A few more claps erupted from the crowd, and I looked around, embarrassed, seeing many familiar faces. My cheeks flamed.
“But she’s decided recently that whatever she’s looking for in her life, Singletree can’t give it to her. And she’s going to leave.”
There were a few boos at this and I felt my blush doubling at all the attention. I shrugged in apology.
“I’m really hoping though, that maybe I can convince her to stay.”
“What?” The word was a whisper, and I turned back to Cormac.
“See, Paige is my neighbor. And she’s been so much more than that. She’s been an incredible friend too. She’s been my doctor …” he trailed off and the gym was silent for a moment. “But over the past few weeks, she’s become so much more important than that to me. To my family.
“I don’t know how many of you know me. But I’m Cormac Whitewood. I moved here with my wife about seven years ago. Linda.”
A knowing murmur moved through the crowd.
“We moved to Singletree because it reminded my wife of the small town where she grew up. And we had two little girls here. For them, this is the only home they’ve ever known. And it’s a great place to raise kids.”
The crowd agreed. Cormac and the kangaroo seemed to be settling into their roles at the front of the cakewalk, and I marveled at how handsome he was up there, and at the way he had of making everyone see his side, want to support him.
“Well, Linda died a few years back, and it was awful. And since then, things have been pretty hard for me and the girls.”
I glanced at Maddie and Taylor, who were both staring open-mouthed at their father up on the stage. April had a hand on each of their shoulders.
“Hard for the kangaroo too,” someone up front suggested.
“And maybe for Frederick too,” Cormac agreed. “And I guess maybe I got it into my head that I didn’t ever want to suffer that kind of loss again, and that it was my job to be sure my girls never did either. I wanted to protect them from pain—protect myself. Because I honestly wasn’t sure I’d survive another loss like that.”
He paused, and his eyes found mine again. Tears pushed to the corners of my eyes and my heart thundered in my chest. I didn’t dare to hope that whatever he was saying was what I wanted to hear, but I couldn’t stop myself from wishing. My hands found each other and I twisted my fingers together nervously.
“And so I did something stupid. When I met a woman—someone smart and funny, someone warm and caring. When I met Paige Tanner, I decided it would be best to shut her out.”
“Moron!” Someone yelled.
Cormac smiled. “Yeah. I am. And I’ve just realized it. See, over the course of a pretty short time, Paige has become really important to me, and to my girls too, I think.” He looked toward his family for their assent, and Maddie nodded her curly little head. Callan shot his brother a thumbs up.
My body had begun to feel light, and I had the sensation of floating. Was this really happening? I couldn’t tear my eyes from the handsome man on the stage, the man saying the words I desperately wanted him to say.
“Anyway, I guess I’d better get on with this.”
Surprisingly, the crowd didn’t agree. “Take the time you need,” a woman toward the front called out.
“So here’s the thing,” Cormac said, looking around again and then catching my eye. “I just realized it’s too late. I’m in love with you, Paige. And I think the girls are too. And I hate that you’re leaving because it means I’ve failed at the thing I said I would do—I said I’d protect my family from suffering that kind of loss again, but here we are.
“I realized just now, with the help of this kangaroo, that I had never actually tried to stop you from going. I’d just accepted that you would, and let my girls and my heart get smashed in the process. But maybe there’s a chance if I were to ask you, you might stay?”
Cormac sounded so uncertain, my heart nearly shattered. He had no idea how much I’d wanted to hear those words from him. But now that the whole crowd was turning to stare at me, I had no idea what to say.
Words crowded my throat as the tears rushed to my eyes, and suddenly Leslie was at my side, guiding me toward the front of the room.
I wanted to speak, but I was literally choked up. I met Cormac’s eyes as we got close to the platform, and the room stopped buzzing as I found security there.
He reached a hand down, and Leslie basically pushed me up the step onto the small stage between Cormac and Frederick.
“I …” I trailed off, glancing at the huge crowd again, and still feeling separate from my body.
“She’s just nervous,” Leslie told Cormac, stepping toward him. “Here,” she said, taking the microphone from him. She turned and tucked the mic into the pouch on Frederick’s front. “This is a lady kangaroo, you know,” she said. “She can hold this for you.”
Cormac took my hands in his as Leslie stepped back into the crowd.
“Paige,” he said, the mic in the kangaroo’s pouch still catching his voice so the entire gym could hear. “I’m in love with you, and if you go, you’ll take my heart with you. I know it’s something you’ve been planning for a long time, and I won’t try to stop you if it’s what you really want, if it’s what you need. But I would never forgive myself if I just let it happen. If I didn’t at least ask. Would you consider staying?”
Everything inside me unspooled, and the tears slipped down my cheeks. I shut my eyes for a long moment, only because the dreams I’d had for myself were tangling with all the plans I’d made, and for that long moment, it was hard to identify exactly what was real.
Here was a man—someone I was pretty sure I loved—asking me to stay. For him. For us.
And here I was—a strong, determined, independent woman who’d made plans for herself. For her career.
Plans that felt hollow and empty because they’d also been made in hopes that by expanding my horizons I could also meet someone who would want to share them with me.
