“She needs a nickname.”
“Sell it to me,” Ava said as she sat on the opposite end. Then realized that Chay was going to feed some of the pudding to Gracie. She hurried to grab a bib and put it on the baby. “She’s a messy eater. Now, about the nickname…”
Chay leaned back, peeling the foil from the top of the pudding cup. Scraping his finger over it, he held his finger out to Gracie, who grabbed it and shoved it in her mouth.
Making them both laugh.
“She’s cute as a bug,” he said. “That’s it. Nothing more. What do you think?”
Bug…she wouldn’t have chosen it, but it did suit Gracie. “I think it’s perfect.”
She concentrated on eating her pudding and not on pointing out that he was bonding with Gracie again. He’d said he’d consider adoption and Ava had to leave it at that.
“So where are these gummies you spoke of?”
“We can’t eat them all at once,” she said.
“We can. You said yourself the good snacks go first.”
“You don’t have any snacks in this house,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, I tend to binge eat if I keep them around. I’m a sucker for anything dark chocolate,” he admitted.
“Really? You seem so controlled. I wouldn’t have pegged you for that kind of behavior.”
He put his cup and spoon on the end table; Gracie was now chewing on her bib. “We didn’t have money when I was with my mom, and I was always hungry. So when I got to grandmother’s house, I wasn’t sure the food would always be there. I’d eat as much as I could in case that was my last meal.”
“Oh, Chay.”
“It’s fine. Grandmother always made sure there was extra food in the house so I’d learn that I didn’t have to overeat, which eventually I did, but the junk food bingeing…that’s stuck around.”
That made her like him a lot more. He was so complicated and interesting and every detail he shared so matter-of-factly made her love him that much more.
And she did love him. She wasn’t sure she was ready to say it out loud or admit it to anyone else. But the feelings were growing stronger and stronger every day.
“One summer we had strawberries in our garden. There were so many, and every day I’d go out and eat them off the plants. Just as many as I could pick. I made myself sick with it and broke out in hives,” Ava said. “My mom is very practical. ‘Well, now you know what happens when you give in to your greed.’”
Ava still thought about that when she was taking too much, wanting too much. She felt a little bit of warning when it came to Gracie and Chay. She wanted them as her family. It didn’t feel greedy at all, but what she needed to be happy. That was always the thing that worried her. She remembered how joyous she’d been in college.
Independence had suited her and her classes had been challenging and rewarding. When she’d met Greg, it felt like her entire life was perfect and full. Then he’d died. She knew that fate wasn’t out there watching her and balancing the scales of heartbreak and happiness, but there was another part of her that was wary of taking too much and losing it all again.
It was funny to watch Ava trying to stay centered as the night wore on. The pudding cups cracked him up. He wouldn’t have pegged her as someone who liked those kind of snacks. But really, who could say what snacks anyone liked? He was addicted to Hot Cheetos, which was why he never bought them when he went to the grocery store.
Gracie was a little calmer now. Happily chewing on her bib while he watched Ava finishing up her pudding. She caught him staring as she licked the last bit from her spoon.
God, why was everything she did so sexy?
“The gummies?” he asked again, because truthfully he wasn’t sure what else to do to distract her and him. If it was just the two of them, he’d take her to bed and make love to her until she was exhausted.
But they had sweet little Gracie.
“You’re not giving that up.”
“Nope. Also I think it might be time for a rummy rematch,” he said. Knowing that they’d never really played. He could see that it was her affection for him and Bug that had her focused on trying to make them into a family. But he also knew himself and his limits.
Messing up with a kid wasn’t like overeating Hot Cheetos. He couldn’t just not show up for a few days. If he committed to adopting Gracie, he was going to have to be there on the tough days and the good ones.
Maybe because of his mom he wasn’t one to leave anything. He took on the tough cases and was a loyal friend long after others had moved on. Once he committed, he was all in. That’s why it was important for him to be very sure of himself before he thought about being Gracie’s father.
