by KaLyn Cooper
“She must have some serious connections with subcontractors.” Logan sometimes had to wait months to get renovations done around his home. “I can’t believe they’ll have everything done, and the house cleaned, within a week. I figured covering the dark blue walls in Brann’s room would take at least three coats, especially since they want to bring it to white. There’s nothing quite like literally waiting for paint to dry.”
“I can’t believe the price she thinks were going to get.” Teagan tapped on her phone. “Oh. My. God. She’s right. The average home in that neighborhood is on the market for less than twenty days. According to this app, sellers are getting what they ask. One house, only a block away, sold last week for more than what she suggested we list as market price.” She laid the phone in her lap and dropped her head back.
“Are you okay?” He glanced over at her and quickly returned his eyes to the busy road.
“I’ve never lived in a house.” Her statement shocked him.
“Never?” Logan couldn’t imagine what that would be like. The house he grew up in was nothing to brag about, nowhere near the five-bedroom, four and a half bath house they’d just left. He knew what it was like, though, to maintain a home. He’d mowed the lawn since he turned into a teenager, helped his mother weed the garden and landscape, learned how to fix a toilet, and anything else that needed to be repaired. It wasn’t much, but it was theirs.
“Nope. We always lived in apartments. We moved quite often. It was just Momma and me.” She scoffed. “I can’t tell you how many schools I attended, but I can tell you I have either traveled through, or lived in, every state in the lower forty-eight.”
“Sounds like your mother changed jobs quite often.” Logan wondered what was up with that. He knew many military families who could make the same claim as Teagan. The Marine Corps had moved him coast-to-coast, twice. He’d seen much of the United States on those cross-country trips.
“This is the first time I will ever have sold a house, yet, I’ve never bought one.” She glanced over at him. “Have you been through this before?”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I bought a condo the first time I got stationed at Camp Lejeune. It had two master bedrooms, so I rented the other one out. When I got orders, my renter bought it at the going price. I made a few thousand dollars so the next time I bought a three-bedroom house.”
Teagan giggled. “You were a house flipper.”
“No, not exactly. I didn’t bother fixing them up. Most of the time I bought new houses, so I didn’t have to worry about anything breaking.” He thought about it for a few minutes. “Over the years, I’ve made some damn good money on real estate. Back to your initial question, yes, I’ve been through this several times.”
She let out a long breath. “Good. I was scared to death to sign that listing agreement.”
He pulled into a parking space at Mr. Keller’s office. “We’re going to have a lot more papers to sign here. Are you ready for this?”
“I’ll sign anything if it means we get to keep the kids.” She was out of the car and headed toward the door to the office before he turned off the engine.
Two hours later they were back in his SUV. They’d had so many legal documents that the law agency ended up giving them leather cases to hold the copies of everything they’d signed.
It still hadn’t sunk in that he was currently responsible for nine million dollars now, counting the diamonds in the safe deposit box in Jacksonville. Thankfully, Ed had asked everyone to come to them, so they didn’t have to leave the private conference room. While Teagan met with the CPA, Logan endured the broker who currently handled Gabriel’s investments. Their relationship would end very soon.
In the few hours of research Logan had done since he’d never needed a broker before, he knew the needs of the children were not the primary focus of that man. Logan would do a lot more research, then move all the accounts to someone else. After the man left, he found Mr. Keller in his office and they discussed the matter. Thank Christ, Ed didn’t like weasel either.
As they headed back to Elizabeth and Matthew’s home, Teagan was very quiet.
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
“This is just a strange arrangement.” She flipped her hand back and forth between the two of them. “I’m supposed to ask you for every dime needed to spend on the children. The CPA suggested we set up a household bank account using the interest off the children’s investments.” She dug in her folio and pulled out a sheet of paper. “Here’s a list of everything that we should buy using that account. He was upset that you’re spending your own money to feed us.”
“Fuck that shit.” Talk like that pissed Logan off. “You’re all now my family and I need to support you.”
“Nope. The way the court sees it, you and I are caretakers of the children.” Teagan went on to explain, “My money should support me, your money should support you, and their money should be used to support them.”
“That’s just bullshit.”
“The CPA also said that the children’s account should be paying you rent because before we moved in, it was a rental property.” She read from her notes.
“No way in hell am I going to take money from those children.” Logan would just have to call that CPA and have a talk with him. He thought of Anora and Brann as his children, ones he shared daily with Teagan.
Teagan. Children. The words triggered the memory of their previous conversation where Teagan told him she couldn’t have children. He wondered why. Just as he was about to ask her what she meant, her phone rang.
Ending the call a few minutes later, she twisted in the seat to face him. “They have a bed for Mom in the memory care unit in Jacksonville.” He could hear the enthusiasm in her voice. “I need to call the medical transport company and check on their availability, then I can contact the nursing home that she’s currently in…Logan, I’ll have Mom in a home twenty minutes away by the end of next week if all goes as planned.”
She was so excited.
