And then I smiled.
I was in Darius’s attractive kitchen, which wasbigger than mine (way bigger), had better…well,everythingthan mine(and I’d gone for a load of upgrades), and I was drying wineglasses.
With grave effort, Lee stopped Indy and Ally from calling intheir crew.
We all had a glass of wine (except Indy, Darius got her someice water).
Then Tony corralled his crew and got them out the door.
Lee corralled his (and I discovered Ally’s man was calledRen, and he was as nice as he was fine) and got them out the door.
Which left me, Darius and Liam.
And I was hiding.
Darius walked in.
I aimed a smile at him, but it was trembling so much, itprobably looked more like a grimace.
He took the wineglass out of one hand, the towel out of theother, put the first down, threw the last beside it, then shifted me with hisbody to fence me in facing him with his hands on the counter at either side ofme.
“Right, sweetheart, so we didn’t get down to planning howwe’d ease into this with Liam, but we’re here now, we gotta wing it.”
“I just thought I’d give him a kiss and go home.He’s got togo to bed.He’s got school tomorrow.”
“Baby, hate to break this to you, but he’s in AP classes andfootball.When he’s not doing something with the team, he studies so much, hesleeps about two hours a night.And he’s sixteen.That’s all he needs.”
I begged to differ.
As such, I shook my head.“He’s still a growing boy.Italked to the doctor about it since he won’t stop.He said boys can keepgrowing into their early twenties.”
“Good to know,” he murmured, eyes on my mouth.
I put a hand to his flat belly, then wished I didn’t becauseI could feel the hardness and ridges, and our son was in the next room.
“Darius, stop looking at my mouth,” I demanded.
His eyes lifted to mine.“He’s not six.He’s not going toget confused.”
I took my hand from his stomach so I could wring both ofthem together and looked around his shoulder at the door.
“Malia, baby, eyes to me.”
I returned my gaze to him.
“Let’s just sit him down, open a dialogue with him, and seewhere he’s at.”
I felt my brows inch together.“Open a dialogue?”
“Yeah.One of the guys at work, Vance, his wife is a socialworker.Her name is Jules.She’s got a job at a shelter for runaways.I talkedwith her about all this, and if you and I got to this place, how we’d help Liamdeal.”
Oh my God.
Could a body melt?
It could.I felt it happening to me.
“That was very sweet of you.”
