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I looked up into his beautiful brown eyes, straining my neck to do so, and said, “Thank you for the cookies. Thank you for caring about your girl so much. And thank you for worrying about me being pulled into alleyways.”
His hands squeezed my hips a little harshly, then he dropped a kiss down onto my cheek. “I’ll be here when you’re done tonight. It’s only for today. I have to go meet with a few investors. Then I’ll be home.”
He was making money the rich way—by meeting with people that wanted him to invest in stuff—and not the normal, everyday American way—by going to work and working their butts off.
“Must be nice,” I teased.
He squeezed my hips and his chin tilted up as an excited look entered his eyes. “You can quit any time you want, darlin’. You want to be barefoot and pregnant in my kitchen? I’m an old-fashioned alpha male of a man. That’s exactly where I want you.”
I burst out laughing.
That was the only thing I could do.
“You’re depraved if you think that I’m gonna quit.” I shook my head. “I might enjoy an extended vacation every now and then, but I certainly won’t spend my days in the kitchen waiting for you to get home.”
“I’m home a lot,” he teased. “You wouldn’t be waiting for me to get home.”
I patted his chest. “Then you can stay with the kids. I’ll work.”
He squeezed my hips again and let me go as his watch beeped with the ‘it’s time to go now or you’ll be late’ beep. Over the time that I’d known him, I realized that Wake ran on his own time frame. He did what he wanted to do, was late when he wanted to be late, and showed up when he happened to show up.
Today, however, he was going to be on time. Which was how I knew how important this meeting actually was—him being on time was very rare.
“Time to go, Dad.” Lolo looked at him. “When will y’all give me a brother or a sister?”
Wake looked at me, looked at his watch, then looked at his daughter before saying, “I can’t answer that. I have to go.”
Then he was gone, leaving out the front door and heading toward his bike without answering his child.
Dammit, Wake!
As if he heard me, he turned back and grinned at the house. Likely, he knew that I was glaring holes in him.
He waved, got on his bike, and gunned it out of the neighborhood.
Tex plopped down like he was excited for a few hours’ rest, and I smiled.
“So…” Lolo said. “When?”
I looked at Wake’s daughter, who had his hair and eyes, and wondered if our own children would have that, too.
Wake’s genes were definitely dominant, that was for sure.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “Right now, I’m on birth control. It’s not that I would be opposed to a child. I think I might like to have my practice settled before I did anything more, though.”
She nodded as if she understood. “Can I help you decorate your new office? I’d really like to figure out how to do that kind of thing. I’m deciding right now between interior design in college, or a veterinarian.”
I blinked. “Those two things are completely different,” I said as I gathered my keys. “What makes you want to do either one? If I had to guess, I would choose you to be a vet. But only because I feel like it has a more stable job market.” I hesitated. “Though, the suicide rate for veterinarians is very high.”
She looked at me with wide eyes. “It is? Why?”
I gestured toward the door. “Come on. I’ll tell you on the way. We’re gonna be late if we don’t go now.”
She grabbed her backpack as I caught up my purse, and together we headed out to my truck that Wake had turned around and parked so nicely for me to get out.
Though, he did make it to where I wouldn’t take out the mailbox like I nearly did yesterday morning when I left.
We were heading down the street, having narrowly missed the mailbox, when I started to tell her about a patient I had my first year in practice.
“So, though I can’t really tell you his name because of patient confidentiality,” I said as I came to a stop at the stop sign at the end of our subdivision. Once looking both ways, I pulled out and only ran over one curb. “Let’s call him Jason. Jason was a vet for six years. The problem was, and this is true for all vets, dogs and cats aren’t looked at like the responsibilities that they are. People bring their dogs and cats, sometimes horses and other animals, to the vet and expect miracles. The only problem is, vets are human. They can’t fix everything. He saw a lot of death in his six years.”
