For us it’s temporary, I remind myself as I stand in the kitchen and listen to my mother rant while we wash the breakfast dishes. A breakfast Hayden didn’t appear for because his mother called and I just left him to his conversation.
For the fourth morning in a row, I woke up wrapped in his arms. When I finally fell asleep, we were on opposite edges of the bed, with Penny and a pillow between us. But once again, when I opened my eyes this morning, he was holding me. Penny was happily wedged between us, and the extra pillow was on the floor.
It's been a rough day already and we just barely finished breakfast.
“The toilet seat is always up now, Cara.”
“Always? He just got here Friday night. How many times could either of you possibly have needed to pee?”
“Every single time I go into the bathroom, the seat is up. I almost fell in.”
Keeping a straight face while imagining the splash and Gin’s outrage isn’t easy. “I’ll mention it to him. He’s a guy who’s been living alone for years, so he probably doesn’t think about it.”
“I don’t think he’s even using the toilet that often. He’s just going in there and putting the seat up to annoy me.”
“Do you hear yourself right now?” I have to force the laugh, though, because I honestly wouldn’t put it past Hayden. “Why would he do that?”
“Because he’s a Reilly.”
Her tone tells me there’s no thought behind the words coming out of her mouth. She’s running on pure emotion. “I’ll talk to him. In the meantime, remember we have hot water now thanks to him. Just kill him with kindness.”
“It would be faster and easier just to kill him.”
“Mom!” I’m pretty sure she’s just venting, but with Gin, I never really know.
“I’m just saying.”
I’m washing the scrambled egg pan before the eggs can fuse to the tattered nonstick coating—our dishwasher died eight years ago—when Hayden enters the kitchen. I don’t need to turn and see him to know it. I can hear Penny’s nails on the floor, and also my mother’s body tenses, her shoulders rising toward her ears.
“You missed breakfast,” she snaps. “I’m not cooking again.”
“Good morning, Gin,” he says, and his hand on my waist is the only warning I get before he nuzzles my hair out of the way and kisses my neck. “Good morning, wife.”
I shiver, but I don’t stop scrubbing the pan. I don’t need to turn around to know Gin has stormed out of the room. Even in her house slippers, her stomping away is unmistakable.
“Gin planning to murder me wasn’t part of the deal,” he murmurs close to my ear.
Since she’s not watching, he really could step out of my personal space. “You heard that?”
“She’s not a quiet woman,” he points out, making me laugh.
“I’m mostly sure she was just venting.” I shrug. “And you know how she feels about your family. When you came into town trying to buy her house and ended up marrying her daughter, you had to know her taking you out was on the table.”
“You two coming up with a secondary scheme to get me to the altar and then off me would void the agreement,” he teases.
“Would it, though? I read all those documents you made me sign very thoroughly, and I didn’t see that anywhere.”
His laugh fills the house, and even though I love the sound of it, I know it will just annoy Gin even more. I rinse the pan and put it in the rack to dry while pulling the plug with my other hand. After rinsing away the last of the suds, I dry my hands and turn to face my husband.
“So, I guess Colleen’s speaking to you again?”
“About that.” He leans against the counter and shoves his hands in his pockets. Uh-oh. “Fair warning. This might make you mad.”
“So, all the women in your life will be mad at you? Maybe you’re the problem, Hayden.”
He actually grins. “Oh, I’m definitely the problem. And I don’t think Hope’s mad at me…yet. She’s mostly trying to ignore us all, which isn’t easy because Mom works for her.”
“Oh, that’s fun. But why am I going to be mad?”
