“Worrying how?” Carter asks.
“Just being a typical mo—” She sucks on her lower lip as her blue gaze falls on me. “Sorry,” she softly says. “I didn’t mean to…”
I save her. “Hey, I know my mother’s the exception, not the rule. It doesn’t bother me. I like hearing about your and Carter’s families.”
She walks over to me and hugs me, long and hard, and I savor it. Over her shoulder, I watch Carter. He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed over his chest, and he’s wearing that playful smirk of his.
“It’s so good to be home,” she mutters against my shoulder. “I missed you guys.”
“We missed you, too,” I say.
She releases me and steps over to Carter, hugging him.
What surprises me is that I can’t identify the source of the green ripple of jealousy that winds through me.
Is it jealousy that she’s hugging him? Or that he’s hugging her?
Before, I would have said the first.
Now?
I’m not sure.
It unsettles me. Not enough to make me want to stop what Carter and I have started, but I know it’ll end up being a topic of conversation between us at some point in the future.
* * * *
This is apparently another of those meals that Susa doesn’t need a recipe to make. She shows me how to layer the dough in the baking dish, supervises me making the spinach and cheese filling, and once it’s all assembled and in the oven, she reaches up and ruffles my hair.
“Good job, you.”
I freeze for a moment, because the way she did it reminds me of Carter.
Only…I get hard.
I mean,reallyhard. Instantaneously hard.
And I’m freeballing it. I hope she doesn’t notice.
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
She cocks her head at me, then looks at Carter, her gaze narrowing a little, like she’s putting something together in her mind.
Carter takes the opportunity and runs with it. “We’d like to talk to you about something.”
Oh, shit.
Well, that’s one way to kill my boner.
“About what?” she asks.
He’s been sitting at the counter, on one of the barstools. Now he climbs down, moving a little slowly and stiffly from his pain, and walks over to us.
“So, Owen and I have been doing some talking this weekend,” he starts.
I pray I don’t end up having a panic attack.
“About what?” she asks.
