Page 65 of Parentmoon

How we were surprised to find each other present and how we’ve been enjoying each other’s company. I don’t need to spell out the sex. My twenty-seven-year-old son just caught me in bed with the man.

“Do you see a future with him?”

I bitterly laugh. “Is Dallas a future kind of man?” Everything in me wants to believe he could be . . . with someone else. Is there a future for us? That’s a completely different question without an answer.

“He’s a really great guy.”

Michael hero-worships Dallas. It isn’t Dallas’s wealth but how he’s a self-made man. Dallas doesn’t mind getting dirty, having experiences, and he’s included Michael on many of his excursions over the period of Keli and Michael’s engagement.

“He is.” I sigh, squinting off at the distance. How can you dismiss a man generously gifting a house?

However, I’m not certain I’m the right woman for a man like Dallas Cole.

Chapter 17

[Dallas]

I’d fucked up.

I didn’t like how Jo brushed me off this morning or the cold shoulder she’s been giving me since the moment she left the bed. We hadn’t done anything wrong, but I could tell she wasn’t seeing it that way.

We didn’t need to be married to sleep together. We were fucking-adults.

But my fuck-up went deeper than us getting caught in bed together by our grown children.

“Daddy, how could you?” Keli admonishes me as she sits on a stool opposite where I stand, leaning against the peninsula counter. A mug of coffee rests before each of us but I haven’t taken a sip. My stomach feels sour. My throat too dry to be quenched by the morning goodness.

“I didn’t do anything, baby.” This is the lie I tell myself because I had a plan.

“You slept with Jo.”

My girl knows I’m not a saint, although she never witnessed a long string of women warming my bed. I am not Katherine, who brought home strangers and married four different losers.

I shrug at Keli’s accusation. “I like her.”

However, my feelings are not quite that simple. There’s something about Jo that I knew was different from the moment I met her. That night our children announced their engagement, and she hugged me without provocation. One minute I’m watching her excitement and the next her small arms were around me, tugging me tight to her body. I felt like I’d been electrocuted. My entire being lit up. My dick jumped to attention. She was a little thing with a strong embrace on her and I wanted it all to myself. Only, in the moment, I froze up. I didn’t know how to respond to such an immediate, electric connection.

Then she beamed at my daughter, showing in her expression how much she adored my little girl. Makes a man extra-proud of his offspring and grateful Jo could see how wonderful my daughter is. And then, the love she has for her son . . . it was in every word Michael spoke about his mom. How hard she’d worked. How she never complained. How she gave him what she could. He hero-worshipped his mother, and it was honorable.

“Daddy, I don’t want Michael mad all over again.”

Keli wasn’t to blame for anything, though. I was.

“He shouldn’t have been mad, in the first place.” A house was the best wedding gift I could think of to give them. They wouldn’t have to struggle with a mortgage. They wouldn’t need to be strapped with financial burdens out of the starting gate. And I wanted my baby girl to come home.

The decision was bold, and it backfired like my brother warned me it might. Jett had suggested Michael’s pride might be wounded.

I didn’t listen.

Michael hadn’t been pleased but I couldn’t have predicted it would lead to the kids canceling the wedding.

In fact, I didn’t want to take that kind of blame. If a little housewarming gift, like an actual house to warm them, broke them in half, maybe they weren’t as strong as I thought.

But deep down, I knew my opinion was wrong. And Jo, dammit, she hammered home how much these kids—these adults—love one another. She was so convinced nothing could have, should have, broken them apart.

Unintentionally, I did that.

Jo won’t forgive me for this. Especially when she learns I’ve known the truth since minutes after it happened. Keli called me in tears, barely able to breathe.