His lips spread as he smiled down at me. “The three of us are going to be more than okay. We’re going to be happy. We’ll find that bastard, take care of Flores, and make Aiden legally mine. Just as it should be.”
I hugged him tightly, needing the reassurance. I trusted Ace with everything inside of me. But even as I held onto my husband, I still couldn’t get thoughts of Reyes being out there somewhere, out of my head.
CHAPTER28
Savannah
“Are you leaving work now?” Ace asked through the phone.
“Yes,” I assured him. “And going to pick up Aiden from school.”
Two weeks after Thanksgiving, it had become routine for me to call or text Ace when I was leaving from work, and then call or text again once I arrived home safely. I swore the man was one step away from hiring one of Micah’s PIs to be my bodyguard or something.
When I joked about that the other week, his facial expression turned pensive, as if genuinely considering it. I was able to get him to drop the idea, thankfully.
Truthfully, I did look over my shoulder and always carried a can of mace whenever I was going to or from the car.
Micah still hadn’t located Vincent Reyes, but he could pinpoint some activity on his accounts in the Philadelphia area. Which meant he wasn’t in Texas. At least, not at the time they traced the movement. He could be anywhere by now, though. So, I kept vigilant.
“And then you’re both headed home, right?” Ace asked.
“Yes,” I told him as I pulled out of my job’s parking lot. A small smile creased my lips at the protective edge in Ace’s voice.
The day after Thanksgiving, we’d told Aiden that he wouldn’t be able to go over his friends’ houses after school for a while. We told him it was because of a family matter. He asked many questions, but I insisted on withholding the whole truth from him.
His curiosity was only satisfied when we changed the subject to Ace adopting him. Aiden turned to me and asked if that meant Mr. Ace would become his dad like I became his mom.
I nodded, too choked up to answer him. He didn’t respond with words, either. Instead, he jumped into Ace’s arms, hugging him and asking him if it was too soon to call him Daddy.
Even my stoic fighter-pilot husband got choked up when he told Aiden the choice was his but that he would love to be called Dad.
“All right,” Ace said. “I leave at five, and I’ll be on my way home then. Love you. Kiss the kid for me.”
“Will do. Love you.”
I made it over to Aiden’s school about fifteen minutes later. The pickup line was long as usual. Aiden poured himself into the backseat.
“You look beat, kid.” I smiled through the rearview mirror. I’d taken to using Ace’s nickname for him.
“I’m tired and hungry.” He sat up with his eyes going wide, and I knew he was about to ask for something.
“Can we get ice cream?” he asked as I pulled out of the line and started for the long driveway out to the road.
“Hmm.” I peered down at the clock on my dashboard. It was close to three thirty. “Did you eat all of your lunch today?”
He nodded.
“What’d you have?”
“They served turkey and mashed potatoes with gravy, but it wasn’t as good as yours. So, I asked if I could switch out for a PB&J. I had that with chocolate milk and an apple.”
“That’s a lot of sugar if we add ice cream on top of that.”
He groaned. “Please, Mama? We’ll get any flavor you want. And some for Mr. Ace, too. I mean for Dad,” he quickly corrected with a smile.
The inside of my chest warmed as I looked back at the smile in the mirror. I was pretty confident this kid knew he had me wrapped around his finger.
“All right, but I’m only letting you eat a few spoonsful before dinner. The rest is for dessert. And you better eat all of the peas I put on your plate.”
