Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,43

I’d pleasure myself next to him.

“You’re allowed to want sex, Bridget,” Marley said, voice soft. “You’re not even forty. You’re smokin’ hot. There’s more to you than being a wife, widow, or mother. You’re allowed to live even after he died.”

I glanced over at the house again. “Am I?” I asked myself more than her.

10

“Hey, Bridget!” Luna called after the door slammed behind her.

“Hey!” I called back, a warmth coming from her voice echoing throughout the house. I liked the fact that she entered without knocking. That she called out with happiness in her voice. The impossible had happened—I liked a teenage girl.

She sauntered into the kitchen where I was chopping up vegetables for dinner.

‘Sauntered’ was the only way to describe how Luna walked. She had a confidence that not many sixteen-year-old girls possessed. A real, natural confidence. Not something forced or learned.

She was wearing tailored pants, pink heels, and a pink silk blouse. Her blonde hair was pulled back severely from her face in a way that should’ve aged her yet made her look like a fresh-faced Kate Moss in the early nineties.

I frowned at her. “How the heck do you have that kind of style at sixteen when I was wearing Doc Martens and had regrettable bangs?” I asked. “It should be illegal.”

She grinned, leaning over to snatch a carrot from the chopping board. “Fashion is the only area where I have it together. I’m a mess everywhere else.”

“Good,” I declared with faux relief. “I was going to make an anonymous call to the FBI to tell them I had a very powerful witch pretending to be a teenager living next door.”

She smiled even wider. “If I ever get powers, don’t worry, I’ll share them all.”

She settled at the breakfast bar with ease, with a comfort I was glad I could offer her. Despite her wide smile, her fresh face, her easy laughter, she had a sadness to her. A deep kind of sadness that a girl her age shouldn’t have. And she was a good kid. She had an energy to her that was just special.

“Ryder’s gone out to get some backup dinner,” I informed her.

She tilted her head. “Backup dinner?”

I nodded to the chopping board. “I have a sixty percent chance of screwing this up, so we always have some kind of backup so my kids don’t end up starved or suffering from scurvy.” I winked. “David was always the cook of the family.”

Her eyes darkened ever so slightly. With sadness. Knowing. I wondered how much Ryder had told her about his father. I knew he didn’t speak much to me about it. As much as I worried what was going on in my boy’s head, I didn’t want to push him. He didn’t want to see the therapist I’d gently recommended, so what was I supposed to do? Force him to go? To speak on how his grief was affecting his everyday life? I didn’t know the right move here.

“Do you miss him?” she asked, her voice soft.

I smiled at her. “Every moment.”

She tilted her head at me, regarded me in a way that was well beyond her years. “You’re a good mom, Bridget,” she said in that same soft voice. “You know, just in case you were trying to tell yourself something different.”

I stared at this beautiful, bubbly, kind, and insightful girl. This absolute treasure. The girl I was falling a little bit in love with. That felt like family. That I wanted to protect from a world that had already marked her but not yet stolen her kindness.

My eyes prickled with tears that hadn’t appeared in months.

“I’m back!” Ryder shouted with the slam of the door.

Luna reached over to squeeze my hand before Ryder appeared with two bags full of food. His eyes lit up with Luna’s presence. “You made it! Good. Because Jake is coming and I bought far too much food.”

I stared at them, at the back of Jax’s head, where he was sitting on the sofa reading Moby Dick, completely shut off from the world.

Alexis was somewhere upstairs working in her office. She’d made all the arrangements to move here and didn’t shed a single tear. The boys were, of course, ecstatic that their favorite—read, only—aunt had decided to move in for the foreseeable future. I greedily hoped she never found romance or happiness so she never left me.

This moment, right here, with my house as full as it would ever be, was almost happy.

And almost happy was all I’d