There was a saying about ‘stealing my thunder.’ People used it in a variety of ways, but I doubt they’d ever used it about someone stealing or even something happening to the person who’d made you that way. It was almost unbearable thinking about someone hurting Addy or disliking her enough to fuck around with her, like that chick who’d spiked her drink in San Diego. Now that I’d found my thunder and lived with the changes she’d brought to my life in such a short space of time, I wasn’t going to risk losing her.
So if we got the evidence needed that said Marni was to blame, my friendship and concern for her brother would lose over my loyalty and love for Addy and the horses.
You can’t miss what you’ve never had, but you can sure as hell protect what you do have so that you never experience what it’s like to miss it. I’d already been through it once before, back when we’d first met, and that was before I’d even really gotten to know Addy and to experience what it was like living life with her in it.
Never again.
I wasn’t at the stage where I was going to propose, and she wasn’t there, either. We were still learning each other and meshing our lives together, and Addy was focused on finishing up the song for the animated movie she was working so hard on.
The last couple of weeks were apparently the hardest when they went into rehearsals and last minute checks to make sure it all flowed perfectly so it could be recorded. I didn’t want her distracted from that, it was too important to her.
See, I knew what she brought to my life, and I’d be damned if I didn’t bring the same to hers.
But the second I thought we were ready for it to happen, I’d be putting a ring on her finger.
Chapter Eighteen
Addy
After the river incident and thanks to the almighty technology gods for waterproof phones, I’d gotten a text from my sister saying she was coming to visit for a long weekend. Marcus was dealing with something on the ranch with Remy and Elijah, so I’d arranged for a girls’ day at Nonna’s.
Adia would be arriving in an hour, so we’d gone down to see if Nonna needed a hand with anything, bringing Bronte and Toby with us to give the men a break. For once, Remy hadn’t argued about Toby being out of his sight, which should have warned us that what they were dealing with was bigger than we thought, but it hadn’t.
As both me and Sadie pulled our vehicles into Nonna’s drive, I looked in the rearview mirror where Santana was sitting next to Toby’s car seat, smiling down at him as he had baby dreams.
“What’s he doing?”
Reaching down to unclip his seat, she glanced at me in the reflection. “His little lips are twitching. He reminds me of an old man eating taffy with no teeth in.”
Opening the door and dropping out of my SUV, I went to the trunk and unloaded the buggy frame Toby’s seat clipped onto and opened it up for Santana to finish getting him settled.
“How many bags do babies need?” I grumbled, pulling out a large diaper bag and grabbing the handles of the gym bag Remy had passed us.
“I have no clue, but I had to stop him from putting the bassinet, swing seat, and the pack ‘n play in there, too.”
Remy was an anxious dad, and he was taking it to extremes, but at least he was trusting her to take Toby for the day. That was progress.
“Have I told you yet how much I love your grandma’s property?” Sadie asked as she joined us with Bronte on her hip. “I’d also like to point out that I feel like the shittest mum in the world. There’s Toby, kitted out to go hiking across the Himalayas, and here’s poor Bronte, with only what I can fit in my handbag.”
Snickering, I led the way around the back of the house, expecting to see Nonna waiting for us outside already. When I didn’t see any sign of her, I led them to the double doors that led from the backyard into the kitchen, following the loud music, and smiled when I saw her standing in front of the stove, humming and shimmying to the music she had on.
Unfortunately, as with all things Nonna, she couldn’t just leave it at a shimmy and a shake. No, she had to do the slut drop, too, making my friends gasp and applaud her.
Given that the music was playing so loudly, she hadn’t heard us come in. So as soon as she heard the clapping, she swung around, tomato sauce covered spoon and all, leaving us looking like we were covered in some sort of psycho stabbing cast-off—just a tastier, less murder-y version, with herbs in it.