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“Well, I had to try.”
“Are you going to tell me yours?”
“I can’t!”
I tickled her sides until she begged me to stop, and I sighed dramatically. “I guess you really are going to keep your wish a secret, aren’t you?”
“Yep.” She took my hand. “Come on. We haven’t had any luck finding creatures by the creek, so Wyatt won’t mind if you help us now.”
“What are we looking for exactly?”
Wyatt looked up from his search. “I want to find a frog.”
There were some—they sung at night in the summers—but having grown up in Starry Hills, I knew they were tricky fuckers. “We’ll try. But if we can’t find anything in twenty minutes, how about we go get some ice cream?”
Avery clapped. “Yes! And can Emmy come too? Or is she still too busy?”
Emmy being bogged down with work had affected Avery the most. She understood how the actor’s wedding was important, but my daughter still missed swimming with Emmy over the last couple of weeks, once it’d become crunch time.
“She’s still super busy, Avery. Just another week, and then she should be around more.”
Not only around more, but things between me and her were so fucking good still that I couldn’t wait for her to meet my kids as my girlfriend.
It was still weird to think about having a girlfriend at my age. But Emmy was mine, and I planned to do whatever I could to keep her.
I might even propose the M word again one day—marriage. Something I never thought I’d do for a second time.
But Emmy was just that fucking special and amazing, and I was falling hard for her.
Avery sighed, but Wyatt came and showed her a pretty rock. “I found one for your collection, Avery.”
As I watched Avery’s mood improve, I couldn’t help but smile. Wyatt was nowhere near as outgoing as his sister, but he was so damn perceptive, to the point where it scared me sometimes.
If any of my kids were to guess something was going on between Emmy and me, it’d be Wyatt.
But he hadn’t said a word to me. If he asked, though, I wouldn’t lie. After all the lies their mother had told them, I’d vowed not to do the same.
Putting a hand on the shoulder of each of my kids, I pushed gently. “Come on. It’s fucking hot out, and I want some ice cream.”
“Bad word, Daddy!”
“You’re never going to stop that, are you?”
Avery grinned. “Nope.”
I tried to ruffle her hair, but she ran away and giggled. When I tried to do the same to Wyatt, he followed his sister, albeit without giggling.
As we walked past Emmy’s house and barn, I couldn’t wait for the day when we could spend time with her together. Fuck, if I was the luckiest bastard in the world, we might even live together one day.
Unlike months ago, the thought didn’t scare me. Emmy wasn’t Andrea, far from it. Yes, things could fall apart at some point. But I hoped not. Because I wanted things to work with Emmy and my kids so fucking badly, more than I’d wanted anything in a long, long time.
* * *
It was the day before Emmy’s big wedding. I was just finishing up dinner with my family—Zach and my kids were teasing each other—when the doorbell rang. My aunt made to get up, but I put a hand out. “I’ll get it.”
I left the laughter behind and went to answer the rear door, used by the family. I looked through the peephole to see an unfamiliar woman dressed in a business suit. I opened the door, and she asked, “Are you Weston Wolfe?”
“Yes.”
