AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Jude was right about one thing; she did regret her decision to leave but not for the reasons he’d outlined. She regretted her decision because she knew that legally Jude could take him for fifty percent of the time. He’d never even spent a full day with him before and now she was going to have to hand her son over to a man who, up until this point, had barely showed any interest in being a father.
As much as she wanted to fight him and say that he couldn’t just pop into their son’s life whenever he wanted to, that Jacob needed structure, the truth was, she knew she was going to give in to his demands. If she didn’t, he’d use all the money and power at his disposal to get as much time with their son as he legally could. Not because Jude had any desire to parent Jacob, but because he’d use their son to hurt her.
Thinking about not having Jacob two weeks out of each month made her want to hold her son and never let go.
“Jacob!” she called out as she extended her arms.
“Mama!” Jacob ran toward her at full speed.
She bent down, catching him as he leapt into her embrace. His tiny arms wrapped around her neck and she closed her eyes, soaking in the moment. It felt like yesterday the nurse was putting him in her arms after she delivered him.
How was it possible that he was going to be five soon?
Before she was ready to let him go, he started to wiggle, and she set him down.
As soon as his feet hit the ground, his chin lifted, and his brown eyes grew as wide as saucers as he looked at the castle. “Whoa! This is just like at Disneyworld!”
“Disneyworld is fake, this is real,” her mom corrected Jacob as she came around the black SUV.
“Hey, Mom.” Unlike the greeting she’d just had with her son, the two women did not hug.
Maternal and nurturing were not words anyone would use to describe Blanche Bardot. Avery couldn’t remember any time in her childhood that her mother had just spontaneously hugged her or told her she loved her. Thankfully she was better as a grandma. She did both of those all the time with Jacob.
Maybe she was trying to atone for her shortcomings as a mom, or maybe Jacob was just a lot more loveable than Avery had ever been.
“How was the flight?” Avery asked them both.
“We landed and are alive so it did the job.” Her mother didn’t hand out compliments easily, even to an airline.
Her mom turned her attention to the castle. Avery wondered what she thought of it since it was the first time she’d seen it, but her reaction was hidden behind oversized, black sunglasses.
“Sothisis what your daddy left you, huh?”
“Does it have a moat? And dragons?” Jacob asked.
“No, but there is a moat at the diner in town. And there’s a painting of a big dragon at a restaurant.” The Drawbridge Diner had a working moat and Lanterns, which had adopted a Tangled theme, had a large mural that included a dragon.
“Can we go eat there?”
“Sure,” Avery had already planned on taking them to Lanterns tonight. “Come on, let’s go to the carriage house so we can drop off your bags.”
“We don’t get to live in the castle?” Jacob asked as he wiped his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed.
She wondered if he was coming down with a cold. It would make sense considering he’d just spent a week at one of the biggest germ-ridden petri dishes on the planet.
“No, there’s going to be people working in there so we can’t sleep there. But after we get your bags dropped off, we can go explore it if you want.”
“Yes!” Jacob enthusiastically co-signed on that plan before taking off in a full-speed run in the direction Avery had indicated.
“The flight would have been much nicer if it was first class,” her mom commented as they walked down the path that led to the carriage house.
Jude always flew first class, and over the years that Avery had been with him, so had her mom, her son, and herself.
“I thought you said you were happy that I didn’t marry him.”
“I did, darlin’. But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the perks.”
Some people might take her mom’s comment as being harsh considering what Avery was going through. But for Blanche Bardot, that was downright supportive.
