“I did it! I did it! I get an ice cream party! Woohoo, Daddy, you are too slow.”
We were the last left, and Cash and Colin were looping around, following the stream and getting close to coming up this side.
My pulse increased, a fluttering anticipation as I gulped at the sight of him talking quietly with Colin. That brash, hard body so gentle as he played along.
I glanced at the girls and whispered, “Are you ready?”
They both gave me big nods, and I quietly rushed, “One, two, three, go!”
We jumped out of our hiding spot and beelined across the field. Their little feet went at full blast beside me, though Eva was about half the speed of Addy, who pulled out ahead.
“There they are!” Colin shouted. “We gotta get ’em.”
Blood sloshed through my veins as they started behind us.
This quick elation that I shouldn’t feel. But it was there, rushing and ripping.
“Hurry! We have to go faster!” Addy shouted, tugging and pulling at my hand.
“Go, go, go!” I shouted, releasing her so she could go flying across the lawn. I swooped Eva into my arms.
Eva squealed and hung onto my neck. “Run fast!”
With each pound of my feet, I could feel heavier ones advancing from behind.
A thunder that rolled.
“Get ’em, Mr. Cash! Get ’em!” Colin urged.
“Hurry, Daisy, hurry!” Emery and Piper were shouting from the stairs, the whole babble of kids jumping up and down. “Hurry it up, Ms. Daisy!”
That energy grew denser. So fierce and unrelenting and perfectly unbearable that I couldn’t breathe. I was five steps away when I set Eva onto her feet so she could make it the rest of the way by herself.
My tiny girl scuttling along with wild laughter rolling out of her as she hurried to the base.
Colin suddenly flew around me, hightailing it toward Eva who dove into Charleigh’s outstretched arms.
“You did it!” Charleigh praised and twirled with my little girl in her arms.
I was one step away from making it when a giant arm looped around my waist from behind. Tugging me back against the hard, rigid planes of his big, big body.
A gasp left me at the crash of severity that ripped through me.
His aura surrounding.
His heart thundering as deliriously as mine.
He pressed his mouth to my ear. “Not quite, fiancée. Looks like you owe meone favor.”
A shiver raced down my spine, my belly flipping and flopping while he held me there for a long moment. I could barely stand when he released me, my breaths shallow and my chest heaving as he strode around me like nothing had happened, going for the kids who were chanting, “Ice cream party! Ice cream party!”
The man only glanced back at me once.
Wearing that old smirk that I’d loved so much.
THIRTY-EIGHT
CASH
