“It’s kind of you to lie to me on their behalf.”
“I’m not lying. He did look guilty.” She kisses my shoulder. “You know the hallmark of a good parent?”
“Successful adult children?”
“Self-doubt. If you care enough to think you’re doing it completely wrong, you’re probably doing a lot right.”
“Why am I confessing all of this to you?”
“Because you want in my pants.”
God, she’s funny.
And correct, though I’m some way off from being able to get out of my own head and simply enjoy having an attractive woman share a nightcap with me.
“Even before the show became ridiculously successful, I would not’ve confessed to anyone that I never wanted to havechildren. Or that I told Lana the same when she informed me she was pregnant.”
“Ever get a woman thrown in jail before me?”
Heaven help me, she’s actually made me laugh. “No.”
“That must be the difference. You put me at my lowest, so now you’re compensating by showing me yourself at your lowest. And Simon? You’re a good dad. However you got here—it doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you’re doing every day. Your boys know they can count on you. They know you love them. Give yourself credit for that.”
I swallow hard and don’t reply.
My voice can’t support it without betraying how much her belief means to me.
She shifts beside me, and the bag rustles again.
A moment later, there’s another item being set on my leg.
“Eat your strawberry shortcake,” she tells me. “And then let’s see what else you want to confess.”
I swallow again. “Did you make this yourself?”
“Nope. Hudson did it while I was in the shower. With orders to use coconut milk and clarified butter, and a threat of hiding his guitar from him and finding a kid with a cold to breathe on him if he didn’t.”
My heart softens as if it’s a mound of butter on a sunny rock.
Remembering once or twice that I don’t tolerate dairy well is one thing.
Consistently remembering—that’s more than even Lana manages.
And it’s making me feel more than a warm heart.
It’s making me suspect I should cut this evening short. I cannot afford to feel real affection for a woman who wants nothing more than a summer fling with a man who’s leaving in a few weeks’ time.
“Hiding your brother’s guitar and giving him a cold is a threat?”
“He wants to be a rock star when he graduates college. And he finally got a few gigs lined up in town for the rest of the summer.”
“You’re allowing that?”
“He’s a legal adult, and I convinced him to get a degree in education so he has a fallback career. I’ve officially set all of my brothers up for some kind of successful adulthood, and now I get to be the cool sister who doesn’t nag them or give them life advice that they don’t want. Also, I told him when he’s famous, he has to get me concert tickets for my favorite bands from my own teenage years that he thinks are cringe. Just like Griff has to get me season tickets to any baseball team I want if I ever leave here and move to a city that has a baseball team.”
“Would you be interested in raising two more young men? They’ve only six years left of their schooling before university, and I could pay in cash and orgasms.”
She laughs. “Not a chance. Especially since these orgasms are still mythical.”
