Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 143842 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 719(@200wpm)___ 575(@250wpm)___ 479(@300wpm)
Pulling her son into something that he shouldn’t have to face.
But he remained solid at my side. Impenetrable. Refusing to leave.
“Who me?” Cody grinned. “Never caused a lick of trouble in my life.”
“And someone is straight delusional,” Dakota said, tilting me a wayward smile, like we were thick as thieves.
The oldest of friends.
“I have what’s called self-esteem, Dakota.”
“You mean a big, fat ego?” she tossed back.
“Cocky Cowboy.” I nudged him, playing too, and he pulled me even closer and went to tickling my side.
“Oh yeah? Say it now?”
I was cackling, flailing all over the place, this feeling spreading through me unlike I’d ever felt before.
Joy.
Joy.
Joy.
His smile went soft as he slowed, just the same as everyone else’s at the table as they watched us.
I tried to smooth out the disorder, to tame the redness on my face and the feeling that was bursting from my soul.
I wasn’t sure I could.
Not when Cody placed a big hand on the top of my thigh and grunted, “Might be cocky, but I’m your cowboy.”
God.
What was he doing to me?
I chewed at the inside of my lip as I caught his mother peeking over at us, and the same thing was blazing from her, too.
Joy.
“Can we go outside and play now?” Maddie came bouncing in from the living room where she was playing with Dakota’s son, Kayden.
The adorable little boy was right behind her, flapping his arms in the air. “I wanna swing, my Daddy Rye-Rye!”
Ryder didn’t hesitate, he stood. “Then let’s go, little man.”
My foundation cracked nearly all the way through when Cody stood, too. “Come on, Button, let’s go outside.”
Cody swept my giggling girl into his arms, peppering kisses all over her face as he carried her out into the heat of the summer day.
I just watched, unable to look away from the hope that radiated back, mine banging into his and the man emitting it right back.
A hand suddenly was on my wrist where I had it rested on the table. I looked to my right to Cody’s mother who sat between me and Dakota. She brushed her thumb over the back of my hand and whispered, “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Emotion clutched, and I could barely force out, “I am, too.”
“Wait a minute,” Maddie said, a sweet demand of excitement. “You got my favorite and your favorite?”
Maddie squealed it as Cody cut a big piece of pumpkin pie where he stood at the island of my kitchen later that evening.
He shook up the can of whipped cream and squirted a giant mound on top, swirling it up into a perfect peak.
He’d swung into the grocery store on our way back from his mother’s house earlier this afternoon. It was amazing that after everything that had been happening that we had found solace in the day, but it’d been there, this serenity that had lulled.
Respite.
“That’s right, Button, I got both our favorites,” Cody said, glancing down at her where she stood peering up at him.
She threaded her fingers together and lifted them up under her chin, her mouth stretched so wide that she showed off all her tiny, gapped teeth, ringlets bouncing around her cherub face. “You remembered all the really important things about me, my Mr. Cody?”
Devotion flooded the room, and I could feel his spirit swim.
He tapped at her nose. “How could I forget when you and your mom are my most important things?”
Her giggle was light, not quite grasping the magnitude of what he was saying, and she scrunched her shoulders up to her ears. “I like being that.”
“I like you being that, too,” he told her.
My spirit thrashed, and my grandmother leaned in and whispered from where she sat on a stool beside me, “Yeah, I bet you like being that, too.”
I did.
So much.
And I was so afraid of accepting it then losing it.
“Get on up there,” he told Maddie, gesturing to the stool on my opposite side.
Maddie climbed up, and she sat on her knees as Cody set the pumpkin pie in front of her.
He shifted to look at my grandmother. “What about you, Lolly? Do you have a favorite?”
“I wouldn’t mind a piece of that pumpkin pie.”
“On it.”
He prepared hers the same way as he’d prepared Maddie’s and set it in front of her.
“What about mine?” I asked, playing coy.
Cody set his big palms on the countertop and leaned my direction, that smirk that slayed me through firmly planted on his face, voice a coarse glide of arrogance and greed. “You get yours later, Shortcake.”
Redness splashed my cheeks and heat blistered across my flesh.
Anticipation had me shifting on my seat.
Lolly chuckled as she dug into the mountain of pumpkin pie and whipped cream on her plate, her grayed eyes gleaming as she looked between the two of us. “Yeah, I sure do like the way that reputation looks on you.”