Mom Over Miami - By Annie Jones Page 0,11
laugh.
“So, you want to take the big gamble and let me watch the kids for the afternoon?”
“Actually, no.”
He opened his mouth, but she pressed two fingers to his lips to stop him from arguing or teasing her or whatever he had planned in his warped little mind.
“Tessa is asleep in the baby room, and Sam is doing something for me in there, too. So…”
“So you’ve got everything under control.”
His words, not hers.
She smiled. “No need for you to stick around. In fact, if you really want to be a big help to me, why don’t you go on home and start lunch? We’ll be along in a half hour or so.”
“Lunch. Got it.” He kissed her cheek, turned to go, then faced her again, his brow creased. “What should I make?”
She ran her fingers back through her hair to try to work out a little of the tension in her scalp. “You worked as a short-order cook for a little while—surprise me.”
His mouth tilted up on one side. “Surprising people was why I only worked as a cook for a little while.”
“Don’t start with that old story about growing up a poor little rich boy who never did anything right.”
“You left out ‘according to your dad.’”
“Oh, right—who, according to your dad, never did anything right. And so you never had the drive and desire to stick with anything.”
“Not the military school, not the Coast Guard, not publishing, not college.”
“Well, maybe not the first time you went, but—”
“But by the time I finally got it together, dear old Dad had had enough.” He smiled, sort of. “Can’t say I blame him.”
Hannah blamed him. Oh, not for finally refusing to fund what, at the time, must have seemed Payton’s never-ending quest for fulfillment, but for washing his hands entirely of his son. It cut Payt to his very core. It had to. And yet he never mentioned it as anything but a joke.
But Hannah knew. She knew those secret aches that never wholly healed, and she saw how having disappointed his father still gnawed at Payt. She saw it in the flicker in his eyes whenever he talked about the family who’d disowned him despite all he had become. She saw it in the way her husband strove to impress the older male authority figures in his life, often at great cost to himself and those he loved.
That was why Payt had gone in to work this Saturday morning, to catch up on signing forms and returning calls and going over the details of the everyday running of the office that his boss chose to ignore. Payt wanted to show the man that he had the makings of a great doctor. And Payt’s boss probably would never even notice. The work got done. He didn’t care how or by whom.
Hannah had wanted to point that very thing out to Payt. The ultimate example of the pot calling the kettle black, she decided, so she kept her mouth shut.
“That’s how the story goes, isn’t it?” She placed her hand just below her throat and raised her chin to supply the proper theatrics. “The Payton-Bartlett story of youthful debauchery and eventual self-discovery? You couldn’t fully commit yourself to anything until you found the Lord and your calling as a doctor.”
“I never could commit to anything until I found the Lord and you, Hannah.”
Her heart swelled with love for this man. Her man. She bit her lip to keep from standing there surrounded by two-foot-high furniture and grinning like a fool. She had loved this man from the day she met him and saw in him things no one else could ever appreciate.
Of course, with that love came awesome responsibilities. One of which was to keep the man honest and on his toes.
“Oh, please.” She shook her head, smiling slyly. “You had decided to become a doctor before we ever met, Bartlett.”
He grinned to hear her address him the way she had when they first met, when she thought of him as some spoiled rich kid who could do with being taken down a peg or two.
“In fact—” she put her finger to her chin to feign dredging up the memories from some dusty corner of her mind “—I believe you were on a mission trip trying to impress another girl when you realized you had a calling to enter med school.”
“Okay, I had decided to study medicine before we met, but, baby, I wouldn’t be where I am today without you.”
“Don’t I know it.”