Page 69 of Safe With Me
Somehow, he’d managed a Friday off, so we’d taken three days at the beach. Once we’d arrived home around supper time, we had a laundry room with sand on the floor, a pile of beach towels waiting to be washed after Sec and Hall’s clothes, and two tired two-year-olds to be bathed. Since Tate hated anything to do with laundry, he’d herded the boys into our bathtub.
“Mama!” Sec – because calling him Second had lasted maybe a month after he hadn’t looked like a Darby – dashed in from the bathroom, giggling and naked as the day he was born. I scooped him up and buried my face in his neck, soaking in his sweet wriggles and sweeter just-bathed scent.
Tate appeared in the doorway, white t-shirt damp and clinging to his chest, Hall anchored on his hip. Hall was Sec’s carbon copy – well, maybe that should be the other way around because Hall had come first, Sec following scant minutes later. Everything Tate had promised at Scott’s holiday party the nighthe’d told me he loved me had come true. He had proposed, and we had gotten married after being engaged a while.
We’d gone to the courthouse instead of planning a big wedding because we’d been saving for a house. Ultimately, we’d ended up buying my little rental house, and it worked well for us. I’d had some scary bleeding after the boys’ birth, passing out and everything and needing a transfusion. Pale and shaking, Tate had decreed the boys were enough and that we weredone. And you know how I love him, so I’d gone along.
So the small house was perfect for our small family.
I was a little sad, though, when we pulled in the driveway after coming back from Mexico Beach and the big lot behind us had aSoldmarker on the realty sign. I’d been coveting that land, dreaming about expanding my garden and maybe even opening . . .
Well, it had sold, so that was that.
“Boy, you are just like your mama.” Tate dropped a kiss on Sec’s curly hair, the same dark shade as his own, and tumbled Hall onto the bed where diapers and pajamas awaited both little boys. “Hard-headed as . . .”
I smirked at the way he swallowed the end of that. Hall was a little parrot, repeating everything he heard, and Sec usually followed up in a few days, like he had to think about what he heard. Tate’s language had cleaned upfast.
Shaking my head, I pinned my husband with a look, Sec grinning at him around the three tiny fingers he’d shoved in his mouth. He’d started that habit since we’d “lost” their pacifiers a week or so before.
“Sure. He gets that from me.” I elbowed Tate’s ribs, then laid Sec down to wrestle his giggling, wriggling little self into his pajamas. Hall, always more serious, grinned at his brother’s antics, but poked his arms and legs into the top and bottom Tateoffered. He was like a sedate old man sometimes, reminding me of my grandfather before he passed.
Kissing the bottoms of Sec’s feet, I eyed Tate as he smoothed Hall’s shirt down over a pudgy little belly. A grin lit his face, and I melted over the flex of his forearms, the way he loved our boys.
This –this– was everything I’d ever wanted.
Well, mostly.
I missed my sister, my sissy, the relationship I guess we’d never really had. I mourned having a mother who’d show up for my boys and be their grandma, although I really had that in Tilda, who had a mutual lovefest with our babies. I loved and appreciated her, but my heart yearned for the mama I’d never really had, too.
And I missed sharing my creativity with others, although since Sec and Hall had started half-day preschool a couple of times a week over at the Methodist Church (you didn’t have to be Methodist but everybody knew that was the best preschool in town), I’d found myself dreaming about a tiny little garden shop with local arts and pretty clothes, something like The Niche I’d had at the store, but tucked away in a sweet shed behind our home.
Except I’d have to let that dream go like my dreams of Mama and Elizabeth because now the land behind us had sold.
Oh, well. I’d learned life often looked different than what you expected – and that didn’t mean good things wouldn’t come.
Once upon a time, I’d expected to find my future husband in someone other than Tate Edwards because I’d given him over to the idea of Elizabeth, what I thought he wanted.
And look at us now – salty and travel-gritty and loving on the world’s two sweetest little boys.
After we’d settled the boys into their room, both of them curled up asleep in their toddler beds, clutching matchingstuffed rabbits, I tossed another load of laundry in the washer and gazed out at the back fence. I’d hoped to push that back, plant some rabbit tobacco and sage and lavender . . .
I sighed.
“What’s that about?” Tate popped the right cheek of my ass before reaching above my head for a trashbag. I knew him well enough to know all the travel clutter and the sand would be out of my SUV before we went to bed.
Wrinkling my nose, I shrugged. “I’m sad the lot sold.”
“Yeah.” Color flushed his cheekbones, and he scrubbed a hand over his nape. “About that.”
Arms crossed, I leaned on the washer and eyed him. What was up with that reaction?
He ran a hand along his stubble. “I, um, kinda used my farm bonus to buy it for you.”
My mouth dropped open. With my pulse thumping in my ears, maybe I’d heard him wrong. “What?”
“I probably should have talked to you first, but I figured I can drive my truck another two years at least. You kept looking at it, and I know you wanted a bigger garden area–”
I launched myself at him, pressing a hard kiss to his mouth. He stumbled back, arms coming around me, hugging me up against him while he kissed me back. I felt his lips move against mine in that wonderful smile of his.
