“Man, who died and named you Scrooge?”
Mindy, that’s who.
The thought socked Jenna in the gut. This should be Mindy’s conversation with Bryan, not hers, though Mindy would probably have said yes to a puppy because she’d never been allowed to have one.
“Jenna? You okay?” Bryan brushed some curls off her face, his expression all worried and serious.
Couldn’t have that. Couldn’t have him wondering what she was thinking about—who she was thinking about. “Yes, I’m fine. But can we nix the idea of a puppy around Trevor, please? I don’t want to have to be the bad cop.”
“Ah, sweetheart, we’ve got years to go before we hit the good cop/bad cop stage.”
“Really? I seem to remember hitting it awfully early.”
“You? I can’t believe you were ever at that stage. I thought you were the good kid. The perfect daughter.”
Until she’d been seventeen and had brought home a little present from that vacation to the shore her mom had finally let her go on with Dave’s family.
Her mother hadn’t spoken to Dave’s mother ever since. And they lived right behind each other.
“Just… no puppy, okay? It’s too much work right now. Maybe when he’s older. Then you can be the hero.”
He gave her a funny look and opened his mouth to say something when Trevor took off running.
Away from them. “Oh, wook! Fishies!”
Jenna went into full-on panic mode. She hated when he got so excited that he just upped and ran.
She and Bryan went after him. Amazing how fast little three-and-a-half-year-old legs could go.
“Yo, Trev.” Bryan caught up to him first, scooping him under the arms with his free hand. “Buddy, you cannot go running away like that. You scared your mom and me.”
Trev looked up at her, his eyes wide and tearing up. “I sowwy, Mommy.”
She cupped his face and kissed his nose, breathing in that sweet sweet scent of his that’d been ingrained in her memory from the first moment she’d held him in the hospital after Mindy had delivered him. She could not lose him.
“I know, baby. But remember what I said in the grocery store? You can’t run like that. I don’t want anyone to take you.”
Bryan winced when she said that and put Trev down. “Maybe you don’t want to say it to him like that? Make it a little less scary?” he whispered.
She whispered right back. “I want him to get scared. I want him to be terrified that someone will take him so he won’t keep doing that. What if he’d run into the street? I’d rather have him scared and alive than fearless and dead.” She was shaking she was so… angry? Scared? Both?
“Can I go see the fishies now?” Trevor turned those big hopeful eyes up at the two of them.
Jenna was so toast. “Yes, Trev, you can. And Bryan and I will be right here.” Two feet behind him. With no one in front of them. In a perfect, uninterrupted line of site.
“Guess I shouldn’t have given him the cotton candy, huh?” Bryan said when their breathing had returned to normal.
Jenna wasn’t sure her heart rate ever would. “Or the hot dog, or the hot fudge sundae, or the snow cone. But it’s a fair. At least he’ll sleep well tonight.”
She on the other hand, would probably not. Just like last night, but for completely different reasons.
“Mommy! Daddy!” Trev turned around and waved at them. “Come here!”
Daddy. He’d called Bryan Daddy. This situation was just getting more complicated every minute Bryan was around.
Bryan didn’t look at her, but she certainly looked at him. He swallowed. Slowly.
“Ah.” He cleared his throat and walked over to Trev, then tapped the brim of the hat Bryan had won for him. “What’s up?”
“If I can’t have a puppy, I wanna goldfish.” Trevor pointed to the hundreds of tiny goldfish bowls on the platform behind the counter. “Can you toss the ball into one of them since you’re the bestest thrower ever?” Hero worship shone in his eyes.
Tears shone in Bryan’s.
Which made them spring to life in hers. Jenna had to look away.
“Uh, yeah, Trev. Sure.” Bryan’s voice was a little husky—no a lot husky. He cleared his throat again. “Where’s the ball?”
“Here.” Trevor held up a ping-pong ball he’d grabbed off the counter then smiled his big sunny grin at Jenna. “Watch, Mommy. Daddy’s gonna get me a fish.”
