AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Mommy is a big juicy fish,” Joss declared, heading her way, and giggling when Trace did the same. “We’re going to get you, fishy-fishy.”
“Are you a hungry penguin?” she teased when Trace got close.
“Very hungry.” He made another chomping sound and Joss squealed, half in delight and half in possible concern.
“Don’t really eat her. She’s my mommy.”
“Good point,” Trace agreed, his eyes still locked with Chrissie’s, trying to read what had triggered her mood change.
If it hadn’t been an intentional attempt to keep emotional distance between him and Joss, and he had to admit to himself that, up to that point, she’d gone above and beyond in trying to get Joss to warm to him, then what?
Whatever it had been, she seemed determined to keep a smile on her face now.
Or on Joss’s at any rate, because their son burst into excited squeals when Chrissie splashed Trace with water again.
“That does it. You’re mine, fishy-fishy,” he warned, calling her by the same name as Joss had used.
“Nope, she’s mine,” Joss corrected, splashing over to where Chrissie was and pretending to gobble her up. “Mmm... She tastes good.”
At which Trace’s mind took off in a completely non-innocent way as his gaze met hers.
“Yeah, she does.”
Chrissie’s eyes darkened. His gut tightened.
Without a doubt, he knew he should have kept that thought to himself because the last thing he needed was to complicate things further by becoming involved physically with Chrissie again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“TODAY WAS A better day,” Chrissie mused that evening as she and Trace slipped out of Joss’s bedroom.
They’d bathed him, read to him, and put him to bed quite some time ago. Joss had been a bit wound up and it had taken a good thirty minutes to get him settled. She’d tried to let Trace read to him, but Joss had insisted she read his stories. Even so, Joss hadn’t been opposed to Trace being in the room, listening to the stories. Instead of the resentment from the previous nights, he’d instead cast his gaze at his father during the “good’ parts, as if gauging Trace’s reaction.
Eventually he’d dozed off to sleep.
Trace didn’t respond to her comment until they were in the living room. His question felt more like an attack.
“Why didn’t you let him have a manta ray?”
“What?” she asked, sitting on the far end of the sofa. His question caught her off guard. Mainly, because the rest of their day had been fairly good, considering. Joss hadn’t been so standoffish and Chrissie had managed not to break down at the thought that Trace had just as much say in the raising of their son as she did, that he had just as much right to their son as she did.
Even now the thought just felt wrong.
“You heard me,” Trace pointed out, taking the other end of the sofa. “What was the big deal about him getting a stuffed animal? He should be able to have a keepsake from the first time he went to the aquarium with me.”
When he put it that way...
“Sorry.” She really was. About so many things. Like her irrational fear that Trace might have taken off with Joss when she’d left them alone. “I wasn’t thinking about it being the first time he went with you when I said no. I don’t want him spoiled and had told him the last time we were there that if he got something that day, that he wouldn’t be able to the next time he came.”
Trace crossed his arms and stared at her from the other end of the sofa. His scowl didn’t relent. “Okay, so you were going for consistency in your parenting. I understand that. But maybe you’d like to explain what was such a big deal about me taking him to the bathroom?”
“No, I wouldn’t like to explain that.” Because how petty did it sound that she’d panicked at the thought that she no longer had final say over her son, but now shared that responsibility with Trace? That she’d been afraid he might take off with their son if she left them alone? Trace had given her no reason to think he’d do that, so pretty petty.
The deepening furrow of his brows warned he wasn’t going to let her answer ride.
A damn burst inside her and emotions came gushing forward full-force.
“You’re not the only one dealing with a lot of new, mixed emotions, you know,” she blurted out, surprising both her and Trace with her intensi
