“How did you—?” My gaze began to dart all around.
“I’m surprised you’d have to ask.” Yep, that was definitely humor in his voice. And damn it sounded good on him. “You’re the one who suggested I get a nanny cam, after all.”
“Yeah, but not to check up on me,” I cried. He burst into laughter, and I’d have given my left boob to have been able to see that in person. I lowered my voice so Eli couldn’t hear, and peeked into the living room to make sure he was still consumed in his cartoon. The coast was still clear. “It’s not like I’ll be doing any shirtless wrestling any time soon. I’m the perfect sitter.”
“From the side of the conversation I overheard you having with your sister, I’m not so sure.”
I rolled my eyes at his teasing and looked around for that stupid little camera. “Can you see me now?”
“Yep.”
I lifted my middle finger in the air and spun in a circle. “Just for not trusting me, you should know I plan on snooping through all your medicine cabinets and your underwear drawer.”
“Why am I not surprised?” he asked with a smile in his voice.
“Get back to work, you slacker. And if you’re lucky, you won’t have a d-i-c-k drawn on your living room wall when you get home.”
All of a sudden, his voice got all low and rumbly as he said, “You do that, I’ll have to think of a creative way to punish you.”
There was something in the way he said it that made his threat sound more like a deliciously wicked promise. My cheeks grew hot. My nipples pebbled, and I felt pressure coiling low in my belly.
I couldn’t form a sentence, the only thing I managed to get out was a shaky exhale before he told me he had to go and ended the call.
As I headed back to the couch—in a pretty intense daze—I only had one thought rolling around inside my head.
Oh my.
13
Marin
Eli was dressed in a pair of cute little PJs and snuggled under his covers by the time I stepped into his room later that night.
“I wanna read this one tonight,” he declared, holding up a tiny book with thick cardboard pages.
In the days I’d been watching Eli, this was the first time Pierce had had to work late, so it was the first time I’d been responsible for putting the little cutie to bed. I hadn’t been in his room before, but I wasn’t surprised to find it was what I imagined most little boys’ rooms looked like. The décor theme was sports. There were stickers on the wall and those glow-in-the dark stars stuck all over his ceiling.
The comforter on his bed was covered in cartoon drawings of baseball and football players, and the lamp on his nightstand was in the shape of a bat. The room was cute and totally him. But it was the picture frame beside the lamp by his bed that drew my eye and held my attention raptly.
As I moved toward Eli’s bed and sat on the edge, I stared at the woman in the photograph.
Eli’s mother.
To say she was beautiful would have been the world’s biggest understatement. The woman was breathtakingly stunning. She was standing in the middle of a garden, dressed in a white, flowy summer dress that cascaded down to her bare feet, the material blowing in the breeze. Her dark hair hung in a shiny curtain all the way down to the small of her back.
She had a long-stemmed rose in her hand and had lifted it to her nose. She was smiling in a way that I knew the picture wasn’t staged. It was a snapshot of her in motion, and her free hand was held out like she was waving off whoever was behind the camera, shyly telling them not to take her picture.
“That’s my mommy,” Eli said, obviously having caught me staring at the photograph.
“She’s beautiful.”
“Yeah. She got real sick when she was pregnant with me. She died when I was just a little baby, but Daddy said she loved me more than anything in the whole wide world.”
My heart broke into a million pieces. Needing to see that smile on his face, I situated myself so I was stretched out next to him, leaning against his headboard, and bumped his shoulder with mine. “Of course she did. You’re just about the most lovable little boy I’ve ever met.”
That got me a wan smile. “Do you have a mom, Mar-Mar?”
Oh man, this kid was killing me. Every word was like a million papercuts to my heart. “Yeah, honey. I do.”
“And she loves you a whole lot?”
“She does.”
He looked at the book he was caressing in his little hands. “I wish my mommy wasn’t in heaven. A lot of my friends at school gots moms that live in their houses with them.”
“Hey,” I started softly, looping my arm over his shoulders and pulling him into my side. “You can’t look at it like that, sweetheart. Some families only have a daddy, like yours. Some families only have a mommy. There are even families out there that have two moms or two dads.”
“Like my friend Jordan. He’s got two dads.”
“Exactly. All families are different, so you can’t compare what you have to what your friends have. You may not have realized it yet, but you’re super lucky.”
He looked up at me with wide-eyed wonder. “I am?”
“Absolutely,” I stressed. “Your mom might be in heaven, but that means she’s always looking down on you, making sure you’re safe. And you have the coolest dad in all of Hope Valley. Did you know that?”
His lips parted in surprise as he shook his head.
“Oh, yeah. Everyone talks about it. Pierce Walton’s the coolest of the cool. Why do you think I call you Cool Guy Eli?”
“Wow,” he breathed, totally in awe. “I really have the coolest dad in Hope Valley?”
“Yep. Everyone thinks so. So you don’t need to be sad, because you’re already one of the luckiest kids I know.”
With that, the shadows that had been in his eyes cleared up, and his light came shining through once again.
After two readings of a story about a baby bear lost in the woods, trying to find his family, Eli finally lost his battle with sleep.
As I made my way back downstairs, my mind was reeling with a million different questions. I knew that Pierce’s wife had passed away, but I didn’t know the circumstances behind it. And it certainly didn’t feel like my place to ask.
Given that Frank was the world’s biggest asshole and, for reasons I’d never been able to wrap my head around, hated his older brother, he’d never talked about it.
After the dinner at his mom’s house when he’d taken me to meet his family, I’d made the mistake of asking on the drive back to his place. That had led to our first of many epic fights. He’d somehow twisted my curiosity into me having a thing for Pierce, which couldn’t have been further from the truth.
That was the first night he’d hit me. We’d been standing in the middle of his living room, and he’d backhanded me across the face. Looking back, I wished that had been the very moment I walked out the door for good. But he’d been so remorseful, and for a while after that, Frank had doted on me, professing his love and swearing it would never happen again. I’d incorrectly assumed that hit had been a one-time thing. And I’d also learned after that to never ask questions about his brother.