Page 58 of Hot Dad Summer

“I’ve grown.”

“We all know why it’s the best summer.” Max said it without looking up from the cooler he was digging through. “Same reason the kitchen smells like vanilla.”

Nobody argued with him, they all just looked at each other and smiled. Nobody teased him for it either, which for this family was the same as a standing ovation. I stood in the doorway my hands clenching tighter around the towels and understood something I’d been too scared to look at straight. All summer I’d been terrified I was the crack running through this family. I’d never once added up what I might be mending.

The light was going gold by the time everyone was dried off and fed cake, including a dog-safe cupcake for the birthday criminal, who tried to eat it with the hat still on until Hazel held the chin strap back like she was holding a drunk friend’s hair.

I was gathering plates, half in and half out of my old pull to be useful, when Hank looked at me. One of his too-human looks he’d been aiming at Wes and Max all summer. He held it just long enough for me to feel seen, then heaved himself off his chair, stole Charlie’s towel right off his shoulders, and trotted for the dock with it. All three kids took off after him, screaming about revenge, until they were three small shapes and one set of enormous ears against the water. Leaving the porch to me and my three men. I’d swear on my stand mixer Hank did it on purpose.

We ended up tangled together on the porch swing in the last of the light. My feet rested in Flynn’s lap while his thumbs worked slowly over my arches, Wes had one arm stretched behind me along the back of the swing, and I’d somehow drifted into Max’s side with my head tucked against his shoulder.

“Next year we’re getting the big slip and slide for Hank’s birthday.” Flynn squeezed my ankle. “The forty-footer. They make a forty-footer.”

“Absolutely not,” Wes said. “Someone could have gotten injured.”

“I don’t know, you seemed to enjoy your ride,” Max teased.

Next year. The words just sat there warm as the grill coals, and nobody rushed to take them back. Not one of the three men around me so much as shifted his weight. I hadn’t cooked today. I hadn’t cleaned, because Max had slipped inside during cake and handled the kitchen without a word. I hadn’t earned a single minute of this day by working tirelessly, and they’d wanted me here anyway. Soaked and grass-stained, my hair and makeup now a complete mess, doing nothing but being theirs.

Max bent down and softly kissed my forehead. “You make this place feel more like home.”

And just like that the little white sign in the window of Sweetwater Sweets and Treats floated up in my mind, the way it had been doing for days. I tucked my face deeper into Max’s shoulder and made myself a promise. Tomorrow, or the day after, I was going to be brave one more time and ask the question about what comes after.

But that was tomorrow’s bravery. Tonight I had a warm shoulder under my cheek, a thumb on my ankle, three kids and a criminal in a paper crown laughing down at the water, and the certainty that it could not possibly get any better than this.

45

***Wes***

Ialways took a week off after the fourth and Daisy had me contemplating taking another whole week off. Max and Flynn were sticking just as close as I was and it felt strangely good to have something special with them. I’d helped raise them as best as I could after our dad died and it created a kind of separation between us as brothers. We were close but we’d each faced our own trials and horrors and done our best to handle everything alone. Daisy took the wall down between us. I felt like their brother again.

I’d worried about how selfish I was being by going after Daisy when my brothers cared for her. I’d been concerned that the gap between us would grow. Instead, I’d found myself having fun with them. We’d turned into kids, elbowing and shoving each other to get to Daisy first. Somehow, Daisy leveled the field and we were just three brothers chasing the same woman. And it worked.

“The kids are good. They barely let me out of the truck to say goodbye. They decided on the way over that Cam’s mom would love Hank and she agreed for some reason.” Flynn shook his head while grabbing an apron. “Twenty bucks says she called in ten minutes telling me to come get the dog. And possibly the kids, too, depending on what they get up to.”

I snorted. Charlie’s mom, Cameron, and her mom were great and often took all the kids instead of just Charlie. Hazel and Poppy loved both women almost as much as Charlie did so they liked going with him. Hazel had never told either of them she wished they were her new mom, though. She’d saved that for Daisy. My stomach still twisted when I thought about Hazel wanting a new mom because I hadn’t let her remember her own.

Flynn slapped me on the shoulder when he moved past me. “Look alive, Wes. Daisy will be back from her errand soon and if we don’t have most of this dinner done, she’s going to try to take over.”

“Too late.” Daisy walked into the kitchen in a pair of tiny shorts and a top that revealed a lot of cleavage and at least two inches of the pale, smooth skin of her stomach. She had most of her hair piled into some kind of updo with a bandana tied around her head and her bangs doing the intense curl she always did to them. She looked like a pin-up girl, the same way she always did, but edgier, like this version of her was trouble.

The shorts were so damn short that they might as well have been underwear and they made her legs look a mile long. Of course, she had on her normal heels. The combination was lethal. I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be doing once I spotted her.

She swept into the kitchen and bumped me out of the way with her hip so she could turn down the burner under the chicken. “This isn’t me taking over. This is me saving the chicken.”

If she expected me to keep my hands to myself, she was sadly mistaken. I gripped her hips and pulled her into my chest, tilting her head back and kissing her as I did. When she melted into me, I picked her up and put her down on the island so I could stand between her thighs. The same way it usually went with Daisy, I went from zero to needing to nail her to the counter in less than two seconds.

I cupped her ass and used my grip to rock her hips into mine while kissing across her bare shoulder. “Other men in town saw you in this outfit?”

She tugged at my hair so I’d lift my head to look at her. “Yep. I got three numbers and a marriage proposal.”

I saw red and heard Max growling somewhere close by. “Excuse me?”

Daisy’s laugh was light and genuinely amused. “I’m joking! No one looked at me anymore than they normally do and that’s just because of the style in general. Y’all can put your backs down. Or do you think that I’m greedy enough to need more than three men pawing at me?”

I kissed her between every few words. “It’s not you that we’re worried about. I hate the idea of anyone else looking at you and thinking they have a chance.”

Her eyes turned challenging. “Would you like me to wear some kind of sign that makes it clear that I’m taken by the Calloway Clan?”