“That’s great.” He felt like such a selfish ass. He hadn’t realized that having her mother so far away had been stressful for her. He’d been so consumed with his job and the children, he hadn’t given any thought to Teagan and what the move had meant for her.
Their lives would become even more complicated when the children started school, got involved in activities, and oh, fuck, when Teagan went to work full-time on New River Air Station.
“Will you be able to parent next week while I deal with getting Mom settled?” She was making a list on her phone. Damn. This woman was so organized.
“Sure. I’ll work something out so I can come home and babysit.” He turned into Matthew and Elizabeth’s neighborhood.
Teagan raised her perfectly arched eyebrows. “No, you won’t babysit, you’ll come home and parent. There’s a big difference. These children are half yours. I certainly do appreciate everything you do for them—especially for making them breakfast, in case I haven’t mentioned how much I truly appreciate that before—but we’re now technically their parents. Babysitters are teenagers who will come into our homes and watch over the children, making sure they stay alive while we’re gone. We’ll need to hire babysitters soon.”
“Does that mean you and I get to go out on dates?” He knew he’d said something wrong the minute he glanced at her.
Teagan’s sun-kissed face blanched. “I’m sorry…I…I’ve been inconsiderate. Of course, you’re dating.” She turned her head and looked out the side window.
Well, he had been dating, up until Gabe’s funeral.
When she faced him once again, she had pasted on a smile. “I apologize for occupying your every evening. I never meant to keep you from your friends.”
Logan pulled into their friends’ driveway.
Where the hell was she going with this?
Teagan babbled on. “I truly appreciate you taking us out to dinner, or bringing something home for all of us to eat, but you don’t need to do that anymore.
”
Not have supper with them? Or did she mean not to have him spend his money on their supper?
He put the car in park.
Her fake smile grew wider. “How about we switch off? I can take care of supper and bedtime one night, and you can do it the next.”
Logan turned off the vehicle and faced her.
“That way it’s fair to both of us, and you can meet up with your…friends.” She shrugged. “I need to get out and meet more people anyway.”
Logan hated this entire line of thinking.
“I already told you that I don’t have anyone special in my life, right now.” He reached across the console and grabbed her hand, holding it between both of his. “I want to clarify. I want to go out on a date with you. Just you and me. Without the children. We can hire a babysitter to make sure the children don’t kill each other or someone else.”
“You don’t need to thank me for taking care of the children by taking me out on a date. I’m parenting. Just like you.” Thanking her for being such a good mother figure to the children was not what Logan had in mind for their date.
“Although I appreciate everything you do for the children, I have no intention of taking you out as a thank you.” He leaned in and brushed his mouth over hers.
Leaning back, he held her gaze. “And I can assure you, if I didn’t want to be on that couch watching television with you and the kids, I wouldn’t be there.” He laid soft kisses on each corner of her mouth.
“I want to be there with you…and the children.” He wanted to show her just how serious he was about dating her. He leaned forward, slowly, giving her time to say something, hopefully not reject him.
The front door of the house flew open and four children, all yelling the same time, came running toward their vehicle.
Knowing he only had seconds before experiencing his first child-interruptus, he lifted her chin so that she met his eyes. “You and I are going on a date when we get back to North Carolina.”
She blinked as though in a daze. “Yes. Date.”
Knocking came from the window beside her.
“Come look what we made,” Anora screamed through the glass.
“Cupcakes for dessert,” Brann announced from Logan’s side.
“We should go inside.” Logan rolled down both windows. “Step back, munchkins. Let Aunt Teagan and me get out of the car.”
As though the children had awakened her from a trance, Teagan said, “We’re going to talk about this some more.”
“Guaranteed.” He wanted to take her hand as they walked into the house, but he didn’t think she was ready for that public display of affection. Instead, he placed his hand at the small of her back, guiding her into the house as the children bounced around them.
Three hours later, with the exhausted children asleep, Logan and Matthew sat on the back patio sipping eighteen-year-old scotch.
“How are things going with the kids?” Matthew asked. “They seem happy.”
“They have their moments, but overall I think they’re adjusting.” He set his glass on the patio table. “I guess, I’m adjusting too. I had to stop at the grocery store the other night when Brann and I were coming back from batting practice. At the counter, getting ready to check out, he asked if he could have a pack of gum. Before I paid the bill, he’d added ten more items. He gave me the line, my mom used to always buy this for me after baseball practice. When I delivered him back to Teagan, she ripped me a new one for allowing him to have all that candy. Fuck, Matthew, every day I think I know less and less about raising kids.”
The man with the almost white hair and nearly black beard laughed. “And let me guess, the next time, when you told him no, he said you were being mean to him and that his real parents would have let him have it.” The man shook his head with self-deprecation, a smile on his face. “You should see when Liza gets wound up. She’ll turn on the tears and tell me that her real father would buy that piece of junk jewelry for her or take her to an adult movie or whatever sin I had committed.”
“Thank Christ, it’s not just me.” An emotional weight lifted from Logan’s chest and shoulders. “I’m just trying to be a good male role model to these children.”
