Page 186 of Tenderfoot

I said no more.

Javi stared at me.

Gosh, he was so incredibly gorgeous.

I mean, really, my big, muscular, handsome, very manly man in my pink and green and velvet bedroom?

Seriously a turn on.

“Harlow,” he growled.

Ugh!

With no choice, I ran it down for him.

The worst part about doing that?

Javi listened with such intensity, it was like my words were feeding him. Like his dad and sister wanting him in their life was nourishment to him.

I skipped the part about how Austin looked at his daughter and how determined he was for his son to have a relationship with his girls. I also skipped a lot of what Julia said about Austin’s growing-up years, though I did tell him Tiffany gave Austin an unthinkable ultimatum, and I left it at that.

When I finished talking, Javi didn’t start.

So I smoothed my hand over his hair, ending it at his neck so I could stroke his jaw with my thumb.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I never knew.”

“Never knew what?”

“When she’d talk about him. Ma. Sometimes, she’d say he was the love of her life. Sometimes she’d say he was an assclown. When I was a kid, I’d have trouble knowing if she was lucid or not. So I never knew which way it really was. And then the illness took her, she stopped talking about him and barely made sense at all.”

“It can be both, you know,” I said carefully.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“I told Julia they had to wait for you to approach,” I said.

“Thanks, baby,” he whispered.

I caught him by the back of the neck to bring him closer before I shared, “So maybe there’s some evidence he’s a nice guy. Maybe he didn’t have any good choices and still made the wrong ones. You were not conflicted by how you felt about him before. This doesn’t have to change anything.”

“What if now, I don’t have any good choices and still make the wrong ones?”

Oh, my guy.

“Don’t let them get under your skin, sweetheart,” I advised. “You don’t have to look out for your mom anymore. You don’t have to look out for anyone, but yourself. Do what gives you peace of mind.”

“And you.”

“In this, I don’t factor. It’s all about you.”

“No, I mean, now I got you to look after.”

Oh boy.

As sweet as that was, I wasn’t sure about it.

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