Did she want a mother figure bad enough to accept what she was having such trouble accepting in Bones?
She locked the door behind them and stepped off the porch.
“Look, Mommy! Presents!” Bradley ran toward the car, on top of which were gift bags, two pink and one blue. He jumped up, trying to reach them. “Hurry!”
“Hold your horses, buddy.” Mommy needs to pick up her jaw from the ground.
She didn’t have to see the cards to know they were from Bones. She picked up the blue bag, which had a little white tag hanging from the handle that read, To B-boy, Love, Bones in careful script. Her heart squeezed when she peeked inside and saw two farm animal books.
“Is it for me?” Bradley asked.
“Yes. It’s from Bones.” She hadn’t yet told him about their date tomorrow, just in case something came up and Bones had to cancel. But she should know better. The man really did stick like glue.
“Books!” Bradley plopped down on the grass and began leafing through one of the books, chattering about each of the animals, and it dawned on her that Bones had seen Bradley playing with his toy animals so often, maybe Saturday wasn’t just a last-minute thought after all.
Lila squealed, reaching for the bags. “Mamama!”
“There’s one for you, too, Lila boo.” She reached into the smaller of the two pink bags and handed Lila one of the cloth books it held. They were also farm animal books, and she was touched that Bones had thought to get Lila’s in cloth, since she was teething on everything these days.
She got the kids settled into their car seats and then retrieved the last pink bag and read the tag. For you, darlin’. Let’s never let your dreams die. Love, B.
She sat in the driver’s seat and peered into the bag. Her heart thumped harder at the sight of several notebooks. She took them out one by one and admired them. The first was white with She believed she could so she did written in pink across the front. The second notebook was light green and white, with blue lettering that read Let your dreams be bigger than your fears. The third was a regular red spiral notebook like she’d used in school. There were three big, uneven stars of varying sizes above the words Sarah’s Stories of Hope written in gold marker. Beneath that, written smaller and in black was, We’re going to make them all come true. Xox, B.
Her chest constricted as she spied gold and black Sharpies in the bottom of the bag, along with a pack of fancy black pens. She wanted to cry and laugh at once. Out of everything she’d told him last night, he’d held on to the one piece that had been the most important to her.
“Go, Mommy. I want to show Nana Babs my books,” Bradley urged.
“Okay, honey.” She set the gifts on the passenger seat and vowed not to let the darkness and hurt Lewis had caused overshadow the beauty of Bones.
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Sarah sat in the courtyard behind the salon with her notebooks and pens, eating lunch and thinking about the stories she used to write. She’d been just a young girl escaping her awful life by disappearing into little-girl fantasies. Now the thought of writing stories for herself seemed silly because she knew the truth. As a girl she’d caught only moments, glimpses of people’s lives. As an adult she knew glimpses were like pictures posted on social media—carefully posed and chosen. They were propaganda. Just like her young-girl stories. Back then it had been Sarah doing the selecting of captured images, as if she were stranded on an island and collecting scraps for a raft. She’d looked away from boys talking smack and fights between young couples, choosing to remember only the most stable, hopeful images.
She was no longer in an unsafe house. Her babies were safe, she’d reunited with at least one sibling, she had friends, and she and Bones were getting closer every day. Her life was incredibly happy at the moment. What more could she possibly hope for?
As she put pen to paper, images of her father tearing her notebooks to shreds, red-faced, veins plumped up like snakes on his neck and arms as he’d yelled at her, made her hand tremble, her breathing still. She set the pen down as a realization dawned on her.
There was only one thing she really wanted. One thing she craved more than anything else in the world. But how did a person write a story about something as intangible as peace of mind?
BONES STOOD IN the middle of Got Toys?, the biggest toy store in Peaceful Harbor, with his motorcycle helmet under one arm, studying an article on his phone about the effect of toys on children and trying to ignore Dixie’s tapping foot.
“This isn’t that hard,” she snapped, shifting her helmet to her other arm and jutting out her hip. “Just grab a stuffed animal and a noisy rattle.”
Bones shook his head. “The right toys enhance cognitive development.”
She peered over his shoulder at his phone. “Are you seriously reading about that right now? Shouldn’t you have geeked out before this?”
He shoved his phone in his pocket and strode back toward the entrance, leaving Dixie to try to catch up.
“Where are you going?” she called after him.
<
br /> “We need a cart.”
“A cart?” Dixie hurried next to him. “What are you buying her, a playhouse?”
