Page 110 of But For You

“I didn’t care that they had moved. I just wanted to get there before he sold it. I knew he had offers, even before they put the For Sale sign up.”

“And you asked him to do what?”

“Just hold on to it until I could get some capital together.”

I waited.

He sighed deeply. “Which your pain-in-the⁠—”

“Carrying a kid,” I reminded him.

“Which your brother took to mean”—Sam coughed—“doctor the reports so the marshal could afford it.”

I leaned my head back so I could kiss under the man’s jaw.

The contented rumble made me smile. “He’s really something.”

“Yes, he is.”

“I mean, he went off about a house needing people the same as people needing a house … what is that?”

“He’s an architect. He believes houses need to be loved to become homes.”

He groaned. “This is not about stature for me; it’s about the place I plan to raise my kids, where we’re going to spend our holidays and put lights up and take them down. It’s where I’m gonna be until I die. We’re not moving to Florida or Arizona or someplace like that when we’re old. This is gonna be the place our kids will come back to after they go off to college, where they’ll bring their families for holidays. You get that?”

“I do.”

“I just … it feels like home.”

“Then let’s do it. Tomorrow, go sign whatever you need to with Dane to get things started, and I’ll call Mrs. Souza, our realtor, and get our place listed.”

He was really happy, and when I saw the joy, my stomach flipped over.

“You should have told me you wanted this so badly.”

“Yeah, I know. I promise to tell you next time.”

It didn’t matter. The way I was being hugged, his warm breath caressing my ear, and the lips sliding over my cheek—that was all my brain was processing.

As we made our way back down the Magnificent Mile toward the loft, we stopped at Water Tower Place because I needed a new lunch box for Hannah, a dress for her for Thanksgiving, and a new backpack for Kola.

“What happened to the old one?” Sam asked me.

“Chilly,” Kola and Hannah said together.

“Really?”

“You saw how he killed that pillow the other night,” Hannah told her father.

The pained expression I got made me throw up my hands.

“What? He’s a destructive force of nature. What do you want me to do?”

Sam shot himself in the head with his finger.

I rolled my eyes at him.

Shopping was fun for me, and Kola was a fan as well. Hannah and her father wanted to sit and eat ice cream. I finally gave up and told them we had to call it quits on the fun shopping because we had to go to the grocery store. Not surprisingly, they were no more excited to do that.