Page 30 of Mack

They broke apart. T.J. was standing in the kitchen doorway in his socks, Rex tucked under his arm, hair flattened on one side from the rug. He looked between them with the unhurried curiosity of someone who had just woken up and wasn’t sure, yet what he’d walked into.

Mallory took a small step back and cleared her throat. “Hi, baby. Did you have a good nap?”

“Uh huh.” He padded into the kitchen and lifted his arms to her. She picked him up and he settled against her shoulder, still half asleep, then looked at Mack.

“Were you and Mama hugging?”

Mack leaned against the counter with his arms folded and said nothing, leaving that entirely to her.

“Yes,” Mallory said. “We were.”

T.J. considered this, then looked at Mack with sudden suspicion. “Do you like my mama?”

“I do,” Mack said.

T.J. studied him for a long moment with those big brown eyes, the full weight of his three-year-old judgment coming to bear. Then he nodded once, apparently satisfied, and looked at Mallory.

“I’m hungry.”

Mallory let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “Of course, you are.”

She set him down. He went straight to the table and climbed up on a chair, dinosaur in hand, the matter entirely settled as far as he was concerned.

Mallory looked at Mack over the top of T.J.’s head. He was watching her with that almost smile, steady and warm.

She turned to the stove. “I’ll heat him up some of that soup.”

“There’s plenty,” Mack said, and reached past her to get the pot.

****

Monday morning came in gray and cold, that made Festive Finds feel like the warmest place in town. Mallory had the music going and a fresh pot of coffee on in the back office and was halfway through restocking a display of advent calendars when she heard T.J.’s voice from the front of the shop.

He was telling her mother something very important about Slate.

Georgia Nichols was a trim woman in her early sixties with dark hair gone silver at the temples and brown eyes that didn’t miss much. She was perched on the stool behind the counter listening to her grandson with complete attention, a cup of coffee in hand, as if she had nowhere else to be and no interest in being there.

She looked up when Mallory came through.

“You look different,” she said.

Mallory went straight to the advent calendars. “I look exactly the same.”

“Mm.” Georgia sipped her coffee. “How was Saturday?”

“It was nice.” Mallory kept her eyes on the display. “T.J. loved the horses.”

“I liked Slate the best,” T.J. announced from the floor where he’d settled with Rex. “And Duke. And Rosie.”

“That’s half of them,” Mallory said.

“I liked them all,” T.J. clarified.

Georgia watched her grandson for a moment, then looked back at Mallory. “And Mack?”

“What about him?”

Her mother smiled like she did when she already knew the answer. “How was he with T.J.?”