But he was already here.
I opened my eyes and when I met his warm golden gaze, all I felt was certainty. “Yes,” I said slowly. “I don’t want to go anywhere. Not really.”
A tiny smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “So you’ll stay? Give us a chance?”
Emotion clogged my throat and my chest felt like it was close to exploding, both because I could barely breathe, and because there was so much hope and happiness inside me I wasn’t sure I could contain it.
“Yes!” I said again, louder, and then I didn’t need to worry about talking because Cormac pulled me into his arms, and held me, his strong broad chest making all the promises I’d ever hoped to hear from a man I loved.
“Keep it PC!” someone called as Cormac pulled back to kiss me.
“Kiss her, Daddy!” I glanced to the side to see Taylor standing at the edge of the platform, her little hands clasped in front of her chest and a bright smile on her face.
“This is okay with you, Taylor?” I asked, stepping away from Cormac slightly to talk to the little girl who’d been so worried I might try to take her mother’s place.
She nodded and pointed to Cormac. “He’s happier when you’re here. And me too.”
Maddie burst from the crowd then to stand next to her sister, smiling and holding her quokka, and Cormac stepped down from the platform, taking my hand as he pulled us toward his daughters. We knelt together on the floor and the girls threw themselves into our arms. And in that embrace, a mixture of strong sure man, tiny little girls, and exotic Australian animals, I felt the future.
It was bright and beautiful and smelled a lot like cake.
Epilogue
Cormac
One month later
* * *
Telling Paige Tanner I loved her in front of the entire town with a kangaroo sidekick was the best thing I ever did. For one thing, I got the girl, but for another—it made me a minor celebrity around Singletree and inspired a few people too.
>
There was now a Cormac Bucket at The Shack—evidently they’d wanted the bucket to contain fried kangaroo, but importing kangaroo to fry was as illegal as importing it to stuff, so the proprietors of the place settled for fried alligator instead. That was about as exotic as this place got.
More important than having a bucket named after me though, was getting Paige to give me a real chance.
We’d gone back to the street that night, spent a few minutes making out on the sidewalk while Callan promised to distract the girls inside, and then Paige had promised to unpack her car and stay in town for a while. And so the next day, we’d had coffee together in her back yard while the dogs and girls romped, and tried to figure out how to move forward.
Dating seriously when you have two small girls to worry about isn’t as easy as one might like, but over the course of the next month, we began to figure it out.
“Pick you up at six?” I said into the phone as I sat on the floor in front of the television inside a tent the girls and I had made over the course of a long rainy May afternoon.
“Sounds perfect,” Paige said. “Amber should be over by five-forty to watch the girls.” I smiled as I put down my phone. Even Paige’s voice made me feel lighter. She was so sure and confident, but her voice was always light and soft.
“You goin’ to take Dr. Paige to get your bucket?” Maddie asked, clambering into my lap. As soon as she was there, Taylor added several stuffed animals, including the quokka and a new koala that had arrived recently as a thank you gift for Antoine’s tax return being processed successfully.
“I am taking Paige to dinner,” I said. “But not to get the bucket.”
The girls had insisted on ordering my bucket several times, but neither of them would actually agree to eat alligator once it arrived.
“Do we hafta go to Uncle Callan’s?” Taylor looked up at me with pleading eyes.
“Not tonight. Tonight Paige’s sister Amber is coming to hang out with you guys,” I told them, eyeing my phone as it rang again with Paige’s name lighting the screen. “What’s up?” I asked, picking it up.
“Amber just called. She’s sick.”
Those words sent all images of Paige and I at a small table in a darkened corner of a romantic restaurant flying from my head. “Oh,” I said, trying not to sound too disappointed. “Well,” I began. “You could just come here.” Other images were protesting on their way out of my head too, like the ones that had me pinning Paige to her bed across the street after dinner, the ones that featured my hands exploring every inch of her soft skin and my body pressed against hers.
“It won’t be too much for the girls, you don’t think?”
Paige was still careful about pressing herself on the girls, wary about giving them the idea she was trying to slide into Linda’s place. I’d talked to them about it all lots of times, but Paige’s nature was to be careful, and I appreciated it.
“I will ask them,” I said, confident about the answer already. I moved the phone from my mouth. “Girls,” I said, and two sets of wide eyes found mine. “What if Paige came here instead of us going to dinner? Would that be okay with you? We could order something here.”
“Pizza!” Maddie yelled, and I frowned at the phone, hoping Paige would still be able to hear after that outburst.
“Fly food!” Taylor argued. She meant Thai, but there had been a bit of confusion last time we’d had it delivered.
“So that’s a yes?” I asked.
“Only if we can eat in the tent,” Taylor said, sensing she had some negotiating power suddenly.
I put the phone back to my ear. “We have to eat inside a tent.”
“That sounds like fun,” Paige said.
“Then we’re on. Come whenever. Bring Bobo. Luke wants a playdate too.” Luke lifted his head from where it lay at the entrance to the tent and raised an eyebrow at me.