Bryan handed her the teddy bear and the light saber and the rubber duck and the half-eaten box of popcorn with the cotton candy paper cone center sticking out of it, his damp eyes saying everything he didn’t.
She nodded at him, her throat too tight to speak as well.
But then he put his game face on, took the ball, and tossed.
The ball bounced off a succession of rims like a pinball game, then flew into the gutter.
“Oh no!” Trevor banged the counter. “I want a fish!”
Jenna jostled the prizes in her arms to get a hand free to ruffle his curls. “Trev, honey, these games aren’t really designed to win. They’re more designed to take people’s—”
“Jenna? If you don’t mind?” Bryan cut her off as he waved the booth attendant over.
“Hey, Ms. C.” It was Rocco, her repeat freshman in English 101 who she wouldn’t be surprised to have as a client next summer. If not sooner. Rocco cuffed Trevor lightly on the chin. “Hiya, bud.”
Normally, that would make Trev light up like a Christmas tree, but not now when his dreams of fish ownership were going down the toilet—where the fish would eventually end up anyway.
Bryan peeled a ten from his wallet. “I’ll take however many balls this will buy.”
Rocco took it, raised his eyebrows, and shrugged. “It’s your money, dude.” He then set a plastic slot machine bucket full of ping-pong balls on the counter. “Good luck.”
“Come on, Daddy, I know you can do it. You’ll win me a fish.”
She saw Bryan’s Adam’s apple flutter again. All this pressure. Best thrower, Daddy … Trevor had a lot of expectations for Bryan, and Bryan was feeling every one.
The first five went the way of the previous gutter ball. The next one however, bobbled a bit closer to actually landing in a bowl and if there’d been another two rows of them, he probably would have gotten it in one.
The next one didn’t do as well, getting stuck between the bowls.
“Aw, man! I wanna fish!”
Now Bryan shoved back a set of imaginary sleeves, went into a baseball pitcher wind-up, and lobbed the ball.
It took one bounce off a rim and went sailing off into the sunset.
Trevor banged the counter again. “Come on, Daddy, you can do it!”
Bryan was feeling the pressure. Three more balls disappeared into the gutter.
There couldn’t be many left.
“How about if we let your mom try, Trev?” Bryan held out a ball. It was a pink one.
“Big tough guy can’t throw a pink ball?” she teased, hiking the teddy bear under her arm, ready for the challenge.
“Big tough guy can throw a pink ball. But if it doesn’t land where it’s supposed to he’ll never live it down.”
She took the ball. “I’ll never understand men.”
“Aw, come on, we’re easy. Football, cars, food, and se—uh, women. Not much more to us.”
The problem was, he was wrong. There was a whole lot more to Bryan Lassiter and he’d just proved it by giving her the chance to be the hero in their son’s eyes.
She tossed the ball.
“Oh, Mommy!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jenna’s ball landed in the middle bowl with a splash and Trevor went nuts, screaming and jumping up and down, banging the counter with his fists. “I get a fishie! I get a fishie!”
Rocco was laughing as he scooped the pink ball out of the bowl, then poured their new pet into a plastic bag for the ride home. “You want the ball, Trevor? Your fish might like to have it for a
souvenir.”
“What’s a souvenea?”
“It’s something that helps you remember a special event.”
“Oh, wike my new teddy bear? I’m gonna name him Bwyan.”
Bryan started coughing and had to turn around. He was coughing so much his shoulders started to shake. Coughing so much he had tears dotting the corners of his eyes.
“So what are you going to name the fish, then, Trev?” Jenna took mercy on Bryan and got Trevor focused on the fish. She’d worry about the teddy bear later.
She’d worry about Bryan later, too.
“My fishie’s name is Wocco.”
Jenna laughed and hiked the offending teddy bear up under her arm. “I’m sure Rocco will be honored.”
Bryan coughed once more then took the prizes back. “You ought to name the fish after your mom since she was the one who won it for you.”
“That’s siwwy. You can’t name a fish Mommy.” Trevor dropped his arm and dragged the bag behind him.
