Bliss had the dark Mackay looks but the softer turn of her cheek, her eye shape, and the arch of her brows were her mother’s. Still, the girl looked enough like Lyrica that she was often mistaken for her daughter by strangers.
“Hey there.” Bliss threw her arms around Lyrica and gave her a firm hug before the girl jumped back with a wide smile. “Where’s your dad?”
“He’s in the house making Mom give him that look that means he’s about to go hide in his work shed and say bad words again.” Bliss laughed. “He’s so funny.”
“What’s he doing to your mom?” Lyrica smiled as the girl tugged at her hand and drew her inside.
Chaya chose that moment to step into the kitchen, her brown eyes sparkling menacingly as she stalked into the room.
“He’s being himself of course,” Chaya bit out before turning to her daughter. “Your aunts are on their way to pick you up for a while. They’re taking you shopping with them.”
“Uh-oh.” Bliss’s gaze flicked to the doorway her mother had just stepped from. “Dad’s about to get in trouble, huh?”
“Oh, baby, your daddy already crossed that little line.” Her mother smiled tightly as Bliss giggled at the mocking threat in her mother’s voice.
She turned back to Lyrica. “They’ll kiss and make up before I get home. Bet me.”
Lyrica shook her head. “Do I look that easy, kid?”
Bliss shrugged innocently. “Well, since he’s in trouble because he hit some guy over you, I thought I’d give it a try.”
Bliss laughed in delight at the surprise on Lyrica’s face before rushing from the room and calling out to her father in glee.
“Lord, she’s just like her father,” Chaya moaned. “She scares me.”
“When’s she going to go boy crazy so Natches will stop stressing over his cousins’ love lives and stress over his daughter’s upcoming one instead?” Lyrica asked.
Chaya grimaced at the thought of that. “Come on, Lyrica,” she protested. “Let’s not rush the divorce I can feel coming when he completely loses touch with reality. Let him focus on you a while longer.”
“Divorce?” Natches strode into the room, a smile of genuine warmth and playful charm filling his expression as he caught his wife in strong arms and pulled her to him. “Never. I was thinking a deserted island instead. There would be no boys there for Bliss to get crazy over.”
Dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt, Natches was a mature man. That maturity had placed a few lines and creases along his eyes, a hint of gray at his temples, but other than that, he was still a powerful force.
Chaya grimaced and shook her head as her husband placed a loving kiss at her neck. “Natches, sweetheart, are you still trying to fool yourself?”
Wearing loose cotton pants and a white T-shirt, her shoulder-length golden brown hair pulled to the crown of her head in a clip, with wisps falling around her face, Chaya appeared far younger than her husband though Lyrica knew the difference in their ages wasn’t that vast.
Chaya had once confided to Lyrica that Natches had been there the day her first child had died in a fiery blast that terrorists had instigated in the Middle East. If it hadn’t been for him, she would have died that day, too, she had admitted.
In the six years since Lyrica had been a part of their lives, the love and sense of bonding between this couple had never ceased to amaze her. Just as with Dawg and Christa, and Rowdy and Kelly, their commitment to each other had only increased over the years.
They were both nearing fifty, but they hadn’t seemed to age much at all since Lyrica and her sisters had arrived in the county. It was as though their love kept them young, kept them seeing the innocence and beauty in the world.
“Talk to your cousin.” Chaya moved from his arms after giving him a quick, forgiving kiss. “Kelly and Janey are coming to take Bliss shopping with the other girls. Then you and I will talk.”
Natches’s brows lifted and cunning sensuality filled his eyes as he watched his wife leave the room. It was a look he probably had no idea others could see. The look of a man who knew joy, never-ending surprise, and pleasure in the woman he loved.
“For a man who loves his wife so dearly, you have an amazing ability to believe other men have no capacity for the same feelings, Natches.” Crossing her arms over her breasts, Lyrica watched her cousin suspiciously as that cunning sensuality morphed and she caught the slightest glint of calculation before it was quickly hidden.
“I have never said I don’t believe in it,” he retorted as he adopted an expression of such innocence it was almost believable.
Lyrica knew him better than that.
“That look might fool your daughter, but it doesn’t fool me, cuz,” she informed him.
Still, it remained.
“Lyrica, you’re so suspicious.” He sighed.