by Mary Calmes
“Stop sighing,” he grumbled at me even as he bent and kissed my nose.
Chapter Twelve
THE place Dane and Aja wanted to meet for brunch at eleven the following morning was downtown, and they were waiting outside for us when we came up the sidewalk. Gentry saw his mother when we got close and bolted toward her. I waved so she’d notice us, since she was talking to her husband, and then pointed at her kid. She knelt and held out her arms, and he slammed into her like little kids did, face in the side of her neck, and inhaled her scent as he hugged with everything he had. The look of absolute bliss on her face made it a picture-perfect moment.
Robert rushed to his father, and Dane hugged him tight before he and Aja switched kids. They both looked better, Aja rested, Dane smiling like he never did. Dane was more of a habitual scowl guy than cheerful. They had needed the weekend alone, and I made the offer again: anytime. Sam gave his slight nod so they knew that really, it was fine.
Quickly, so no one else saw, Aja whipped back the collar of her blouse, showed me a hickey, and then covered it back up. Dane turned to look at us when he heard my snicker.
“What?” I asked him.
“What?” she echoed.
He turned, brows furrowed, and gave both Aja and me a look before leading Hannah and Robert into the restaurant with Sam right behind him.
“So.” I smiled slowly at my sister-in-law.
She looked like the cat that swallowed the canary.
“Nice couple days? You sleep well?”
“Sleep?” She coughed.
I started laughing, and Sam glared back at us.
“Thank you for giving us a couple nights off.” She smiled at me.
“We don’t need it every week or even every month, but it’s nice to know we have the option.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And the same goes for you and the marshal.”
“Nah.” I shrugged. “We can just have a quickie in the car.”
And of course that came out right as we reached the table and the waitress had just asked if the table was good.
Sam groaned and let his head roll back and hit the booth. Dane went face-first into the palm of his hand.
“What’s a quickie?” Hannah wanted to know because she had scary cat ears, and she turned to look at her uncle in anticipation of an answer.
The waitress started giggling, Aja choked, and I told Hannah that a quickie was going through the drive-through.
She looked confused and her brother told her she’d understand when she was older. He looked very pleased with himself.
AFTER brunch, after clothes and backpacks got switched out, Dane told Sam how good it was to have him back and that he would expect to see him the following day in his office. Sam nodded and then they were gone.
“What are you meeting Dane about?”
“Oh, you know perfectly well what.”
I had no idea, and then it blinked into my head. “Oh, the house.”
“Yeah, the house,” he grumbled. “I should know better than to ask him to keep a secret from you.”
“Yes, you should,” I said pointedly. “And so?”
He wrapped his arms around Kola’s legs, as my son was sitting on his shoulders and I was carrying Hannah because her stomach hurt.
“So what do you think?”
“I think I love that house, but I don’t know if we can afford it.”
“You’ve always loved it.”
Yes, I had.
The large two-story Queen Anne located in Oak Park’s historic district was bigger than the house we were in now. It had close to thirty-five hundred square feet of living space, a big attic, high ceilings, hardwood floors, and a completely renovated basement with a washer and dryer. When I had first seen it, years ago when Dane and Aja moved in after they were married, I had been sick with jealousy. Of course, because it was my brother, I got over it, but when they had moved… the desire had kicked in all over again. The fact that Sam and I were so in sync that he had wanted it too, for me, for him, for the kids, made me deliriously happy. And I knew that Dane was basically selling it for a quarter of what it was worth, for a quarter of what he had paid, but I also knew that to him, that wasn’t the point.
“I’ve never seen you like this about something,” I said to Sam.
“I’ve never wanted anything for you guys like this.”
“You’ve been thinking about this for a while, huh?”
“Yeah, and I think we can swing it. The mortgage will be more than we’re paying now, but not by that much, not like by another grand.
And the house is bigger, and it’s in a better neighborhood, and the schools are good, and most importantly, your brother is giving us a deal.”
I turned so I could see his eyes.
“I finally get that Dane really does say exactly what he means.”
“It took you this long?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but now I know if he says he wants me to have the house for you and the kids because he appreciates me taking care of you all, even though it’s not his place to reward me for doing something I love, for doing something that’s part of my nature, I get it.”
“An epiphany. I think I’m getting all verklempt.”
“I am trying to have a serious conversation with you.”
“Yes, dear.”
He draped an arm around my shoulder and hauled me close, and it was nice, the four of us together, my family.
“So you were saying?”
“I want us to move. I want the house.”
“Okay.” I breathed in, leaning on him. “I do too. I’ve always loved that house. I was sick when they moved out of it.”
“I didn’t care that they moved, I just wanted to get there before he sold it. I knew he had offers even before they put the For Sale sign up.”
“And you asked him to do what?”
“Just hold onto it until I could get some capital together.”
I waited.
He sighed deeply. “Which your ass—”
“Carrying a kid,” I reminded him.
“Which your brother took to mean….” Sam coughed. “Doctor the reports so the marshal can afford it.”