“Hey, Sport, let me carry that for you.” Bryan held out his free hand before they ended up with a dehydrated fish in the bag. “I think we need to get him a bowl and some food and pretty quickly. We might want to think about heading home.”
“Aw, but I wanna get a cupcake. You said we could get one and Wocco will wike a cupcake.”
Bryan did some judicious juggling with the prizes and the bag with the poor fish that’d be lucky to live the next twenty minutes forget the hour or so it’d take them to buy his bowl, his food, and go satisfy cupcake cravings.
“You did promise him, Bryan,” she said, chuckling. “I heard you.”
“Well then, it’s a good thing I know just the place, isn’t it?”
“Do they have stwawbewwy ones?”
“I guess. They have lots of different kinds.”
“What about snozzbewwies? Do they have them?”
Bryan looked up at her with a deer-in-the-headlights look. “You want to help me out here, Jenna?”
“Seriously? You don’t know snozzberries?”
“Never heard of them.”
“Really? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? One of the classic movies?”
“No…”
“Trev? Wanna tell Bryan about the movie?” It was one of his favorites, especially when she’d recited the dialogue with the characters. Trevor had looked at her as if she was the smartest person in the world and Jenna had been more than willing to let him believe so. The teenage years would come soon enough.
They’d ended up watching the movie a few times back-to-back until he knew some of the dialogue, and still watched it at least once a month together, their little “thing.”
“Watch me, Bwyan! I’m an oompa loopma!”
Trev had the song and the waddle down pat. The waddle wasn’t hard since he’d walked the same way when he’d been in diapers; all he had to do was channel those days.
“You should watch it with us sometime. Daddies watch movies with their kids, wight, Mommy?”
Out of the mouths of babes…
“If he wants, Trev.”
“Or course I do. What dad wouldn’t want to?”
“Yay!” Trevor spun like an oompa loompa which was a lot like Charlie Chaplin with his pants bagging around his knees. “So, do they? Have snozzbewwy cupcakes?”
“Well, now, Trev, I don’t really know. I guess we’ll have to find out. You ready to go?”
“I’m always weady for cupcakes.”
***
Bryan glanced in the back seat as Jenna tightened the seatbelt across Trevor’s booster seat. The giant teddy bear—Bryan—was strapped in beside him. Trevor had insisted, and Jenna, awesome mother that she was, had agreed. Bryan was wishing he’d won another one so he could have latched it to this side of the cab, the perfect airbags in the event of an accident.
Amazing how his priorities had shifted in the twenty-four hours since he’d officially become a father. Three and a half years too late, but that hadn’t been anyone’s fault. What would be his fault was if he allowed any more time to be lost.
Unfortunately, he did have to get back to the job he was working on. The Vistons were due back from their vacation in two weeks and he’d promised to have the addition wired and ready for the drywallers by next weekend. Taking this time off to be with Trevor was going to make the schedule tight. Plus, he had a few shifts to cover for Gage this week at the club, which was going to make it even tougher to carve out some time for Trevor.
It was a good thing Jenna had turned down his impromptu proposal. He didn’t have time to court her, get to know her, fall in love with her. Work had to be his focus so he could pay for his son.
He pulled into the parking lot at Gage’s fiancée’s bakery. In the year since Gage and Lara had been together, Lara and her cousin, Cara’s business, Cavallo’s Cups & Cakes, had grown so much that Gage had been spending all his free time building on an addition to the kitchen and expanding the front of the building to include a walk-in store where people could buy the products they made on-site. Business had taken off after the Fourth-of-July community picnic last year and Gage was complaining that he no longer had any spare time. Since he’d barely had any before that, that was saying something, and was the reason Bryan had helped cover his shifts whenever possible. With his nephew’s surgery, Gage had a lot on his plate and Bryan had been able to help out.
But now, with wanting all his free time to be tied up with Trevor—and Trevor’s mother—things were going to get tight across the board.
