“Home with my dad.” Her eyes sparkle, and it’s hard to miss the way Beck goes completely mute with total adoration anytime he looks at her.
God. I hear he barely travels at all anymore and is basically home with her all of the time, and he still looks at her like she holds the key to his happiness, and he’s utterly smitten.
I glance at Annika too, who’s being beamed at by Grady, and I have to take a large swallow of martini before I can ask my next question. “Both of them? You both have babies, right?”
Annika nods. “He knows he’s only needed until one of the new dads here get separation anxiety.”
“So probably another thirty minutes,” Sarah says. “If Annika and I both last that long too. And she’s breast-feeding, so she might have other issues.”
They both laugh.
Then sigh.
Then laugh again.
It makes me miss Aspen.
“I hear Cooper’s modeling your new wedgie-proof underwear,” I say to Beck.
He blinks once, clearly confused, then grins broadly like he has no idea why I’d say that, but it sounds fun, and he’s game. “It’s not ready yet. We still have a lot of wedgie testing to do.”
“A lot,” Tillie Jean agrees. “I’m on the wedgie-puller team. Part-time. All volunteer. It’s a lot more unpleasant than people think, considering Cooper’s diet, and how close I have to be to his—mmph!”
“Thanks,” Cooper says to Max, who’s holding a hand over Tillie Jean’s mouth.
Max gives him a full-onI’m not doing this for youlook. “Beck, you know Dax Gallagher?”
I start to open my mouth—Dax and I collaborated on the final song I did for the movie tonight—but Cooper squeezes my hip again while Beck nods. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “We go deep sea fishing every other year or so.”
“Tillie Jean wants to ask him to be the grand marshal for next year’s Pirate Festival Parade.”
“Dude. He’d freaking flip. I mean, as much as he ever flips over anything that’s not Willow. C’mon. Let’s go talk to him.”
“Seriously?” Tillie Jean squeaks. “We can just go do that?”
Beck looks offended. “TJ, have Ieverlet you down?”
“There was that one time you voted for Annika’s sister’s banana pudding in the bake-off…”
“Because hers was better,” Annika murmurs with a smile.
Sarah steps between them and turns Tillie Jean to follow Beck. “Go on. Talk to Dax. It’s your only chance. Ever. Go now, or forever be disappointed.”
Our group shrinks.
Cooper tightens his grip around me and presses a kiss to my overdone hair like it’s no big deal that he’s claiming me in a room full of my peers and a select number of the press.
Like this is where I belong. Like I’m home.
This is what I wantall the time. “You have no idea how much better my night is for you being here,” I whisper to Cooper.
“I’m glad you don’t mind claiming a unicorn in a baby dragon suit.”
Is this love?
Or is this infatuation?
Whatever it is, I’m leaning all the way into it tonight.
