Page 458 of Small Town Firsts
And the girls are all in bikinis. I’m good.
Guess I’d need my mom to definitely work on Cam. The text conversation went into overdrive as my brothers continued to spiral with the stripper topic.
I wish I’d never taken my damn shirt off.
Then again, I did wish for more jobs. And now I had more than I could handle in a month.
By the time I was out of the shower and dressed, the chat had devolved into baseball scores and NBA brackets for the upcoming playoffs.
I skimmed the texts and pocketed my phone on my way out the back door.
It was almost an hour before Nora would show up, but it gave me some time to reply to a few messages from the booking app. My face felt as if it was on fire by the time I got through a dozen of the jobs. Most of them were women—also a handful of men—all with colorful notes added to the job.
I checked over the railing of my deck to find Danny flat on his back, with a snoozing Trouble draped over his stomach. He looked happy. There were more and more moments of it, of course, but that was the first time he’d looked so carefree. And without his Switch was definitely a plus.
I headed down the stairs to where they were and dropped onto the ground beside them.
Danny stiffened a moment, before he relaxed again and laced his hands behind his neck. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, bud. How was school today?”
He shrugged. “The substitute teacher is really nice.”
“Yeah? Girl or guy?”
“Miss Stacey. She’s super pretty.”
I turned my head to grin at him. “Is that so?”
His face reddened. “Yeah, it’s no big deal.”
“My prettiest teacher was Mrs. Gallows. Red hair like a cloud and loved to use colorful chalk on the board. Pretty sure she’s the only reason I know the difference between your and you’re.”
Danny was quiet, but his bright blue eyes were trained on me for once. “Did you go to my school?”
“Sure did.”
He turned his gaze back to the sky. “I like school. Mom never let me go.”
My chest ached. I mirrored his pose with his laced fingers behind his neck and stared up at the sky with him. “You never have to leave school again.” My voice was rough, and I had to swallow down the lump.
“Good.”
Trouble flopped between us and stuck his head into the crook of Danny’s neck until he was laughing.
And damn, that sounded good to me.
EIGHT
NORA
I was a little early.I forgot how everything was so close together in town.
I grabbed the bouquet of Gerbera daisies and the bakery box on my passenger seat and got out. A dog barked as I shut my door. I glanced over at the yard and found Sully and Danny laying on the grass. They both sat up and I was struck by how alike they looked.
And then came the double shot of longing I’d never felt before.
What would it be like to have a man like Sully and his mini me?