His heart ached for the time he’d already lost with his son. For what he’d missed. For knowing how Trevor had felt in his arms as a baby. How he’d smelled. How he’d cried and cooed and when he’d started sleeping through the night. If there were any foods he was allergic to, or anything he was scared of or what he liked to eat… Everything. He wanted to know everything about Trevor and he wanted to be part of every moment of his life from here on out.
Should he ask for custody?
Bryan jerked the car to a stop. Custody. The word had just popped into his head, but now that it was there, he couldn’t not think about it. It was his right, after all.
But was it right for Trevor?
He climbed out of the cab and opened the back door to undo Trevor’s seat belt. Things were going well with Jenna. Would a discussion about custody upset that balance? Was it wise to risk it? Suppose she said no and hired an attorney? She was Trevor’s mother and a good one; no judge would take a child from her and it could limit his access to him.
Bryan helped Trev down. No, he’d hold off. For now anyway.
“What cupcake are you going to get, Bwyan?” Trev hopped up and down some more.
“I don’t know yet. How about if you pick once we see what kinds they have?”
“Okay.” He bent over and looked under the car. “Huwwy up, Mommy! Race ya!”
Bryan had to do a quick lunge to grab the kid before he went racing across the parking lot. Jenna was right. Better to scare the pants off the kid than have them knocked off of him. Gage and his family were already living that nightmare.
“Trevor, if you go running off, no cupcakes.”
It stopped the little squirming monster in his tracks. “No cupcakes?”
“Your mom’s right. Running away is dangerous. You’re in a parking lot. People can’t see you from their cars. They could hit you.”
“And squash me like a bug?”
Bryan winced at the image. It’d probably come from that Michael kid, but in this instance, Bryan was glad for Michael’s over-sharing.
“Yes, and then you’d never get a cupcake.”
“Oh.” Trev stuck his thumb in his mouth and twiddled his hair with the other. “Okay. Can I hold your hand?”
Bryan could only nod.
Lara, Gage’s fiancée was behind the counter when they went in.
“Hey, Lar.”
“Hi, Bryan. And who do we have here?” Lara glanced at Jenna with a smile, but it was Trevor
who got her full focus.
“I’m Twevor. Do you have snozzbewwy cupcakes?”
Lara tapped her lip. “You know, I think I just sold my last snozzberry. Do you like any other kind?
Trevor scrunched his face. “Oh. How about dinosaurs? I wike T-wexes.”
“I do have some dinosaurs.” She pointed to the glass case. “Why don’t you look around and I’ll take a look in the back to see if there’s a spare snozzberry hanging around. Sound like a good idea?”
“Yes, pwease.”
Lara raised her eyebrows at Jenna and Bryan. “Polite. Very nice.”
It was nice. So was the little tug to Bryan’s heart at the compliment paid to his child even though he knew he had no claim to it since Jenna’s parenting skills had made Trevor the way he was today.
Okay, so he wouldn’t bring up the custody issue. Not yet anyway. She was doing a good job and he didn’t want to mess this up.
“Wook, Mommy! She has a T-wex! And a diplodocus.”
“I see, Trev. You want one of those?”
“I dunno.” He slid his sticky palms on the glass as he looked at the rest of the cupcakes.
“He can’t say T-rex but he can say diplodocus?” Bryan whispered to Jenna before he walked behind the counter to grab some paper towels.
She shrugged. “No rs or trs. You should hear him say truck. It’s pretty embarrassing.”
It took him a few seconds but he got it. He chuckled as he walked to the front of the glass case with Lara’s vinegar spray bottle and wiped up Trevor’s hand prints.
“Oh, wook, Mommy! They have a fire fu—”
“Truck. They have a fire truck. Yes, I see it, Trevor.” She raised her eyebrows at Bryan.
Yep, definitely embarrassing.
“Hey, look what I found!” Lara walked out from the back with a smile on her face and a cupcake in her hand.
A red cupcake. With some weirdly shaped strawberry on top.
“What’s that?” Bryan asked.
Beefcake & Mistakes Page 15
