“Autumn and Forest sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” at least half of the kids sing, the others giggling.
I try to untangle myself from Forest, but he won’t let me go. He tucks his face into my neck with a chuckle as the kids finish the rest of the rhyme.
“Who’s kissing?” Dad asks loudly. “Autumn and Forest?”
I start to shake, my nerves shot, as I fist Forest’s shirtlike I’m hanging on for dear life. “Oh god, oh god. This can’t be happening.”
It was one thing for the kids to catch and tease us in the pool while Dad was at home, but it’s another for them to basically snitch on us. We’re breaking so many rules, and my own resolutions, not to mention Dad’s blood pressure must be through the roof. Forest finally eases his hold on me, and I rush back inside the room.
“Daddy, stay calm!” I yell, which, really, isn’t helping matters. “I can explain!”
Dad raises a bushy brow while the rest of the adults are silent, watching our exchange like a tennis match. “Explain what?” Dad asks. “That you two have said to hell with the employee handbook and are sucking face?
“No! We—Forest and I—oh god!” I whine, my tongue tied. “Your heart!”
“My heart’s fine.” Dad cuts his eyes to one of the machines he’s hooked up to, which, surprisingly, isn’t blaring with alarms. His heart rate is steady, though he’s still pale. “And it’s not as if I didn’t already know,” he says with a mild huff.
My mouth falls open. “Really?” My skin tingles when Forest rests his hand on the small of my back.
“My arteries might be full of sludge, but my mind’s still sharp,” he says, tapping his temple. “You kids always think you’re so slick, trying to hide your relationships from me.” He darts an amusedgot yalook at Bailey and Isaiah’s appropriately abashed faces after all their sneaking around when they first got together. Isaiah scratches the back of his neck, the first to look away. Dad pins me with a challenging look. “I was born at night, but not last night. You really think I thought you were merely ‘saying goodnight to the kids’ at the hotel? I just said that because I didn’t want to think about the two of you doing the hanky-panky.”
Gentry tugs on Shayla’s tank top to get his mom’s attention. “What’s hanky-panky?”
“Oh god,” I say, like a broken record.
“And every night when you jetted off across the street after dinner, then snuck back into the house hours later—which, by the way, is silly, considering you’re an adult, not that I’m keen to admit it—after ‘accidentally falling asleep’,” Dad says, making finger quotes. “I didn’t buy that either.”
My mouth runs dry. “I was sowing my wild oats,” I say weakly, and Dad rolls his eyes.
“Sure you were,” Bailey says sarcastically with a snicker. “With good ol’ wild Forest.”
“What’s wild oats? Like oatmeal?” Gentry asks next.
James sighs heavily and rubs his eyes.
“Shut up, Bailey. You’re not helping,” I grumble, which only makes her snort, and I inch away from Forest. “We are not together.”
“Yeah, we are, angel,” Forest says, slipping his hand around to rest it on my hip. “Might as well fess up to it, since they already know.”
“Shut up,” I hiss. “We are not.”
Forest laughs, though it’s strained, and he says playfully, “No, you shut up.”
“Stop denying it for my sake,” Dad says with a dismissive swat of his hand through the air, wincing when he tugs on his IV. “I was rooting for the two of you to get together all along.”
“But…he has three kids,” I say. It’s what Dad had warned me against when I had joked about making a cherry pie for Forest the first night I babysat.
“Whom we all love. And the three of them fit right in, don’t ya think?” Dad says with a warm smile, looking around the room until he finds Josephine. “Really, this couldn’t have turned out any better since Forest fits right into our RPG group, too. Isn’t that right, James? Martin?Isaiah?”
The men nod as one. “Right,” Isaiah answers with a grin, then says to Forest, “We’ll add your house to the rotation.”
Josephine runs to Forest and me, throwing her arms around us with a happy squeal. “I love all you too!” She jumps up and down, nearly unbalancing me in all her excitement. “Can I be the flower girl when you get married?”
She startles and jerks back when I raise my voice to the crowd, my heart giving one last thump before it shatters at the look on Josephine’s sweet face. “We are not getting married because Forest doesn’t want more kids!” I clap a hand over my mouth and stumble sideways. This time, Forest isn’t fast enough to catch me when I rush out of the room and down the hallway.
Chapter Twenty
Forest