Bones stopped walking and pulled out his phone. “The kind for a yard or for dolls?”
“Are you shitting me?” She grabbed his arm and hauled him toward the front of the store as he navigated to an article about playhouses. “She’s one. Do not buy her a playhouse.”
“It looks like that’s better for three- and four-year-olds.” He pocketed his phone again and set his helmet in a basket. “We need blocks, balls, stacking cups, musical toys, dolls, stuffed animals, and action figures.”
“Anything else, Santa Whiskey?”
He glared at her as she put her helmet beside his with a chuckle.
“She’s a girl. You know that, right?” she asked as he pushed the cart toward the ball aisle.
Ignoring her smart-ass comment, he chose a big rubber ball, another the size of a grapefruit, and a smaller one made out of cloth. “Come on, the stuffed animals are two rows over.” As he pushed the cart, he said, “When she pretends to give her friends a bath, or feeds them, she’s practicing the things that will help her make sense of the world.”
“And of course every little girl needs action-figure friends, because they might end up with a Special Forces bestie in preschool.”
“It’s a good thing you don’t have children.” He picked up two stuffed animals, then glanced at the aisle directory. “Ah, strollers. She needs one for her dolly.”
“Dolly?” Dixie snort-laughed. “You are pussy whipped.”
“Nice mouth on my baby sister. And no, I’m not. Sarah isn’t like that. She’s the least demanding and most caring, selfless woman I know. I’m not pussy whipped, Dix. I’m…”
“Falling for her,” Dixie suggested.
Falling? Hell, he’d fallen off the edge of a cliff the day he met her. “Something like that.”
He picked out a pink toy stroller, and as they headed for the doll aisle he stopped to pick up a doctor kit.
“Now she needs medical supplies?”
“It’s for B.”
“Bullet?” Dixie said absently, eyeing a bearded guy who was scoping out bicycles at the end of the aisle.
“You think Bullet needs a toy doctor kit?” Bones yanked her in the opposite direction, grabbing the cart on the way.
“Ow! I meant Bradley. Sorry.”
“Put your eyes back in their sockets.” When they reached the next aisle he released her.
“News flash, Bones. If I want to look at a hot guy, I’m going to do it.”
“News flash, Dix. Not on my watch. Nothing good comes from that.”
“What do you want me to do? Put on a frilly dress and wait for a guy to ask my daddy for my hand?”
“Sounds about right to me.” He laughed and headed for the block aisle.
“Or maybe I’ll just crash my bike in another town and see who comes by to rescue me. Maybe I’ll get lucky and meet someone’s brother who’ll go gaga over me.”
“Is that before or after you tell them they’re doing everything wrong?”
Chapter Ten
BONES DROVE DOWN the long, lazy driveway toward Nick Braden’s ranch Saturday morning, wondering if there was any sound better than the laughter of children. He had experienced many great moments in his life. The day when his parents got the all clear about his father’s stroke and times when his family was together and he could feel love all around him. But if he had to pick one day, one single moment of complete happiness, he was currently in the thick of it—surrounded by gorgeous maple trees kissing the sky with vibrant red and orange leaves, his girl’s hand in his, and the two children who had stolen his heart giggling in the back seat as horses frolicked in the nearby pasture.
He parked in front of one of the cream-colored barns and spotted Nick in the distance, coming up from another barn. A cowboy hat sat low on his brow as he lifted a hand in greeting.
“Horsies, Mommy!” Bradley yelled. “I smell them!”
Lila squealed, arms flailing and legs kicking in excitement. “Moos!”
“No, Lila,” Bradley corrected her. “They’re horses, not cows.”
Lila giggled. “Moos!”
Bones squeezed Sarah’s hand, bringing her eyes to his as Bradley corrected his sister again. He’d never seen a woman look so beautiful in a simple long-sleeved white shirt, a thick cardigan, and jeans. Sarah had tied a pink sash just above her baby bump. Her boots had seen better days, but they looked like a million bucks on her.
“How do you stand it day after day?” he asked with a smile.
“I’m sorry. I know they’re noisy.”
“No, darlin’. They’re incredible, and so are you.” He pressed a kiss to the back of her hand and said, “Don’t look so shocked. You know just how amazing your children are.” He knew the look of disbelief was probably because of what he’d said about her and not her children, but he wasn’t going to give it credence. She looked radiant, and he hoped that soon she’d trust him enough not to doubt his words.
He climbed from the car and walked around to Sarah’s door as Nick approached.
