You never know, Froot Loop.
I chuckle at my dad’s old nickname for me from when I was a kid. Before I got “too cool” for it.
Owen
My favorite food for the first five years of my life!
Heather
So I’ve heard.
Owen
How’s my little girl?
Heather
Adorable as always. Missing her daddy and Ladybird.
Owen
We miss her. Tell her I’m looking at houses tomorrow. As soon as I find one, I'll send for you.
Heather
We’re packed and ready!
The moon is out, and the sky is filled with stars. It’s a beautiful, early-October night, and I’m sitting on the back porch of the bungalow with Gina, Haddy, and Gavin, while Maverick grills up our dinner.
They have a pretty place here with large twinkle lights strung from the tin roof over the wooden platform. The table is black wrought iron with matching chairs, and a side table holds all the plates, napkins, and utensils.
Ladybird is lying at my feet like a sphynx across from Spanky, who’s doing the same, and I think my exuberant bloodhound’s grooming fiasco has been forgiven. At least, I hope it has.
Gina sits across from me nursing a glass of iced tea and not glaring daggers at us—or crying, like I was afraid she might do earlier when we crashed into her workspace.
We’re not staying here long, and I don’t want to leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth, especially not hers.
The truth is Gina Bradford hits me right in my weakness.
For starters, she’s tall. She’s slim, but athletic, and she has long, strawberry-blonde hair and bright green eyes. I don’t know when I got a taste for gingers, but her particular shade of rose-gold really does it for me.
She’s quick to laugh, and her lips are always shiny and pink—and she smells like cherries. It’s the craziest thing. I never thought I had a favorite scent, but the last few daysI’ve been here, I keep catching whiffs. It makes me want to pull her close and bury my face in her neck.
Which is completely inappropriate and creepy. I hardly know the woman.
She loves dogs.
Not only that, she knows everything about them. Maverick told me she majored in cynology in college, which means she has a degree in dog breeds and behaviors. I didn’t even know that was a field of study.
Naturally, I have said none of this to my sister, or she’d be off to the races.
Gina is smart, beautiful, funny, feisty, a scientist, and I haven’t had this much troublenotthinking about a woman since Angie died seven years ago.
Seven years.Has it been that long? I guess it has, since Maddie started second grade in September. I remember all of it so clearly…
We were so happy, so ready to start our family when we found out she was pregnant. She didn’t have a hard pregnancy. In fact, she was glowing and nesting the entire time. I’d just taken up hockey, and she encouraged me to pursue it.
She’d be there at all the games wearing my jersey, growing bigger and bigger with our little girl inside her, and I thought this was my life. I thought it was only going to be rainbows and sunshine from here on out.
