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“Thank you, Mr. Valentine,” she says.
Valentine carries her up the stairs to her room, and Kaitlyn close behind, carrying her squishy pillow. He gets her set up in bed with a book and asks Michael to set the kids up with a tv show downstairs.
“Just one episode,” he says seriously.
The kids nod like bobbleheads and once more I am blown away. This man showed up out of nowhere and turned an emergency into something that was almost fun. There’ll be less fun later when I have to talk to Annie about those boys but a night that was shaping up to be an utter disaster is now no longer even a crisis.
He’s it.
He’s my dream man.
I don’t even think twice about kissing him on the porch when he’s ready to leave. At first, he kisses me back. Then he gently pushes me away and says, “I can’t. I want to but now’s not a good time. If you still want this six months from now, I’ll be ready.”
As I watch him walk back to his home, I decide there’s nothing on Earth that could keep me from wanting him six months from now or six years from now, or six hundred years from now.
He’s my fantasy come true and I intend to claim him.
CHAPTER FOUR
I get back in the house. Gwen is there.
“I thought you were out all night,” I say.
“Work finished early,” she explains.
I bite back a comment about that and only nod.
Gwen looks at me and says, “Is the girl going to be okay?”
I nod. “Very bad sprain. Do you know the neighbors?”
Gwen shakes her head. “Klarice? Well, enough to say hello to, I guess.”
“They’ve been here for years, right? I mean, I think this is the first time I talked to them.”
She smiles and gestures to my big recliner chair. She has a glass of scotch poured for me. I make my way over and sit down. She says, “Her sister died, and she took her sister’s kids, and then her husband died, so she’s been raising them alone.”
I take a sip of my scotch. “Well, that’s a lot to say hello about.”
She shrugs. “I probably know more about them because our kids have helped her out. Babysitting. Mowing the lawn, that kind of thing.”
I nod. “Makes sense.”
“Look, Val, there’s no easy way to do this but we need to talk.”
I don’t know why what comes out of my mouth does. I say, “You’re having an affair with your boss.”
Her eyes grow wide, and she says, “How long have you known.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
I take another sip. “I thought maybe waiting to do anything about it until after the kids got settled in school made sense.”
She looks at me and asks, “Why aren’t you angry?”
I don’t answer for a moment or two and then I say, “I’m so damned angry about this, Gwen, I can’t even begin to express it. I’m planning to spend all day Saturday in the forest killing anything that moves. I’m angry. I’m fucking angry.” None of what I say is a lie, but I say it all in an even tone of voice.