“How’s it going?” Nick pulled him into a quick, manly embrace.
“Couldn’t be better.” Bones opened Sarah’s door and helped her out. “Sarah, this is my buddy Nick Braden. Nick, my girlfriend, Sarah.” Another flicker of shock appeared in her expression. Get used to it, darlin’. He went to help Bradley out of his car seat.
Nick tipped his hat. “Nice to meet you, sweetheart.”
“Nice to meet you, too. Thank you for letting us come out today,” she said.
“My pleasure,” Nick said. “Kids and animals go together like peanut butter and jelly.”
“Or in our case, Wowbutter and jelly,” Bones said, earning another hint of surprise from Sarah. “Nick, this is Bradley. You’ve got to watch him. He’s been studying farm animals, and his knowledge puts me to shame.”
Bradley tipped his face up toward Nick, squinting into the sun, and said, “Are you a real cowboy?”
Bones grabbed his backpack, in which he’d stowed all of the paraphernalia Sarah usually brought in her baby bag. The backpack was easier to sling over both shoulders if need be. He picked up Lila and joined the others, catching the tail end of Nick’s answer.
“Lila! He’s a real cowboy!” Bradley gushed, earning excited sounds and hand clapping from his baby sister.
“I think we might have to keep her away from ranches when she’s a teenager.” Bones pressed a kiss to Lila’s cheek.
“The little one’s got good taste,” Nick said. “She could end up with a doctor.” He shuddered dramatically, making Sarah laugh.
Nick gave Bradley a quick, kid-friendly safety lesson about the animals, and Bradley listened like a pro, nodding and repeating the important points to Lila. It was just about the cutest thing Bones had ever seen.
“What do you say, partner?” Nick said to Bradley. “Think you’re ready to say hello to the horses? I have some that are just your size.”
Bradley nodded and took Nick’s outstretched hand.
“Should we get the stroller?” Sarah asked.
“No. I’ve got her,” Bones said as they followed Nick and Bradley around the barn to another pasture. He took Sarah’s hand, enjoying her shy smile, and said, “But if you get tired, just say the word and we’ll sit down and rest.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said. “I’m like the Pregnant Woman of Steel. I’m faster than a speeding three-year-old, able to step over Lego buildings in a single bound.”
Bones chuckled. “Then what’s your kryptonite?”
She smiled up at him, heat emanating from her eyes as she said, “You are.”
Man, he loved that. He leaned in for a kiss, then thought better of it with the kids around. A kiss on her hand or a quick peck on the cheek was one thing. But something told him even a child would feel his emotions toward her if he kissed her on the lips now. Instead, he whisp
ered, “Careful using your heat vision in front of the kids. You don’t want me to combust.”
She laughed and quickly covered her mouth. “Sorry, but does that line ever work?”
“Apparently not,” he mumbled.
“It’s a little horse!” Bradley hollered, pulling them from their secrets and sending Lila into a wiggling, squealing bundle of excitement.
“Moo!” Lila called out, pushing to get out of Bones’s arms. “Moo!”
“Horse,” Bradley said, as if his sister should know this by now.
“It’ll take her some time to learn, B-boy.” Bones set Lila on her feet, holding tightly to her hand as they approached the fenced area where a miniature horse was grazing.
“Look how sweet it is,” Sarah said. “Go slow, Bradley. Remember what Nick told you.”
Bradley squinted up at Nick. “Hand up?”
“Palm up,” Nick said, showing him the proper way to hold out his hand. “Let her smell your hand and get used to you.”
Bones crouched beside the kids, one arm around each child’s waist in case the horse acted out.
“She’s the tamest old girl I’ve got,” Nick reassured him. “She grew up around kids, and we’ve never had an incident. Littler ones than Lila have petted her.”
Good to know, but I’m not taking any chances.
Bradley let the horse sniff his hand, then pulled it back quickly, giggling. “It tickles!”
Lila squealed, reaching for the horse’s nose as Bradley did it again. The horse nudged Bradley’s palm, and they both stumbled backward, giggling. Bones pulled Lila against his side to keep her from plopping onto her bottom.
“Gentle,” Sarah reminded them, moving to Bradley’s other side. She pulled her phone from her back pocket and took a few pictures.
“Try it, Mommy!” Bradley urged.
Nick held his hand out. “Why don’t I take a few pictures of your family?”
“Thank you.” Sarah gave him the phone and put her hand out toward the horse, who pushed her lips along it. “She’s so soft. What’s her name?”
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