Page 14 of Until You

“Yes,” Paige says, stepping in front of me, her eyes pleading. “Dinner. Remember you invited Miss Tenny over for dinner tonight?”

My eyebrows narrow and shoulders tighten. “How could I forget?”

An awkward silence falls between the four of us momentarily, and it has Tenny taking a step back into the still open doorway.

“Thanks for your help with Hani, girls, but I just remembered . . . that I—uh—have something—”

“No!” Paige says, grabbing Tenny’s hand and pulling on it. The reaction surprises me. “You can’t go. You said you’d have dinner with us.”

“Pretty please,” Addy piles on, begging like they used to do when they were little and really wanted something.

The question is, what is it that they want here?

I meet Tenny’s eyes and smile. “Please. Stay,” I say, trying to convince myself I’m asking her out of obligation rather than because she’s more than easy on the eyes. “Make yourself at home while I open the wine. Would you like a glass?”

She stands there for a beat as the girls stare at her with puppy-dog eyes. Her smile is soft, reticent as if she’s uncertain she wants to be here. That makes two of us. “Yes. Sure. That would be lovely.”

“Girls? Can you help me in the kitchen, please?” I ask without waiting to see if they follow.

The minute we clear the doorway, I tug both of their arms so they’re forced into the small pantry space in the hopes that our location will prevent Tenny from hearing this conversation.

“Explain,” I demand.

“We found her cat,” Paige says.

“That’s not what I mean,” I say. “Since when is it okay to randomly go with strangers?”

“We’re eleven, Dad.”

“Exactly,” I whisper yell.

“Chill,” Addy chimes in, which only serves to irritate me more. “She didn’t offer us candy. She didn’t ask us to help her look for her lost cat. We’re the ones who found it. We’re the ones who returned him.”

“And you’re the ones who went into a stranger’s house without anyone knowing where you were.”

“And we’re perfectly fine.” Paige raises her eyebrows as if to ask what the problem is.

And there are a whole lot of problems, but ones to be discussed at another time when we don’t have a guest within hearing distance.

“We’ll discuss that later. But why did you lie and tell her I invited her over for dinner?”

Their devious grins have me groaning. “We thought you might need a friend, and she’s super pretty.”

“Why in the hell would you think that?” I ask, glancing out of the pantry to make sure we’re still alone.

“Language,” Addy says, which I answer with a glare.

“Because you have to be lonely with just us keeping you company,” Paige explains.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh as I read between their eleven-year-old lines, and then look back at them. “I can handle my own love life, girls.” Fucking hell. Seriously? I look so desperate that my own kids are trying to set me up?

“We know, but we thought maybe if you were happier . . . it would help with—everything,” Paige says softly as the knife twists in my heart.

I hang my head for a beat, the tightness in my chest returning. How dumb was I to think simply being here would be enough to make up for what they’ve gone through?

“Girls—”

“Besides, we’ll be dating boys soon,” Addy adds before I can apologize again for things I have no control over, “and the last thing we want is for you to be lonely when we’re out with our boyfriends.”