We did end up eating in the tent, much to the delight of my daughters, and the dogs ran around out in the rain for a bit before curling up side by side in the corner of the living room. It was hours later, when the girls were in bed and the soft snarfing snores of the dogs filled the living room, that Paige and I sat cross-legged, facing one another inside the tent. The sheet walls of the structure glowed with the lights from the kitchen, and the fairy lights the girls had brought in twinkled around us like scattered stars laying on the carpet.
“I had fun tonight,” Paige said, holding my hands in hers between us as our knees touched.
“Dating with kids,” I said. “Always an adventure.”
Her smile didn’t falter. “It is, though. Your life … I mean, I know it’s complicated and messy sometimes—you have two other humans to look out for. But it’s also spontaneous and wonderful and fun.”
“You like eating Thai food inside a fort made of sheets and pillows?”
She grinned. “I do, actually. And I would never have done it without you guys.”
I sighed. Sometimes I felt guilty for dragging Paige into the complications of parenthood when they weren’t even her children. “I would never give them back in a million years,” I said. “But sometimes, I just wish we could date like young single people—stay in bed on the weekends, go out on a whim …” I thought about it a lot, about all the things I couldn’t give Paige that I wanted to.
She shook her head. “I don’t.” She squeezed my hands and scooted even closer, leaning into me. “Don’t you see how lucky you are?” Her gaze moved around the little tent and then found mine again. “You have it all, and so do I. Those little girls are giving us both a second chance.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant, and I felt the frown cross my face.
“I don’t remember so much about growing up. I took all the magical little moments for granted. They were just part of a day, right? But now, every minute with them reminds me of what it was like to find wonder in the small things, to not need much besides a couple pillows and a sheet to turn your world into a magical castle—to really only want to know that you’re safe and loved in order to be happy.” She gave me a meaningful look. “I love being part of their lives, because in a way, I can experience that joy again. With you.”
“I know what you mean,” I agreed. “I’ve just been in the trenches longer, I guess. I forget.”
“I know,” she said. “And I know maybe it’s hard sometimes, having me here instead of Linda.”
We’d grown comfortable talking about my wife, my life before. But this wasn’t an accurate statement. I shook my head. “It’s not, actually. Maybe at first a little. But you fit, Paige. You fit us all perfectly. And it’s not like you’re in her spot, nothing like that. You’re in your own spot, and I know the girls feel that too. Our lives are so much better with you in them—and it isn’t as if you’ve replaced Linda, not at all. We still have her, her legacy, her memories. But now we get you too.”
Paige glowed in the dim light and my fingers itched to trace her jaw, to bury themselves in that thick mane of hair.
“And if all you need to be happy is to know that you are safe and loved,” I went on, cupping her jaw and leaning in closer. “Then you’ve got it.”
I pressed my lips to hers and the same thrill flittered through me as the first time I’d kissed her.
She responded immediately, her arms sliding around my neck and her mouth opening to mine, her lips soft and firm. We kissed for a few minutes, and then Paige tugged me slightly, pulling my weight over hers as she lay down on her back inside the tent, her hair fanning out around her and catching glints of gold from the fairy lights.
I pulled away, my arms still around her, so that I could look at her here, inside the makeshift tent on the floor in my living room. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” I told her. “I love you, Paige.”
“I love you too,” she said, smiling up at me like my very own fairy princess.
There were several exotic animals lining the walls of the tent watching us, but they didn’t stop me from running my hands over eve
ry inch of Paige’s body as I peeled her sweater from her torso and pulled the leggings from her long muscular legs. Even the questioning gaze of the koala didn’t keep me from kissing my way up her inner thighs and tasting the sweet center of her as Paige gasped lightly and fisted my hair.
Even Bobo’s low growling just outside the thin walls of our tent didn’t cause me to pause as I lifted myself over her and then pressed inch by inch into the soft wetness of her and burying myself there.
“God, you feel good,” I told her, practically sighing in contentment as I held myself there, not moving for what felt like an eternity.
“So good,” Paige agreed, and she clenched me so deep inside I couldn’t stay still any longer, and together we moved in the glow of the lights, sighing and moaning quietly to the tune of Bobo’s disapproval, until finally we both found release. It was sexy and sweet, restrained and still so unbearably hot.
As I spiraled back down to the slightly sweaty comfort of Paige’s arms, I realized I’d lost myself for a few minutes there. “Was I yelling?” I asked, suddenly worried I might have lost control entirely.
Paige giggled and pulled me tighter. “No, not yelling,” she said.
“Was I loud?” I was worried the girls might’ve heard—the constant fear one suffered when having sex in a house populated by tiny people.
She shook her head and kissed me again. “You were perfect, Cormac. You are always perfect.”
And together we lay for a few minutes longer in the safety and shelter of our love, surrounded by exotic animals—living and stuffed—and sure in the knowledge that while life wasn’t exactly perfect, it was as good as any fairy story we could imagine.
**
Want more Singletree? Read on for a sneak peek at the next story in the series — Addison and Michael’s - Falling Into Forever!
FALLING INTO FOREVER
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Chapter One - Pumpkin Spice Day
Michael
Second Chance Spring Page 21