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“Justine and Beau are growing up fast.”
“I know. Thanks again for giving him a weekend job with your framing crew.” Her nephew Beau would be finishing high school the following May before going off to college in the fall. Only a year behind him, his sister Justine was a junior at Divine High School.
“The boy’s not afraid to work. I like that.”
Grace turned the page and slid her palm over another photograph as she lifted another picture from the page.
“Why do you keep doing that, darlin’?” Jack softly asked.
“Doing what?” she replied as she tried to close the scrapbook. Jack stayed her hands and flattened the album and pulled it a little closer. “You keep covering up pictures of you. Why?”
With a sigh, Grace let her fingertip drift across the candid photograph taken of her from the rear while she carried on a conversation with a family member. Her ass was enormous. “I’ve put on so much weight in the last couple of years. I’m heavier now than I was when I met you, Jack.” Heat crept up her neck and her lips trembled. “I’m not voluptuous anymore. I’m fat.”
Jack let out a long sigh, and she sensed it when Adam looked up from his computer and laid it aside. Jack tilted her chin so she was looking into his ocean-blue eyes, but she felt it when Adam drew near, too. “Darlin’…” With that one empathetic endearment, his heart resonated in his voice.
Adam tilted the scrapbook so he could see the image and said, “I don’t care for that picture either, but for a totally different reason, baby. Number one, that’s not how I see you from that angle, and also because I don’t like how tired you look in that picture. You’d been sick recently, you hadn’t been sleeping well, and you were worried about finishing that manuscript.”
She could hear Adam’s heart in the rough timbre of his voice. Will I ever believe them when they tell me they think I’m beautiful? Believe it enough for self-acceptance to last? Guilt followed as she tried to swallow the lump in her throat. Why do I make them keep reminding me of this? It’s like telling them I don’t believe them.
A fresh wave of fatigue swept over her and a tear streaked down her cheek. “It’s always one thing or another.”
Jack kissed her shoulder, his beard stubble rubbing through the thin fabric of her robe. “But all those issues resolved themselves. Remember? You got well and the book was done in plenty of time.”
“You’re still not sleeping as well as I’d like, though,” Adam said as he stroked her knee. “Maybe you should go see Emma.”
She’d actually considered making an appointment with their doctor but when it came to mind, it was always an inconvenient time. Her schedule was so busy some days she didn’t know which end was up. Just having two of her men clustered around her made her feel better. “Maybe I’ll do that.”
Adam cleared his throat and said, “Rose Marie has been a handful for you lately, too, hasn’t she?”
Grace nodded. She wasn’t going to put the blame on their three-year-old daughter but the little girl had recently discovered that she had opinions of her own, many of which ran counter to her mother’s. Some days felt like a competition.
“She’ll outgrow this stage. I know she will.”
Adam leaned forward to kiss her forehead as he placed the scrapbook and the loose pictures on the coffee table.
Ethan jogged down the stairs and came into the living room. A smile crossed his lips as he surveyed her in the blue robe. “Feel better?” When he made eye contact, he frowned. “What’s the matter?”
Adam rose to his full, imposing height and reached out a hand to her. “Nothing a little tender loving care won’t fix.”
Chapter Two
Hank Stinson removed his pearl-gray cowboy hat as he walked through the front door of the Dancing Pony nightclub. He placed the Stetson on the bar and put out his hand to shake with the man sitting at the next seat down.
Travis McDaniel grinned and turned to him for a back-slapping hug instead.
“Welcome home, Fishcop. You stayin’ this time?”
Travis had started out as a humble game warden in Texas, only his career had taken a circuitous route. In recent years, he’d been in Washington, DC, working for changes that would help the whole country rather than just a few territories. Hank had heard the frustration in his voice the last time Travis had called.
