“Ah, of course.Tidy bunks.”
“Exactly,” Mateo said.
“But where is she?”Tamsin asked again.
She felt certain the brief glance the three men shared meant something, but before they could answer, the front door opened and they heard Lu’ana call out.
“Yoo hoo!”
Bebe almost immediately ran in, squealing with joy to see Tamsin.“Aunty Tam!”She jumped up and down, her arms up.
Laughing, Tamsin picked her up and kissed her on the cheek, settling her on her hip.“Have you been a good girl for Aunty A while I was gone?”she asked.
“Uh-huh!”She leaned in, her lips against Tamsin’s ear.“She’s a puppy, too!”she whispered.
Tamsin didn’t have time to process that because Lu’ana appeared at the end of the hall.“Welcome back!”she said.Tamsin joined her in the living room, where Mateo had removed Maisie from her carrier and was holding her.
“Did you have fun in Idaho?”Lu’ana asked.
Tamsin nodded.“It was quite lovely spending time with everyone, but I’m so glad to be home.”She tickled Bebe’s chin.“And I missed this little princess, as well.”Tamsin hugged her, breathing in her scent.“Missed all of them.”
“Well, they missed you, too…”
An hour later, all the kids were there, Brianna had arrived, Duncan had returned to Dewi’s, and Tamsin finally had a moment to herself.
“Where is Aisling?”she asked again.“I’m looking forward to finally getting to know her.”
There was another quickly exchanged glance between Carl and Mateo that she couldn’t decipher.“Errands,” they said in unison, throwing each other matching glares before Carl took over.“Shopping,” he added.“Groceries.We needed a bunch of stuff.”
“Ah.”
Brianna now held Maisie.“She looks like she grew a foot since I last saw her!”She snuggled her closely.“I’ll miss her so much when we move to Idaho.All of the others, too.”
Tamsin didn’t want to speak the other possibility, that it might be her moving that created the separation, because why ruin such a lovely homecoming with melancholy thoughts?
“How is it living with Malyah and Joaquin?”Tamsin asked Brianna.
“It was a small adjustment, at first, but then…”
And before Tamsin knew it, it was nearly noon and time to feed everyone lunch.
And still no Aisling.
Aisling
Bloody feckin’ hell.
She’d spent the past two hours sitting in the parking lot of the warehouse store, before they even opened, with her eyes closed and trying not to think about what clusterfuck she might face upon her return.
Won’t be possible to drop everything off and run, I s’pose.
But even with Faegan finally dead—praise the Goddess—Trevor told her she was to stay there with Tamsin and Maisie Rue.
I must’ve been a right cunt in a previous life to be tortured like this.
Maybe she’d have to finally come clean and admit it to Trevor and beg him to release her from the assignment.She should be heading over to the UK soon anyway to take a more active part in planning the raid.She knew they were identifying the security and lab personnel to target with Primes to make the incursion easy once they reached that point.She would be as useless as tits on a bull for that, however, since she neither spoke Russian nor was she a Prime.
Finally, once the store opened, she headed inside with the list on her phone and started shopping.
