Page 62 of Stowaway Whirlwind
Layla asks me, “This is the dress?”
I lightly trace my fingers down the bodice. “Yes, this is the dress.” A flicker of worry crosses my features when I ask, “How much is it?” There’s a small, white price tag dangling at my side, but when I reach for it, Layla snips it off with a tiny pair of sewing scissors and hides it behind her back.
Layla’s eyes twinkle with laughter. “That’s for Davis to worry about, not you.” She turns to walk behind the curtain, disappearing after saying, “Give me just a second.”
Though Layla hadn’t teared up when she saw me in my wedding dress like everyone else, her eyes are watery when she returns, having traded the price tag for Lily. Layla’s chin quivers as a solitary tear rolls down her right cheek.
Dolly rubs her hand up and down Layla’s upper arm, giving her a sad smile. Though I’m not privy to Layla’s situation, I can take a guess at what’s upset her, and my heart breaks a little.
“Dolly, can you help me with my dress?” I ask her instead of Layla, who had tightened her arms around Lily when I reached for her. “That’s if you don’t mind holding her a bit longer,” I say to Layla.
Layla nods, dipping her eyes to my daughter before closing them and kissing Layla’s crown as she rocks side to side.
“Thank you,” Layla says quietly once I’m re-dressed in my regular clothes, the gown whisked away by another employee for alterations. She kisses Lily one more time before passing her to me. “You have a beautiful family,” she says, biting her bottom lip to stop it from wobbling, then walks past the fitting room intothe employee area in the back, her arms wrapped around her middle.
* * *
Davis is distracted and lost in his head throughout dinner, which we picked up from a family-owned Tex-Mex restaurant in town. At first, I was worried that reality had come crashing down on him or something after paying for my wedding dress. After he changed into sweatpants, I went through his jeans pockets, looking for the receipt. I was sick to discover it cost over two thousand dollars, which I never would have been able to afford when I was a waitress in Nevada. But then he told me about his conversation with his sister, staring at his take-out container the whole time, and his mood suddenly made sense.
I get Lily settled for bed while Davis and Wyatt finish putting up the porch swing out front, working around the security company who came out late to install cameras on all sides of the house’s exterior. They’re also installing keypads on the front and back doors that automatically lock when closed and can only be unlocked by typing in a code, which no one will have but us.
With nothing else to do since Davis and I already cleaned up the kitchen, I lay back on the couch in the living room with the crochet afghan over my lap and search for a movie to watch while I wait. I finally selectHope Floats, one of my and Aunt Lydia’s favorites. I can’t seem to get her off my mind lately.
Halfway through the movie, Davis walks past. “We’re all done. I’m going to take a shower,” he whispers, even though Lily is in the bedroom and he doesn’t need to keep his voice down.
When thirty minutes pass without Davis’s return, I pause the movie and go in search of him. When I don’t find Davis in our room or either bathroom, I check the other two bedrooms,finding him in the one that used to belong to his sister. Davis had told me that Amanda had taken most of the furniture when she moved out, so there’s nothing but a few cardboard boxes of her leftover things that she didn’t want and still needs to be donated, along with his Dad’s things that Davis doesn’t need, but can’t bear to part with yet.
Davis is sitting in the dark with his back to the wall beneath the window that faces the side yard, holding a small wooden picture frame on his lap.
I shuffle toward him. “Are you ok?”
“Yeah,” he answers, bobbing his head, though he’s still eyeing the photograph dimly visible by the moon.
I sit next to him, legs crossed, and lean my head on his shoulder. The photograph is of him, his dad, and his sister on a small aluminum boat in the middle of a lake, each holding a fishing rod. Davis and his sister have small fish they caught on their hooks, smiling with several missing baby teeth. I’m guessing his mom is the one who took the picture, and I imagine it was a happy day, though I wonder why his sister didn’t take the framed photograph with her when she moved out.
I twist to kiss Davis’s cheek. I know there has to be more to the story about his sister’s estrangement. “Want to talk about it?”
“Nothing to talk about,” he says with a long sigh, then sets the frame back inside the closest box.
Heart in my throat, I say, “Rule number four: we do not lie to each other.”
Davis finally cracks a smile. “That’s a good rule. Which reminds me…” Davis moves faster than I can react, hauling me across his lap on my stomach. He smacks my left asscheek. “That’s one.”
“Davis!” I put my hands behind my back over my butt to stop him from spanking me again.
“You just earned yourself another.” He grabs my wrists with one hand and smacks my right cheek. “Four more to go.”
I manage to yank my wrists out of his hold and scramble off his lap, barely getting to my feet to rush out of the room before he lumbers upright. I giggle when he nearly catches me in the hallway, and with a burst of speed, I run past the couch to put it between the two of us.
“And another for running from Daddy,” he says, giving me a sexy, slightly sinister smile, then dodging to my right.
I dodge left. “You’d have to catch me first, Daddy.”
We circle the couch twice, and I laugh each time one of his feints to the side fails. My eyes widen when he smirks, then launches himselfoverthe couch like a track athlete jumping a hurdle. He manages to brush the back of my hoodie before I’ve made it out of the front door. The exterior lights flick on when I jump from the front porch and run to hide behind the Ford.
Davis looks positively wicked as he rounds the truck, then stalks me down the driveway, backlit by the flood light as his bare chest heaves. Thanks to a head start, I might have been able to get away from him in the house, but out here in the open? I don’t stand a chance.
Davis
