“Seriously. We have fifth graders who aren’t as well adjusted as her.”
“She’s more mature than Mike,” Georgia grins, and I shove her off the last step.
We grab our wine glasses off the kitchen counter, top ourselves off, and walk outside.
Everyone but Dominic is lounging on the patio and sipping on wine.
“Did she go down okay?” Gloria asks us.
Georgia climbs into Oliver’s lap. “Yeah, she’s amazing.”
“Out like a light,” I add on.
Ben smiles. “Domy’s doing such a good job with her, isn’t he?”
I hum. “Speaking of which, where is he?”
Oliver points down towards the beach. “He walked down to the water.”
I look and see his tall silhouette lit by the moon. “I’m gonna go tell him Frankie went down okay.”
I walk through the lawn, down the little stone staircase and into the dunes, admiring the way his lean body looks against the dim light of the ocean. His jeans are rolled up to his knees, his feet in the water. “Hey,” I say.
“Hey. Did she?—”
“She went down immediately. Asked some really good rat questions. Brushed her teeth for the full two minutes. Told us to tell you she loves you.”
He nods.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. It’s good for her to form secure relationships with people other than me. That’s half the reason we decided to move above Tita Gloria and Tito Ben. It’s way harder on me than it is for her.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for reading to her and putting her down,” he adds graciously. “It’s your vacation, too, and I really meant when I said that I didn’t want you to work?—”
“It’s okay. I said it was okay. I was being honest. I promise.”
We stand in silence for a moment, listening to the ocean, feeling the occasional wave on our feet.
“Listen,” he says, angling his body towards me.
I look up at him, at his gorgeous face and his dark eyes reflecting the moonlight, his hair a little messy from the wind.
“What you said in the kitchen.”
Ah.
His normally still body gets fidgety, but only a little. He scratches the back of his head, but he still meets my eyes. “That was nice,” he says gently. “It’s nice to be thought of like that.”
“Like you’re hot as fuck?” I grin shamelessly.
His eyes flick down to my mouth. “Yeah,” he says. “And not like a lame dad. It’s been a long time. And coming from a fucking stunning woman… it’s nice.”
I feel warm everywhere.
“But I want to tell you this now, because you deserve honesty.”Damn. “I can’t?—”
