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She scowled.
Darcy laughed. “Big brother is mighty protective of you.”
“I can usually hold my own,” I answered with a smile.
Ava held her hand out and introduced herself. Far from unfriendly, she simply struck me as wary. I felt her assessing gaze, but there was no malice in it.
After a few minutes the back door cracked open again and I could not help but smile as Brayleigh’s voice preceded her.
By this time, Lucky was seated with Sean and Raiden, Sean and Tracy’s little girls rounded up between their chairs, while Dani and Tracy ran around preparing things.
“I think I’ll go offer to help.” I wanted to avoid Hope. What if the come to Jesus’ moment we shared at the craft fair didn’t hold up?
Darcy laughed and even Ava smiled.
“We’re on clean-up crew. By that time, Dani will have wound down and will no longer care. That’s when we take over.”
I watched Hope scan the yard and her face brightened immeasurably when she caught sight of Lucky.
My stomach tightened.
Heading straight for him, Hope dumped Brayleigh in his lap and gave him a noogie before heading over to us, dragging an extra chair behind her.
She squeezed her chair in between me and Tracy, forcing Tracy to shift over.
She pulled several Tim Horton’s paper bags out of her enormous handbag. “Contraband cookies.”
Ava laughed, then explained to me. “We’re not allowed to bring food to Dani’s house when she hosts. She likes to keep things healthy.”
“Here, Minty. It’s peanut butter. I owe you one.” She dropped her hand between our chairs and passed me the cookie. “Be stealthy. If any of the short people come over, don’t share. Especially toddlers. They have no sense of personal preservation.”
Several hours later, a freshly bathed Brayleigh asleep in her crib, Lucky and I hit the shower as well. His touch was tender, almost unsexual, as he asked how the day went for me, that worried crease reappearing on his forehead.
I reassured him as best I could.
But it was afterwards, spent and limp in his bed, his face tucked against the back of my neck, that I really thought it through.
The conversation with Hope at the fair, her adamant assertion that there was nothing romantic between them.
The anxiety on Lucky’s face as he put distance between himself and his best friend, who also happened to be the mother of his child.
I thought about the accusations I leveled at him when I saw him with his sisters at his show. The groupies that turned out to be Darcy and Ava.
He had never given me a single reason to doubt.
I was my own worst enemy and the solitary obstacle blocking the path to happiness.
I made a decision.
A good one.
No more jealousy.
When the thoughts came, and I knew that they would, I would smile them away the same way I did with every other fucked up thing my brain threw at me.
Chapter Twenty-Eight-Night Terrors
Lucky
