His mouth grazed the shell of my ear. “That a good enough answer?” he murmured.
Need curled down my spine, and one of those happy sighs was exhaling some of the weight from my chest.
Like I no longer had to bear the full burden on my own.
“I couldn’t sleep because I was afraid if I closed my eyes, I might wake up and it’d be a dream,” I confessed.
Those hands splayed wide across my belly, and he pulled my back to his front.
Gluing us together.
His mouth trailed up and down the side of my neck, eliciting a tiny moan, his grip just tugging me tighter. “No dreamin’ this, baby. Believe me…I’ve spent the last six years dreaming of you. Wishing for you. My mind didn’t stand a fuckin’ chance at competing with the real thing. Nothin’ better than you.”
I whimpered, and then I froze when the kitchen door swung open. My attention whipped that way to find Daisy racing in, my daddy’s hand wrapped up in hers as she hauled him inside.
Oh, crap.
Her eyes went wide with excitement. “Mr. Richard. You’re here! You’re here! Did you stay for a sleeps over?”
Clearly, my daddy wanted to know the answer to that, too. Or more importantly, where he’d slept.
Richard chuckled, not even considering releasing me. He just turned us a little so we were facing out, those arms locked around me.
A clear statement given.
Mine.
“Well, since you’re here, where else was I supposed to go?”
“You love me?” She asked like she was floored by the idea, and her beaming smile filled the entire room.
Her sweet innocence so genuine.
So real.
The child just seeing things for what they were.
I guessed maybe it was the only thing that could unfasten those arms from me because Richard spread his hands over my stomach, dragged them to either of my hips, and left a kiss behind my ear before he stepped around me and knelt in front of her.
He tucked an unruly dark lock behind her ear. So tenderly that I nearly succumbed right there.
A goner.
“Yeah, precious flower girl, I do. I love you.”
“Just like you love my mommy?”
He grinned, a light chuckle rippling free. “Different but the same.”
Then she threw herself into his hold, and he picked her up and spun her around, and she lifted her arms in the air, that blundering cast waving all around. “Amor, amor, amor,” she sang.
She grinned at me from over his shoulder. “Told you.”
I choked out a laugh. “You did, didn’t you?”
She turned her attention back to Richard. One-hundred-percent serious. “I am the smartest girl in the worlds. Just ask my papa.”
She waved an over-eager hand his way.
Daddy smiled.
His love abounding, though there was no missing the remnants of uncertainty still lingering in his eyes. “Yes, you are, mi amor. The smartest girl in all the worlds.”
“Well, then, I guess you must be,” Richard said, all too keen to agree to the logic.
I didn’t have the heart to make this a deeper life lesson. That all children were smart in their own special way.
I figured all of this was life-lesson enough.
The truth that sometimes…sometimes when your heart refused to give up, it ended up exactly where it was supposed to be.“Still not sure this is a good idea.” Richard had his hands shoved in his jeans’ pockets. Man standing at the side of the long SUV that had shown fifteen minutes before, the whole crew piling out.
Richard’s concern was that half of them needed to leave.
“Um…hello. We’ve got her.” Melanie took a step in front of me. With the way she puffed out her chest and widened her stance, she might as well have been wearing camo like some kind of commando.
Richard shot her a glare. “Really?”
Emily giggled and took a step toward her brother. “It’s fine, Richard. We’re all here. None of us will let Violet out of our sight.”
She gestured at Maggie and Mel who were flanking me.
Royce’s brow lifted, the man leaned back against the front grill of the SUV. He sent Richard a glance before letting his attention drift toward the four of us. “Not so sure. What’s Mag-Pie here gonna do? Kill ’em with kindness?”
He sent an overbearing look to his adorable little sister. She returned him an offended pout.
Rhys cracked up. “Oh, I bet that little thing can kick some butt. Besides, Mel’s here. Biggest ballbuster there is. Not a man alive who’d get in the way of that.”
“Damn straight, cowboy. Lord save us, turns out the man knows a thing or two after all.”
Richard huffed. Not close to being amused.
I stepped toward him and set a placating hand on his forearm. “It’s okay. I’m gonna be fine. All four of us are gonna be together the entire day, and my daddy has Saul and two of our other guys watching the land.”
I swore fire puffed from the man’s nostrils.