Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“Yeah, but if his son doesn’t like us, that’ll be a big deal, right?”
What on earth?
“Where’s this coming from, Cadence?” I asked carefully.
She didn’t answer me directly.
She said, “I mean, now I have two big sisters and…and…Tom and, I mean, we don’t want to mess this up.”
The “two big sisters” thing.
Shot to the heart.
“There’s no way we can mess it up, honey,” I said gently.
She didn’t reply so I glanced at her again.
Her vibe was not good, and she was looking out the side window.
“Talk to me,” I ordered.
“He likes me.”
“Who?”
“Tom.”
“Of course.”
“He said I was a natural.”
“What?”
“When I went to the courts with him and Clay the weekend before last. He taught me how to serve. I got into it, and he said, ‘You’re a natural.’ And he’s like, Tom Pierce and he said that to me.”
No.
It wasn’t Tom Pierce, famed tennis star who said it to her.
It was Tom, a man who taught her how to serve. A man with whom she shared meals. A man she watched movies with and went to museums with and talked about books with.
A man who was, for a short time, and with every day that time grew longer, the only semi-kind-of-real father she’d ever had (Teddy and then came Faun didn’t count—with the bottomless pit of his vanity, Teddy set himself up as the older brother right from the start, which was beautiful since she hadn’t had one of those either).
Tom had kids. Tom being fatherly to my kid would be second nature.
And he’d been being fatherly to my kid.
Oh shit.
That wasn’t a shot to the heart.
I was dead.
I was also going to start crying.
Last, I was oh so totally building a tennis court at the house.
“Mom?”
“Matt is going to love you, baby,” I said, my tone husky.
“Are you okay?”
“I just really like Tom, and it’s a huge relief, my darling girl, to know you do too.”
“I do,” she said softly.
“I’m so glad,” I replied.
She fist-bumped my thigh.
I got myself together and shot her a smile.
We made it to Tom’s, and I loved it for him that his driveway was full of cars.
I hadn’t seen him since Matt showed, but we’d texted and talked, and he was thrilled with how things were going.
I have my boy back, was one text.
And I was thrilled for Tom.
But he was like Cadence (also like Rollo). He liked people. He liked to be around people.
And people he cared about being close was his Nirvana.
Tom was very excited about tonight, and not nervous at all.
I suspected between him, Chloe, Sasha and Judge (and hopefully Matt), they’d smooth away Cadence’s nerves, and fast.
We were barely in the door to the utility room when Chloe was bearing down on us (I had a garage opener, and Tom had a lot of space in his forecourt, so everyone had parked to give me direct access to the parking spot that was now mine in the garage, so there was no coming in the front like a guest for us, this being Tom’s decree).
“My lovelies, you are not going to believe,” Chloe announced.
With Chloe escorting us along the way, we made it to the kitchen, and my eyes found Tom first.
He looked happy and handsome, and best of all, seeing his gaze soft on me, finally—finally—he was mine.
His smile made my stomach melt, and my panties get wet, and my heart swell, all at the same time.
I then found Matt, who was Tom to a T. Maybe a little leaner, and younger, but he looked like his dad.
I gave him a smile, he returned a cautious one, and I was about to break away to go give Tom a kiss and then meet Matt, when Chloe demanded, “Mika, you must watch this.”
“Chloe—” Tom began.
“Shh, mon père,” she shushed him.
I felt my eyes get big at this.
Tom loved his kids, but he was not a pushover to be shushed.
“It is kinda a thing you have to see,” Sasha said as she approached our huddle.
She was giving Cadence a greeting smile.
She gave me one next.
And then we all looked down at Chloe’s phone.
“I don’t know, my wonderful watchers,” Elsa Cohen was saying on the phone. “I think I like this?” she asked.
And then I gasped.
Because a picture came on screen of Jamie Oakley in an attractive suit and tailored overcoat, escorting Nora Ellington—my Nora Ellington—who looked to be wearing something fabulous and semi-formal, but her wrap was hiding it, into somewhere I couldn’t tell where it was.
But wherever it was, it was fancy.
He had his head up, looking where they were going, his hand on the small of her back.
She was being Nora, that being coy. As such, she was showing a great deal of shapely leg at the end of which was an amazing shoe. She did this by lifting up a skirt she didn’t need to lift to ascend the steps she was ascending. She also did this with her head ducked down, like she was avoiding the photographers.