with the intention of keeping my hands off Ella, and with one tirade, she had me teetering on the edge of self-control. It had been almost a year since I’d had sex, and my body was reminding me in a very hard, very painful way that the only woman I wanted was standing in front of me, complaining that I was in the friend zone.
“Okay, stop. You didn’t shove me into the friend zone; I put myself there. And the daddy zone, too. That’s on me. Not on you.”
“Then you’re stupid!” she yelled, her eyes alight with the cutest indignation. “I mean, the friend zone, not the dad stuff.”
“You’re so cute.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Oh damn, wrong choice of words.
“Cute? I’m cute? No, that’s the issue. I haven’t had my hair cut in a year, do you know how that feels? It’s not the hair—I’m not that vain—it’s the time, Beckett. The time it takes to invest in yourself as a woman, and I’m not a woman anymore. I abandoned my makeup, my Sunday-night candle baths, I haven’t slept a full night since Maisie’s diagnosis, and I’ve been stuck wearing pants for a month because I haven’t shaved my legs.”
“I like you in pants.”
“That’s not the point! It’s July, Beckett! July is for shorts and hikes and suntans, and being kissed under the moonlight. And I’m in jeans with no kisses, and my legs look like a Yeti somewhere in the Himalayas lent me his coat!”
“Wow, that’s…really visual.” Don’t laugh. Do. Not. Laugh.
Oh yeah, those nails were leaving marks.
“I’m not a woman anymore. I’m a mom. A mom who can’t be anything other than a mom because her kid might not live through the year.” She deflated like a popped balloon, her hands leaving my biceps and her head landing with a small thud against my chest. “God, I’m selfish.”
I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her in tight. “You’re not selfish. You’re human.”
“Hair doesn’t matter. Not on my legs or on my head. Not when Maisie doesn’t even have any. I told you, we get a month of downtime, and my brain just runs amok on crap that doesn’t matter.” She mumbled the words into my chest.
“It matters because you matter. You know when you’re on an airplane, and they tell you to put the oxygen mask on you first before your kids? This is that. If you only put the oxygen on your kid, then you pass out and can’t help them. Every once in a while, you have to take a breath, Ella, or you’re going to suffocate.”
“I’m okay. I just needed to get that out.”
“I know you are, and I can take it.”
She pulled back an inch and gave me a sexy-as-hell smirk.
“What?” I was almost afraid of her answer.
“Oh, nothing. It just doesn’t feel like I’m in the friend zone.” She shrugged.
Oh shit, I was hard, and I’d yanked her right against me.
“I never said I didn’t want you, Ella. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure I said the opposite. Nothing’s changed.”
She blew a long breath out through her lips, moving a strand of blond hair that had slipped free of her ponytail. “Yeah, and it doesn’t matter anyway. Hairy legs and all.”
“You’re killing me.” I took her hand and turned around, then left the residence with her in tow, winding our way to the front desk where Hailey was handling paperwork of some kind. “Hailey.”
“Beckett,” she said in a mock-serious voice.
“Take Ella right now to get her hair cut. Get her a massage, a seaweed bath, or whatever it is you girls like to do. Paint toenails, get new clothes, all of it. You have five hours, and then I need her at the courthouse. Can you do that?”
“Beckett—” Ella objected.
“Stop,” I pleaded. “You’re giving me the gift of your kids. Let me give you a few hours. And afterward, we’ll go out. To an actual restaurant with actual menus and no crayons on the table. No lawyers. No kids. Just us. And you’ll feel as pretty as you always are to me.”
“Ella, if you don’t jump this guy, I will,” Hailey stated.
Ella silenced her with a glare. “Hailey has to work.”
“I’ll handle the phones and guests,” I offered.
“You will?” Ella scrunched her mouth to the side just like Maisie. “And you won’t kill anyone who annoys you?”
“I will do my best to leave your business intact.” I pulled out my wallet and then handed Hailey my credit card. “Don’t give this to