She dragged air into her lungs and wiped her tears. She had to hold her shit together for the girls. Once she was able to swallow past the lump clogging her throat, she put on the happiest face she could muster and trudged upstairs with the laundry basket of River’s clothes. As she closed the basement door, she heard a car door. She looked across the living room, through the front window, and saw Tank heading up the walk with his arms full of grocery bags. She hadn’t misjudged him after all, which brought tears of relief. God, she was a mess.
She wiped her eyes as she opened the door. “Hi.”
“Hey. Sorry I’m so late. I would have been here forty-five minutes ago, but I stopped to help a lady with a flat tire, and I had some club business to take care of. I’ve got more groceries in the truck.” His brows knitted. “Are you okay?”
Groceries? How could she have doubted him when he was so good to them?
“Yeah.” I was just having a mini breakdown. “I didn’t sleep very well. I’m just tired.”
Sorrow rose in his eyes. “Maybe you can catch a nap later. I’ll watch the girls.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay. You didn’t have to bring us groceries.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he said as he stepped inside.
The girls came out of the bedroom giggling. Tank winced, and Leah followed his gaze over her shoulder, and her jaw dropped. Junie stood in her pajama bottoms, Rosie in her underpants. They had ink all over their arms, bellies, and noses.
“We dwawed!” Rosie held out her arms.
“Every picture tells a stowy,” Junie said. “Like Tank and Conwoy.”
Rosie pointed to the ink on her nose. “Nose hole!”
Tank stifled a laugh.
Leah put one hand on her hip, trying to stifle her laughter. “Are you allowed to draw on yourselves?”
The girls looked at each other. Junie shook her head with a serious expression. Rosie shrugged, grinning like a goon.
Leah looked up at Tank, who towered over the three of them, holding five bags of groceries, tattooed from fingers to neck. How could one man have such a tremendous impact on their lives so fast?
“Am I in trouble?” Tank arched a thick dark brow, looking like a kid caught with his hand in a cookie jar.
“Big trouble.” Laughter bubbled out before Leah could stop it, which made the girls and Tank laugh, too.
Tank set the groceries on the floor and knelt, motioning for the girls to come to him. He put his arms around them, pulling them in close. “I don’t know about your mama, but I want to hear the story behind each and every one of those drawings.”
The girls burst into chatter about the pictures they’d drawn, and Leah’s breath caught. River would have said something just like that, turning a not-so-bad parenting moment into a chance to learn more about the girls. She watched Tank with them. He looked different, gentler, with laughter glittering in his eyes. She had a feeling they were having just as big of an impact on him as he was on them.
TANK HAD BROUGHT enough food for an army. Through giggling baths, a chatty and delicious breakfast, and finishing the laundry, Leah kept imagining River being there with them and the things he might say or do. Tank had somehow sensed her thoughts, and he stayed close by with supportive comments and warm embraces. When he’d seen River’s clothes in the basket, she’d told him about needing to take some to the funeral home, and he’d offered to do it. He’d also taken the rest of River’s clothes up to his bedroom so she wouldn’t have to. She came out of the girls’ room after putting away their clothes and found them playing on the living room floor. Tank was standing by the side window, leather-booted feet planted hip-distance apart as he thumbed out something on his phone. His eyes darted to her and the girls every few seconds, watching them as closely as he watched over his family and friends at the Salty Hog. He caught her looking at him, causing an unexpected flutter in her chest. He pocketed his phone and closed the distance between them.
“Are you wiped out? Want to catch a nap?” he asked quietly.
“No. I’m okay, thanks.” She lowered her voice. “I just miss River. I keep expecting him to walk into the room.”
“That happened to me for a long time after Ashley died. I think getting out of the house would help. How about we take the girls on a little outing? Would that be okay?”
“Sure, but you don’t have to spend all your time with us. We’re not your responsibility. Don’t you have a girlfriend or a job you need to tend to?”
His brows slanted. “Have you ever seen me bring a girlfriend to the Hog?”
“No, but…” She shrugged.
“There are no buts. I’m not here out of obligation, darlin’. I don’t leave the special people in my life alone. End of story. So what do you think? Are you up to an outing? Gunner’s got a litter of puppies at the animal rescue, and I know two little girls who might get a kick out of seeing them.”
“I don’t have carseats.”
“I do.”
You have carseats? He glanced at the girls, but she continued looking at him, trying to put the pieces of the thoughtful man she was getting to know together with the harsh man she’d thought he was. But it was like they were pieces from two different puzzle boxes, and she’d had the wrong impression all along.
THE GIRLS WERE so excited to see the puppies, they wore their zip-up animal-print hoodies with ears on the hoods. Rosie’s had cat ears, and Junie’s had dog ears. Tank and Leah buckled the girls into the carseats in Tank’s truck, and as Leah started to climb into the front seat, she saw their memory blankets, clean and folded on the seat. Blinking away bittersweet tears, she turned to Tank, waiting to close her door, and threw her arms around him. “Thank you. You can’t imagine how much this means to me.”
His arms circled her. “You just showed me.”
Their eyes locked, and that flutter in her chest strengthened. She shifted her eyes away and climbed into the truck, glancing over the seat at the girls.
“Look what Tank found.” She handed them their blankets, and they squealed, hugging them along with their lovies, and thanked Tank profusely as he settled into the driver’s seat with one of his very Tank silent nods of acknowledgment.
Junie and Rosie talked nonstop. Leah had warned Tank that they were a handful when they were excited, and as he drove through the gated entrance to the Wicked Animal Rescue and Wicked Veterinary Clinic, she wondered if he was regretting the offer yet, although if he were, he wasn’t letting on.
“Piggies!” Junie shouted as they passed a pen with piglets in it, and Rosie started oinking like a pig.
“That’s right, Twitch.” Tank stopped the truck so the girls could watch the pigs. “Sometimes Gunner rescues farm animals.”
“Gunner is a funny name,” Junie said.
He chuckled. “I guess it is. Gunner is my brother. His real name is Dwayne, and my other brother Baz’s real name is Baxter.” He looked at Leah, as if he wanted her to hear what he said next. “And my real name is Benson. We’re all part of a club, and we use our nicknames instead of our real names. We call them our road names.”
“Like Twitch?” Junie asked.