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I nuzzle my nose against his. He smells like peppermint and sea salt.
“Speaking of big things…”
“I like where this is going…”
He snorts a laugh. “Mind out of the gutter, Trouble. I was thinking about South Africa.”
I knit my eyebrows. “Not where I thought you were going with this.”
“Donovan has things on lock at Lighthouse Medical. So…I’m thinking it’s about time I put my money where my mouth is.”
“And your money is in South Africa?”
He shrugs. “Doctors Without Borders. It’s always been a dream. I can take a couple months. Really help people.”
I open my mouth. Close it. “What about Lighthouse Medical?”
There’s one of his cocky side-grins. “What’re they gonna do—fire me?”
Sometimes, I forget that my boys are at the top of their game. Prime time.
Jason is, after all, the top surgeon in the state—and Donovan took over the post as the director of Lighthouse Medical since the great Leonard King “went into retirement.”
Aka, he’s on house arrest in his mansion on Hannsett Island.
Justice isn’t always cut-and-dry, but I was never interested in revenge—I was interested in freedom. And we have that now. We have the freedom to be the people we want to be. To love the people we want to love—as unconventional as our strange little family might be.
Jason turns back to me, and his blue eyes flicker over me, sizing me up.
“You want to come? We can bring Otto. Introduce him to the elephants.”
I bite my lip. “Can I think about it?”
“You, pretty lady, can do anything you like.”
He tilts his head to kiss me. It’s upside down and our lips mismatch, but it’s ever-so-sweet.
Our public display of affection is followed by a chorus of “Ewwwww!”
Otto and his best friend, Diego, Maria’s son, are at the front of the boat, swinging from a hammock attached to the jib and the mast.
“Hey!” Jason calls out. “Don’t make me come over there!”
“Or what?” Diego taunts. He’s a brave little boy, petulant at times, but I think his boldness rubs off on Otto, who is normally such a wallflower of a boy, in a good way.
“Or it’s overboard with yah!” Jason leaps into action, and in two long-legged strides he’s on the other side of the boat. He grabs Diego, hoists him out of the hammock, and dangles him over the edge of the boat.
Diego screams with laughter. “Otto! Help!”
Otto clambers out of the hammock and goes to rescue his friend. In only the past couple of months, he’s shot up. It’s like the new kidney packed a wallop of growth hormones. If he keeps this growth spurt up, he’ll be as tall as Jason by the time he hits high school.
As it is, he’s tall enough to “rescue” Diego. The two boys then proceed to “defeat” Jason by pushing him overboard. He pulls a perfect dive. When he hits the water, they cheer, and I roll my eyes.
Boys. I’m surrounded by boys.
“Diego! Play nice!”
Well, not entirely surrounded—Maria is my lone female compadre. Like me, she’s taken the precious downtime to read and sunbathe. She does it from her rental sailboat, Cisne, which is latched onto ours with a series on complex knots and ties. When she catches me looking at her, she rolls her eyes and huffs, “Boys!”