I leaned my head back so I could kiss under the man’s jaw.
The contented rumble made me smile. “He’s really something.”
“Yes, he is.”
“I mean, he went off about a house needing people the same as people need a house… what is that?”
“He’s an architect. He believes that houses need to be loved to become homes.”
He groaned. “This is not about stature for me; it’s about the place I plan to raise my kids, where we’re going to spend our holidays and put lights up and take them down. It’s where I’m gonna be until I die.
We’re not moving to Florida or Arizona or someplace like that when we’re old. This is gonna be the place our kids will come back to when they go off to college, the place they’ll bring their families for holidays. You get that?”
“I do.”
“I just, it feels like home.”
“Then let’s do it. Tomorrow, go sign whatever you need to with Dane to get things started, and I’ll call Mrs. Souza, our Realtor, and get our place listed.”
He was really happy, and when I saw the joy, my stomach flipped over.
“You should have told me you wanted this so badly.”
“Yeah, I know. I promise to tell you next time.”
It didn’t matter, only the way I was being hugged, his warm breath caressing my ear, and the lips sliding over my cheek. That was all my brain was processing.
AS WE made our way back down the Magnificent Mile toward the loft, we stopped into Water Tower Place because I needed a new lunch box for Hannah, a dress for her for Thanksgiving, and a new backpack for Kola.
“What happened to the old one?” Sam asked me.
“Chilly,” Kola and Hannah said together.
“Really?”
; “You saw how he killed that pillow the other night,” Hannah told her father.
The pained expression I got made me throw up my hands. “What?
He’s a destructive force of nature. What do you want me to do?”
Sam shot himself in the head with his finger.
I rolled my eyes at him.
Shopping was fun for me, and Kola was a fan as well. Hannah and her father wanted to sit and eat ice cream. I finally gave up and told them we had to call it quits on the fun shopping because we had to go to the grocery store. Not surprisingly, they were no more excited to do that.
When we got home, I made the mistake of lying down on the couch and getting snuggly with Hannah instead of simply grabbing the car keys and heading right back out to go to the grocery store, which was not within walking distance.
“Are we going?” Sam asked me, but I could hear the humor in his voice.
“In just a second,” I promised, even though it was cold and overcast outside and all I wanted to do was curl up and not move.
“Your cat is in a ball in the middle of our bed.”
He had the right idea.
Sam made a fire and turned on the TV, and when he was done, he shoved both Hannah and me off the couch and took our spot.
“Daddy!” She was indignant.
He grunted at her.
I got back up and lay down on top of him, draping myself across his chest, my head under his chin. Hannah snuggled down in his left arm. Kola joined us, PSP in hand, head on the other end of the couch, his legs between mine, on top of Sam’s. We were a warm pile all crushed together, and I could not keep my eyes open.
“I like it when there are other people here,” Kola said after a few minutes of only the sound of football. “But I like it when it’s just us too.”
“Me too,” Sam said, and I felt the rumble of laughter deep in his chest.
“What?”
“Your daughter,” he said, and his grin was wide when I opened my eyes.
Head back, eyes closed, my sweet little angel was snoring like a drunken sailor.
“I told you,” Kola grumbled from the other end. “She’s really a boy in there. She farts too, you know.”
Yes, I knew.
WAKING up from a nap in the middle of the day is never good. You rise grouchy and ready to go back to bed. So I was in a foul mood as we headed over to the grocery store.
Once there, Sam and Kola went to get milk and bread and the rest of the essentials, and Hannah and I went to grab fruit. I had apples and grapes and I was picking out some bananas when someone said my name. Before I could turn, I felt a hand on my shoulder and then a gun—and I knew what one felt like firsthand—pressed to the middle of my back.
“Come with me.”
“Okay,” I said because I just wanted to get the man away from my girl.
“Pa.” Hannah looked up at me, tugging on my hand, trying to move me forward, only then seeing the man and trying to move around me to see my back. “Come on.”
“No, love,” I told her. “Go find Daddy.”
Her face wrinkled up and she started the blinking she always did before the tears.
“B,” I directed her as I felt the gun shoved hard against me, “run.”
She didn’t argue. She was feisty, my girl, but she understood what my tone meant, and the sound of my voice had left no room for argument. She bolted away from me to go find Sam. The idea of my munchkin alone in a store would normally have made my stomach hit the floor, but she had started to scream. I heard her—I was certain dogs all across the tristate area did too—as she began to wail for her father.
“Shit,” the guy muttered behind me, and I sent up a silent prayer that kidnapping kids had not been on his agenda. I had no idea what I would have done to keep my baby safe.
The man grabbed my bicep tight and walked me away from the produce department and then out the front door where a black sedan was idling halfway across the parking lot. We were close to it, almost on top of it, when the door opened. I saw dress pants, but no one leaned forward so I could see a face.
“Freeze!” I heard Sam yell from behind me.
It all happened so fast.
“Drop your weapon and get on the ground!” His furious roar blew through me.