“No, you’re not,” Matt accused. “You’re trying to be the father Gabriel never was.”
He couldn’t argue. Matthew was right. Logan wanted to be the best father possible to both those children. “I think coming back here this weekend might be good for them. I’d like them to see Washington DC as a fun place to visit. Your kids are helping a lot.”
Matthew smiled and grinned into his glass. “They’re good kids. Lizzie did an excellent job raising them so far. Don’t get me wrong, they can be little shits. Liza is becoming a master at manipulating men. Last weekend, when Micah came up to join Austin and me for a Nationals baseball game, she had him feeling so guilty that he took her out for ice cream.”
That opened the perfect opportunity for Logan. “Do you find yourself doing more stuff with Austin than Liza?”
Shaking his head, Matthew confessed, “I admit, I bonded with Austin right away. Everything seemed easy with him. He’d been ignored for so many years by his stepfather, and we both like baseball. Liza, I had no fucking idea what to do with a little girl.” He chuckled. “Now, she has me wound around her little finger.”
“So, how did you finally win Liza over?” Logan was really hoping for some serious tips.
“Elizabeth saw that video on YouTube where the man gets all dressed up in a suit and tie then takes his little girl out on a date. She got the brilliant idea that I should take Liza out at least once every other week and do things with her that she wants to do.”
“How’s that working out for you?” Logan picked up his glass and sipped. The scotch was fucking smooth.
“Last week, Liza wanted to go to the mall. She got all dressed up and I stayed in my suit and tie after work.” By this point, Matthew was grinning. “We ate at one of the chain restaurants in that area. She’s gotten into ordering a virgin strawberry daiquiri when I order a drink from the bar.” He was smiling. “She’s so fucking cute trying to be a young lady.”
Their gazes caught, and Matthew explained, “We practice our manners. And we have a no electronics rule. We’re not allowed to sit anywhere I can be distracted by a television and my phone has to be on vibrate. I’m only allowed to answer if it’s Elizabeth or a nine-one-one work emergency.”
“Too bad more parents don’t teach their children those rules. I swear, teenagers are becoming more and more rude. Their table manners are atrocious, and they never look up from their phones.” Logan took another sip and set the glass back down.
“No argument here,” Matt agreed.
“So, you take Liza out to dinner,” Logan pressed. “Do you go to a kids’ movie afterwards?”
“Sometimes.” Matt burst out laughing. “I told you that last week she wanted to go to the mall. What I didn’t tell you, was that I bribe her. If she acts like a little lady, and is very good during supper, I buy her something special. I bought her a purple fuzzy purse that she just couldn’t live without. You should have seen the look on the clerk’s face when I approached the counter. Liza had stopped to look at something on the other side of the display so the woman couldn’t see her. I swear she thought I was some kind of child abductor.”
Matthew thought about it from moment before he added, “We don’t always go out. Sometimes I just get on the floor and play with her for a few minutes. Little girls are amazing. Their imagination is so different from boys’.”
“Thanks for the advice. I’ve never been around little girls before and to be honest, sometimes Anora scares the shit out of me. One minute she’s walking around with a fluffy crown on her head, and the next minute she’s wrestling with Brann.” Logan chuckled. “I’d love for her to grow up and be a strong woman like Teagan and Elizabeth. In the next breath, though, I want her to stay this beautiful innocent child.”
“I know exactly wha
t you mean,” Matthew agreed.
For a long time, the two men sat quietly, their faces lit only by flickering citronella candles. The clink of their glasses touching the patio table the only thing disturbing the creatures of the night.
As they both set their empty glasses down for the last time, Matt locked eyes with Logan. “I love both my kids, and would kill anyone who tried to harm them or Elizabeth. I’ve seen you with Brann and Anora. I think you feel the same way about them.”
“I love those children more every day,” Logan admitted. His feelings for Teagan, though, were nowhere near as easily defined.
Chapter Sixteen
The rain had shifted back to sheets of water dumping from a gray sky for the second day in a row. The kids were cranky and so was Teagan. She was having the period from hell. She felt as turbulent as the choppy ocean.
It was a damn good thing Logan had to work late for the last several nights. Very late. It was just her and the kids for supper the last few nights. That night, microwaving a container of frozen macaroni and cheese and a box of chicken nuggets was all she was capable of making. Everyone should be damn glad for Midol. At the moment, it was the only thing keeping her sane.
Teagan promised herself a better attitude…tomorrow. Bad weather or not, she would load up the kids and take them to visit their new grandmother. Nana, as they had decided to call her, had arrived the previous week. Teagan was pleased with the brand-new facility. It had many safety checks in place so her mother could no longer walk out of the building and go for a stroll by herself, clueless to the danger.
As the children watched an animated movie, and sang along to all the well-known songs, Teagan decided she needed to do something constructive to take her mind off her cramps. When they had left DC two weeks ago, she had promised Matthew to meticulously go through each of the remaining office boxes.
She hiked all the way to the third floor and curled up in her favorite overstuffed chair, heating pad in place.
