A normal dock where her son strapped roller blades to his feet.
She frowned, hurrying faster.
There was no asphalt here. No concrete. Nowhere to skate—just a dirt path and the dock.
Kellan held a cell phone, filming the whole thing. Brady stood off to the side, arms crossed, frowning at the scenario.
She was with Brady on this one.
“What are they doing?” she asked, but she didn’t have to wait long, because Ollie stood and started skating down the wooden dock toward the water.
Gavin took off in a full sprint, calling her son’s name. “Oliver!”
She did her best to run in the dress, but it was tight around the thighs, and long strides were not happening.
“Ollie,” she yelled.
He paused for the slightest second. Then he kept moving toward the water.
No. No, no, no. If he skated into the water, those skates might as well be cement blocks on his feet.
“Stop,” she cried at the same time Gavin yelled, “Don’t go in the water.”
Her heart lodged in her throat, unwilling to beat as Gavin took the steps to the dock two at a time. She’d never seen someone move that fast.
But Oliver was near the edge and appeared to have no plans to stop.
Chapter Three
“To be honest, I’m just winging it. Life, motherhood, my eyeliner. Everything.” —A decorative sign.
Gavin
Gavin Frank knew better than to turn his attention away from his kids for any length of time. He and his ex-wife Rachel had created a system for ensuring they always had adult eyes on them. Of course, it had to be on his watch that they’d disappear into trouble.
Unfortunately, the twins had a propensity to wrangle themselves into chaos without meaning to. He couldn’t blame them, not when he was certain this was a genetic deficiency on his side.
He and his brothers had gotten into a whole slew of predicaments as pre-teens for the same reason. Not enough trouble to get them arrested or sent to the ER, but their DNA was coded to cause enough torment to turn a dad’s hair prematurely gray.
Though, Gavin had rarely gotten caught. No one would call Gavin a rule follower; he broke the rules with the best of them. But, as a child, he was the one who led his brothers in just such a way that their hands got dirty while his remained squeaky clean.
Call it his big brother gift.
Now he was an adult. An adult with two boys, an ex-wife who married his brother, and a mother who would not stop trying to fix him up with anyone who met her criteria.
What those criteria were? She hadn’t let him in on that.
Yeah, the universe laughed at him constantly, and the retribution for all the screw-ups in his life was strong and swift these days.
This time, though, it wasn’t just his boys turning his hair gray. They had a third partner in Molly’s son, Oliver. Good kid. Played by the rules.
Which was why it made no sense at all that he’d tucked his feet into roller blades for what appeared to be a dip in the lake.
Gavin growled internally in frustration and ran faster toward the kids.
Gavin’s boys were stocky, waiting for their teenage growth spurt that would probably hit around the time they turned fourteen—if Gavin’s history was any sign. Oliver, however, was not stocky. He’d hit his growth spurt around the time he turned six and stood tall and straight as a thin line.
Molly wasn’t a tall woman, so Oliver’s dad must’ve towered.
