between them and almost fell out of the hammock. “I’m grateful for all your help. You’re the most generous man I’ve ever met. But I don’t want our relationship to be that way. I don’t want to always be the one who needs help, who needs comforting. I know you think I’m a nut about this, but this has to be a two-way street.”
“I’m willing to make it whatever kind of street you want.”
She sighed. “It’s impossible.” She pushed herself up and out of the hammock and crossed the deck. One of the puppies chased her feet, attacking her shoelaces.
“It’s challenging,” he corrected her, coming up from behind and whispering in her ear. “But not impossible. You’re worth the effort.”
Kat tried stepping away from Ethan again, but she was right at the deck railing. “Maybe this isn’t the best time for me to get involved with someone. A couple of weeks ago I said I needed to take things slowly, but maybe we should cool things altogether until I’m in a better place. It’s hard for me to devote time to a relationship, when I’m still in survival mode.”
“So you want to wait until your life calms down?”
Did she?
“Kat, no one’s life really calms down. You always think it’s going to, but it doesn’t. And you keep putting plans off—that dream vacation, taking up a hobby, having a relationship—until pretty soon you’re old and you haven’t done any of the things you wanted to do. If you keep putting your life off until tomorrow, pretty soon you’ve got nothing but a whole pile of dreams you always wanted to realize, but didn’t.”
He was right. Should she shy away from a good man because the relationship was challenging? That seemed stupid.
Resigning herself, she leaned back against him. “You’re too smart for me.”
“Nah, I’m just irresistible.”
The back door opened, and Jasmine and Samantha bounded out onto the deck hand-in-hand. Jasmine, with her long, coltish legs, was head and shoulders taller than Samantha, but the younger girl kept pace.
“Ms. Holiday,” Jasmine said in her most polite voice, “can Samantha sleep over?”
Kat felt a momentary panic. Samantha had never managed a sleepover before. The one time she’d tried it, she’d been in tears at ten and had wanted to come home. But that had been last fall, and Sam had matured some since then.
Kat tried to gauge whether her daughter was in favor of this plan—or whether it was all Jasmine.
“Please, Mom?” Samantha said, answering that question. “I can go get my toothbrush and come right back.”
“She doesn’t even have to do that,” Jasmine said. “My dad always keeps extra toothbrushes around. And she can borrow a nightgown from me. My dad says it’s okay.”
“C’mon, Mom,” Ethan said. “Don’t be a wet blanket.”
Kat cast him a withering look that told him she didn’t like her maternal authority being usurped. “Okay,” she said, with misgivings, and both girls cheered. “But, Samantha, I need a word with you.”
Samantha looked a little wary, but she took Kat’s hand and allowed herself to be led to the other side of the deck. They sat on a built-in wood bench.
“You sure about this?” Kat asked.
Samantha nodded enthusiastically. “Jasmine has the best collection of Barbies I ever saw. And she’s nice to me. Most of the girls at school won’t even talk to first-graders. She said she always wanted a sister.”
“That’s very sweet of her. You’ll be extraspecial good?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You called me Mom, a minute ago, instead of Mommy,” Kat said. “What’s up with that?”
“Jasmine calls her mother Mom. Only babies say Mommy. I want to call you Mom.”
Her little girl was growing up. Kat wanted to scream no, no, no! “Okay. You are getting very grown up.”
She sent Samantha on her way, and the two friends ran back into the house giggling.
“It’s good to hear her laughing again,” she said to Ethan. “When I was a kid, I never did sleepovers.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “No one asked me. And I sure wasn’t going to ask someone over to my place.”
“Since Sam is with Jasmine, maybe we can do something together,” Ethan said.
Kat looked a bit startled by Ethan’s proposition. Even though she had to have known it was coming. He’d made his intentions abundantly clear, but he was still wary of moving too fast and scaring her away. No matter how impatient he was to take things further with her, he didn’t want to go where she wasn’t ready to go.
“We could just watch a movie or something. Preferably one that