“I’m not pretending,” I lied. I absolutely was. It was what I did best.
I wasn’t ready to absorb what he was saying. Okay, that wasn’t true. I wasn’t ready to set myself up for disappointment again. All good things came to an end eventually. Even love. Not that I knew. The only person I’d ever truly loved had gone missing for ten years and now hated me.
“It’s just—”
“Pepperoni,” he interrupted, waving a slice of pizza in my direction.
“What?”
“One pepperoni and one whatever the hell you want. I’ll eat either. Hannah likes cheese, but Travis likes pepperoni, so I pick them off for her when she isn’t looking and voila: instant cheese pizza. That’s what you order in the future.”
I swallowed hard, unsure whether to accept the out he’d just offered me by changing the subject. But the fact that he was offering me the out meant everything.
So much so that I smiled at him and said, “I’m falling in love with you too. But, with a man like you, it’s a very long trip. I’m still not completely convinced you aren’t a serial killer.”
Porter smiled. “You’re such a liar.”
“I speak nothing but the truth.”
He cocked his head to the side, a mischievous glint shining in his eyes. “Oh yeah? Nothing but the truth?”
I made a show of crossing my heart.
“Okay, then. How many times have you listened to my voicemail?”
Oh shit. “Your voicemail?” I played stupid and got busy packing up the smorgasbord of leftover pizzas.
“You know, the one when I told you I loved you, like, a week ago. The one you confessed to only getting last night.” His arrogant smile stretched wider. “The one you are now pretending you don’t know about. And the one, I have no doubt, you listened to at least two dozen times because you love me too. And you missed me, most especially my sexy body.”
I barked a laugh. “Wow. You are quite full of yourself tonight, aren’t you?”
His heat hit my back, and his arms looped around my stomach. “No. I’m right.”
“I listened to it once,” I lied, resting my hands on top of his.
He chuckled and dipped low to press his lips to my neck.
My head lolled to the side to give him more room as he peppered kisses up to my ear.
“What happened to the truth?” he teased before nipping at my earlobe.
I purred, tracing my hand up his strong shoulders and into the back of his hair. “It got lost with your humility.”
His chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh.
And then, as his hand slipped over my breast, mine turned into a full-blown moan.
Moments later, after a quick check to make sure the kids were still asleep, it turned into a full-blown repeat performance in the bathroom.
Only, this time, we left the lights on.
* * *
“Hannah!” I hissed. “Leave her alone!”
My daughter turned to look at me, her face filled with awe as she stood over Charlotte. “She’s still asleep.”
“I know!” I hissed, waving an urgent hand to make her come back into the bedroom.
We’d been tiptoeing around her apartment all morning, trying to let her sleep. This included eating three bowls of cereal in her bed at six thirty in the morning, after Travis had woken up for a breathing treatment. Charlotte hadn’t even budged as I’d crawled out from under her on the couch and headed down the hall to help my son. The hum of the nebulizer was loud, but we did our best to keep it quiet by going into the bathroom in Charlotte’s bedroom and shutting both of the doors. I supposed she hadn’t been sleeping any better than I had over the last week, and pair that with a night of awkward yet completely incredible sex in a cramped bathroom and I figured she was down for the count.
It made me an epic weirdo, but I could have watched her peacefully sleeping for hours.
And it seemed my daughter shared the infatuation.
“Get over here!” I whisper-yelled, silently snapping my finger and pointing to the floor beside me.
Smiling, she skipped over and took my hand.
Shaking my head, I guided her back into the bedroom and quietly closed the door behind us.
“Travis, your new mommy sleeps a lot,” she said, heading straight for the bed, where she climbed up to sit with her brother.
He didn’t even look up from his iPad as he replied, “She’s not my new mommy.”
“Yeah. She is, Trav,” I corrected.
His head never moved, but his eyes lifted to mine. “I already had a mom. She died. I don’t need two.”
Hannah’s eyes lit. “I’ll take her! I never had a mommy.”
My gut twisted. “Hannie, you did have a mom. She’s in heaven now.” Or more likely hell, but my lies knew no bounds when it came to my children.
I walked over to the bed and sat on the side. Hannah crawled into my lap, while Travis watched me out of the corner of his eye, pretending he wasn’t. I had to smile. Maybe he was more like Charlotte than I’d thought.
“Put that down for a second,” I told him, shifting Hannah to one of my legs.
“Fine,” he huffed and begrudgingly obeyed.
“She is your mom. And she loves you very much. When I first met Charlotte, she missed you so much that she was still struggling, even ten years later. I know this is weird and it’s hard to understand, but she loves you more than you can ever imagine.”
“She won’t even let me see you though.”
“That’s going to change, okay? It might take a little while before we get everything set up. But I promise you we’re all working to make that change.”
“Not that Brady guy!” he exclaimed. “He’s an asshole.”
Hannah gasped so loudly I had to bite back a laugh.
“Hey!” I snapped my fingers. “Watch your mouth.”
I set Hannah on her feet, and she wandered away, flashing Travis a pair of wide you-are-in-so-much-trouble eyes.
He sheepishly looked away. “Brady’s always saying that it’s best that I don’t talk to you anymore. And he’s mean to Charlotte too. He told his wife the other day that Charlotte was too weak to be a mom.”
My jaw turned to granite. Yeah, I’d hated Brady before. But my son was right: He was an asshole. But, now, he was talking shit about my woman…in front of my kid? Fuck that.
“Don’t worry about Brady,” I clipped before getting my anger in check. “Charlotte and I are going to work together to make sure you’re taken care of. But I need you to drop the attitude, okay? She thinks you hate her.”
His sad eyes lifted to mine. “I do hate her.”
I shook my head. “No, buddy. You just don’t love her yet. There’s a big difference.”
He stared up at me with haunted eyes and asked, “Do you love her?”
“Yes,” I answered curtly. “But, before you read into that, I don’t know what’s going to happen between the two of us. There’s still a long road to the future.”
“Does she love you?”
I grinned. “Well, Charlotte is currently pretending she doesn’t love me.” I shot him a pointed wink. “But come on. We both know she does. I mean…look at me. How could she not?”
He giggled, and it eased the ache in my chest.
“She showed me a picture of you kissing her while we were at the police station.”
“Oh yeah?” I drawled, shock and pride settling inside me.
“She said that you would trust her to do what was right for me.”
I hooked my arm around his shoulders and pulled him into my side. “I do. And proof that I was right is that, last night, when you truly needed me, she called and told me to come over.” I kissed the top of his head. “Give her a chance, Travis. I promise you won’t regret it. She’s pretty amazing.”
He nodded, but he didn’t quite seem convinced. Instead of harping on him about it, though, I decided to change the subject.
“Okay…now, let’s—”
“Daddy!” Hannah shrieked, terror sharp in her tone.
I lurched off the bed and rushed toward her voice. She came sprinting out of Charlotte’s closet until her body got tangled in some of the hanging clothes, and before I could reach her, the whole rod came down on top of her.