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I stared at him. He was not joking. “We’re building an addition onto the house because my mother is coming?” I clarified.
“Well, my mother is going to be coming, too, and although she’s happy staying with Calliope for now, we can’t be sure Calliope will be here much longer. So, it’s best to have somewhere for them to stay when they’re here. And you love this place, you don’t want to leave anytime soon. Neither do I. So, we need to expand.”
I blinked.
Kip knew I loved this place. Knew I wouldn’t want to leave. So he was building a guest room. And he wasn’t saying he was going to do it and fucking around for a year. No, the second he realized we needed it, he set things in motion.
“I love you,” I blurted.
He grinned. “I know.”
I waited.
He didn’t say anything else.
“You know?” I repeated. “You fucking know?” I was yelling now. “That’s all you’re going to say to me telling you I love you?”
Kip chuckled in the face of my fury.
Chuckled.
Then he pulled me up from the chair and into his arms.
“No, that’s not all I’m going to say,” he murmured, holding me close. Or as close as he could with the belly. “But I wanted to get you a little riled up before I show you how much those words mean to me.”
I opened my mouth to yell at him some more. Maybe.
But he kissed me instead.
Then he took me into our bedroom and showed me how much those words meant to him.
twenty-three
Emmet
kip
The second thename flashed on my phone, my heart dropped to my fucking boots. Gus Fender was an old Army buddy who was a badass in his day and now was an even bigger badass. I didn’t know a whole lot about what he did, but I did know he had some high security clearance, high enough to get me information on Fiona’s husband in Australia with barely any information.
Before I called him looking for that information, we hadn’t spoken in five years. He’d called when he found out about Gabbie and Evelyn, expressed his condolences, but we weren’t fucking chicks, so we didn’t ‘check in’ over the years. Plus, checking in with a guy who lost his entire family in one fell swoop wasn’t exactly going to be enlightening through the years. Chances were, he was probably still doing shit.
And I couldn’t exactly ask Gus a whole bunch of questions since the fucker’s entire life was redacted.
So yeah, I called when I needed strings pulled, and him calling back would only mean one thing.
Bad news.
“Guessing you’re not calling to chat,” I said, already walking to my truck.
“You asked me to pull some strings and get an alert if we had anyone by the name Emmet Landon entering the borders from Australia,” he said by way of greeting.
I walked faster.
Fiona was no longer working at the bakery, much to her disdain. We’d had many arguments about her working these past few weeks. She’d won them up until a few days ago.
Then Nora and Tina had joined in the fray.
They were a little harder to fight off than me.