My kidnapper shoved me forward at the same time, and only then did a man with a gun lean out.
All I had was my own body to shield Sam with to make sure that no bullets reached the man I loved.
“Drop!”
But the command hit me, and for once I didn’t second-guess him or worry or even think. Normally I acted, but I was so used to him now, to our life, to a clear division in our home. I did the everyday stuff, Sam did emergencies. I handled homework, he handled people with guns. It was our way. So he gave me an order and I obeyed it. I simply collapsed onto the asphalt.
There were shots and yelling. The car’s engine gunned, tires squealed, there was a volley of gunfire, and then, when I lifted my head up just a little, the car fishtailed and its back window exploded before it crashed into a parked car.
“Stay down!” Sam yelled as he pounded by me.
I watched him run to the car, stop, crouch down on the side, and yell from where he was, pressed behind the back door on the driver’s side. Anyone who could get out of the car needed to do it right fucking now before he started blowing holes in it.
There were sirens, then a whole wall of sound, and when I looked, I saw the driver’s side door open.
A gun was tossed out before a man emerged, fingers laced together on top of his head. He went instantly to his knees before Sam ordered him to spread-eagle on the ground.
As soon as the man complied, Sam yelled at whoever was left in the car to come out. He didn’t rush forward; he didn’t throw open doors, just waited. After another moment, the back door opened and a man fell out onto the ground. He was clutching his right shoulder, and there was a lot of blood.
Sam still didn’t move until there were police cars surrounding him. Officers swarmed the car, Sam pointed, and they ducked down and came around the other side. Doors were grabbed and flung open, and then I watched as a collective breath was taken and guns started being holstered. An ambulance parked, and only then, as I lifted up, did I realize that maybe five feet from me was a dead man.
It was a blur as Sam came loping back to me and dropped down on one knee.
“You’re amazing.” I caught my breath, beginning to shake.
“Baby, you listened.” He smiled big even as his voice cracked.
“For once, huh?”
“It was the perfect time to start,” he assured me as he crushed me in his arms, hugging me so hard I thought my ribs would snap. “Okay, come on, you gotta move.”
He dragged me to my feet, threw me over his shoulder in a fireman carry, and then yelled for help. Two officers were there fast, parting the crowd, and I was back in the store and being put down right inside the front door, off to the left, where the shopping carts were. It was also where Kola and Hannah were.
When the kids saw me, they ran. As soon as Sam put me down, I was mobbed by little people. Sam ordered the officers to guard me and the kids and not let anyone near, he didn’t care who it was.
“I’m authorizing deadly force, do you understand?”
They did.
Sam was gone then, charging back out through the doors.
“Pa, what happened?” Kola asked me, sitting down beside me on the floor, holding my hand between both of his. “Hannah said there was another man, but we didn’t see him.”
“It’s okay, I’m okay, he didn’t hurt me,” I told my son before turning to my girl. “You did a good job going to get Daddy, B. I’m so proud of you.”
She nodded, and I saw how puffy her eyes were then and guessed what had happened. As I pulled her into my lap, I looked back at my boy.
“Good job translating what she needed, Kola,” I told him. “I bet she was crying really hard and Daddy didn’t understand.”
His smile was huge. “He didn’t, but I did.”
I put a hand on his cheek. “Good job, love.”
He was beaming with pride, Hannah started hiccupping, and I clutched them both tight to me as chaos swirled around us.
As I listened to Kola talk to Hannah, tell her that when they got home, if she wanted, he would play Candy Land with her before bed, and felt her nod and start telling him who she wanted to be, the cold knot of fear in the pit of my stomach slowly started to unravel. There would be time to sort out my head later. Right that second, for the kids, I was their rock. I was fine, so they were fine. It was how it worked.
Who knew that someday I was going to be the grown-up?
Chapter Thirteen
I HAD to go home without Sam. There was no way around it. I was okay to drive; it was normal, and so I did it. Of course we had a police car in front of us and one behind us and four officers escorted us to the loft, which was thoroughly checked before we were allowed inside for the night.
Once we were home, I did normal things. We had dinner; I made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup with Goldfish. I had the kids take showers and get into their jammies. We got clothes out for the following morning, filled Kola’s new backpack with the things from the old one, and then, because Hannah didn’t want to play a game, we sat together on the couch and watched Schoolhouse Rock on DVD because Hannah liked the songs and Kola was getting the math.
Hannah fell asleep right after seven, which was her bedtime anyway, and I put Kola to bed at eight, which was his on school nights.
When there was a knock on the door, I checked the peephole and was surprised that standing next to one of the officers was Chaz.
I opened the door, and he looked pained. “What’s wrong?”
“You gotta go downstairs. Sam’s there. Me and Pat….” He stopped, looking down the hall as the elevator dinged and Pat got off.
He was jogging toward me when Chaz put a hand on my shoulder, returning my attention to him. “Okay, me and Pat are gonna stay with the kids. You need to go.”