Make Me Yours (Bellamy Creek #2) - Melanie Harlow Page 0,15
if they bought the one with the doghouse in the yard.
“Ooh, you should go down to the shelter and pick one out,” I said. During the summer, when I wasn’t teaching, I volunteered at a local shelter. Once I had my own place, I couldn’t wait to rescue a couple animals.
“Can we, Daddy?”
“We’ll see,” said Cole, setting down a glue stick. “Okay, I think I’m done.”
“No, you’re not, you have to write things you’re thankful for on the feathers,” insisted Mariah. “Like this.” She held up her turkey so we could read the words she’d carefully printed. Her feathers read, FAMILY, HOME, SCHOOL, NEIGHBORS, SHELTER DOG.
“You don’t have a dog yet,” Cole pointed out. “Shelter or otherwise.”
“I know.” Mariah closed her eyes. “I’m trying to manifest it by positive thinking.”
I laughed. “Those are good choices, Mariah. And there’s nothing wrong with positive thinking.” Maybe I could manifest sex with Cole if I wrote it on my turkey.
Cole quickly scribbled words on his feathers and held it up. “Okay, here are mine.”
I leaned forward so I could see them better and grinned. They read, FAMILY, FRIENDS, BASEBALL, TAX REFUNDS, BEER.
“Dad,” Mariah scoffed. “You can’t say beer.”
“Why not?” He picked up his beer and took a sip. “It’s one of my favorite things.”
“Because this is supposed to be for kids.”
“Oh.” Cole picked up a marker, crossed out BEER with an X, and wrote MILK. Then he wrote NOT FOR KIDS with a little arrow pointing to the crossed-out word.
“Now it looks even worse,” Mariah said, giggling.
“That’s okay, Mariah,” I said. “I’ll use yours for the example. And mine.” I finished labeling my feathers and held my turkey up. “What do you think?”
“Family, friends, students, holidays, love,” Mariah recited. Then she smiled in approval. “Those are good. Better than my dad’s.”
Cole crumpled up a piece of construction paper and threw it at his daughter like a snowball. “Enough, you. It’s time for bed. Let’s get this table cleaned up.”
“I’ll clean it up,” I said, rising to my feet and reaching to gather up all the scraps. “You can put Mariah to bed.”
“She can help,” Cole insisted, taking his maligned turkey over to the fridge and sticking it onto the front with a magnet. “Mariah, return Grandma’s scissors to her junk drawer and put the glue sticks and extra paper back in the craft cupboard.”
“Okay.”
A couple minutes later, the table had been cleared except for my wine glass and Cole’s beer bottle. “Say goodnight to Miss Cheyenne, and get upstairs,” Cole told his daughter.
“Can’t she come up and say goodnight like she did before?” Mariah asked.
Exhaling, Cole looked at me. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all,” I said. “That gives me a chance to finish my wine. I’ll come up in five minutes?”
“Great!” Mariah grinned and scooted out of the kitchen, and I sat down again.
Cole lowered himself into the seat next to me. “Thanks for staying.”
“No problem.” I picked up my wine and took a sip. “I didn’t realize how much I needed this.”
He laughed. “Stressful day?”
I shrugged. “My mom is a little extra these days, with Thanksgiving this week, and my brother’s wedding in two weeks, and then Christmas not long after that. But with Griffin well on his way to giving her the grandchildren she’s always wanted, you’d think she’d let up on me a little, but no.”
“No?”
I shook my head. “Yesterday she left this pamphlet on the kitchen table called ‘Beating the Biological Clock.’”
Cole winced. “Ouch.”
“Tell me about it. I was so furious, I crumpled it up and threw it away right in front of her. And then late last night, of course, I got out of bed, dug it out of the trash, and read the whole damn thing front to back. And it turns out she’s sort of right! Women lose, like, a thousand eggs a month, and peak fertility occurs when girls are between the ages of eighteen and thirty.” I tossed back the rest of my wine—so much for taking it slow—then set the glass on the table with a plunk. “And you know what else? Men continue to make sperm and testosterone at virtually the same rates throughout their entire lives. So not only is the asshole biological clock a real thing, it’s a real thing only women have to deal with.”
“Sorry,” he said.
I looked at him, and his expression was so contrite I had to laugh. “It’s not your fault. And I don’t think my body is shriveling up and wasting away that quickly. I