AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My heart pounds as Bree’s gaze meets mine again, green eyes alight with some unreadable emotion.
“Why not?” I ask before I can lose my nerve.
She shakes her head adamantly. “I can’t go to your stuffy function stuff. It’s not me.”
“You went to plenty of your father’s ‘stuffy stuff,’” I counter, making air quotes.
A pained look flits across her face. “And I hated every moment.” She lets out a small sigh, her shoulders slumping slightly. “It’ll be full of people whose heads are too far up their own butts.”
“Like me?” I ask with a smile.
“Yeah. Grumpy, old people.”
“I’m thirty-five years old. I’m hardly old.”
She grins. “Everyone will be old compared to me.”
I forget she’s only twenty-two years old. Some days she seems much older. She’s wiser than she gives herself credit. But then she can get on her hands and knees and play with my girls and not worry about how she looks as long as she makes them smile.
“Anyway, I don’t think I own the right attire for a posh work function.” Her sweet voice takes me out of my musing and she gives me a self-conscious shrug. “I have nothing to wear.”
Seizing my chance, I grin at the girls. “Should we go shopping then, ladies?”
Hettie and Havana shriek.
Bree’s head whips up, eyes widening almost comically, but I just wink at her. She’s not getting away that easily, not if I have anything to say about it.
“Can we buy a toy?” Hettie asks.
“And ice-cream?” Havana pushes.
“An elephant and an ice-cream?”
“Of course.”
“Dr. Havers, is that any way to show your daughters how to behave?”
“Yeah! We’re going shopping,” Havana gives Bree a big hug.
We finish lunch and take the girls around the last part of the zoo before we stroll back to the car with two very exhausted girls in our arms.
“That was sly,” Bree says after we each belt one girl each into her car seat. “You used treats on them to get to me.”
“I did.” We pass at the rear of the car. I lean low and whisper in my ear, “And call me Bast. Dr. Havers is for when you’re misbehaving.”
“Misbehaving. I’m a good girl.” Her eyes widen. Her face goes crimson as she realizes what she’s said, and what I said.
“Are you?”
A ripple runs down her throat as she rushes past me and gets into the passenger seat, dragging the seat belt over her body.
I smile as I get into the car.
“Let’s get Bree some clothes.”
“Thanks for letting the girls stay over. We know how hard it is for you after...” James, my father-in-law, pauses, his brown eyes staring into mine with apprehension. “And it’ll help Marie. She still struggles to this day.”
My heart clenches at the reminder of how deeply my wife’s death two years ago affected her mother. Marie gives a small, pained smile.
