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“You also don’t have kids who just lost their mother,” I growled into the phone, hoping it was low enough Ivy couldn’t hear in her bedding cocoon.
“Fuck, I know.” His hostility was gone. “Listen, I get it. It’s just...our hands shouldn’t be so tied.”
“I agree. I’ll still see what I can do.”
After we disconnected, I tossed my phone to the side. I had to get to the office, but I needed to situate the kids first.
I peered under the blankets and found a mass of brown hair. “Tired?”
Ivy squinted at me, her eyes bleary. “No.”
She’d never admit it. “Let’s grab some breakfast. I’ve gotta get to work.”
In the kitchen, I groaned. Dishes were piled high by the sink. How could three people use so many? The house didn’t have a dishwasher. I had offered to pay for one to be installed, but the landlord preferred the house’s natural state. As if the dishwasher would ruin the effect of the nineties oak cabinets.
I opened the fridge. A half-cup of milk was left in the last jug. So, cereal was out as an option, but the kids refused to eat the brands I bought anyway. High-protein, whole-grain cereals weren’t their thing, but I refused to buy the kind they would eat. Brownies for breakfast would be healthier.
Good old PB&J, then. I scanned the inside of the fridge. No jelly. I stuffed a hand through my hair. We were out of that too? I had already used all the sausage Eliot had sent with us when we moved, and going along those lines, the beef he’d packed into the back of my pickup was also gone.
I checked the oatmeal canister. Enough for one serving. I could bypass breakfast, but I had two kids. The yogurt was gone. No fruit except for one sad, brown banana. A reflection of the job I was doing as a single parent. That damn banana was a banner for why the kids were going to live with their grandparents.
Ivy was jumping over a seam between the flooring planks—also oak colored. “There’s nothing to eat.”
The kids noticed before I did. Meg’s sarcastic humor filtered through my brain.Way to go, Alcott. Crack parenting right there. Had our positions been changed, she would’ve been in the same situation, and she’d have known it. Our busy work lives were why she worried about leaving me a single dad and talked with her parents about taking the kids.
“I agree.” I pushed another hand through my hair and caught my reflection in the microwave. The strands stood on end, and I looked half asleep. I couldn’t go out like this. I’d look like a dad who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. “Go get dressed. I’ll wake up G, and we’ll go get groceries.”
“But I’m hungry now.”
“We need groceries first.”
“What about Hummingbird’s? Maybe we’ll see Snow White again.”
“Tova.” Her soft blue eyes flashed in my head. The image from my dream wasn’t dying. The curve of her bare hips was purely from my imagination, but I couldn’t think about her without getting hard. “Get dressed, please.”
She huffed and stomped out of the kitchen. I roused my son, told him to get dressed, then I went to clean up. I kept my polo on. The conference call wasn’t online, and I didn’t have to appear as if I wasn’t in a home office.
Grayson appeared in the doorway of his room as I was leaving the bedroom. “Daddy, I’m hungry.”
“We’ve gotta get some groceries first.”
“Can we go to Hummingbird’s?”
“Not today.”
“I want to see Tova again.”
She made an impression on my attention-starved kids. I had been the fun parent when Meg was alive, but now I didn’t have time. A dull thud started at my temples.
“She was really nice,” he insisted, as if I hadn’t noticed exactly how nice she was. As if I hadn’t noticed the sensual sway of her hips, how much my fingertips burned to stroke over her skin, or thought about how her long hair would feel running over my bare chest when she—
Fuck’s sake.
“Get dressed,” I said, harsher than intended. I had to get that woman off my mind.
“I am dressed.”
I glanced at the duck pajama pants and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles T-shirt. Meg had hated that shirt worse than his Spider-Man gear.
