to risk interfering in her work. He hopped into his truck and headed home.
Although traffic was already building for the morning commute, it had been a flimsy excuse to toss at Danny. His house was only a couple of miles from May’s. The drive took less than ten minutes even with traffic. He was soon striding into the kitchen with Gump clomping along beside him trailing drool on his socks.
The thud of running bare feet prepared him for a tackle-hug from his daughter before she got into sight. He bent down to accept it and barely avoided toppling over as she barreled into him.
“Morning, kiddo. I’ve missed you.”
She rained a few kisses on his cheeks, letting him know she’d missed him too.
Glancing over at Gareth, who was rinsing a plate and loading it into the dishwasher, he stood back up and said, “Good morning. Thanks for keeping this troublemaker company.”
“Sure thing.”
Katie elbowed Will in the thigh.
“What? You don’t think you’re a troublemaker?”
She shook her head.
“Then how can you possibly be my daughter?”
She crossed her arms and gave him an adorable scowl.
“Fine then. You’re an angel. Feel like sitting with me while I eat some breakfast?”
She was so happy to spend time with him that she insisted on making him breakfast: two slightly blackened Eggo waffles drenched in syrup and topped with mushy bananas she attempted to slice with her kid-friendly butter knife. It certainly could’ve been worse.
At least he hadn’t had to sneak any of it to the dog.
Gareth joined them at the table when he finished the dishes. “I promised Katie we’d let her swim this morning,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“I sure don’t. I’ve got to practice my cannonballs sometime, right?” he said with a wink at Katie.
Her giggle made everything right in the world.
After finishing his breakfast and cleaning up after himself, he herded her to her bedroom so she could get changed into her swimsuit. He took a quick shower before donning his own swimsuit and grabbing a couple of their pool towels. Then they all headed over to Gareth’s.
Will and Katie had the pool to themselves for the first hour while Gareth finished some of his chores. Gareth came outside with a pitcher of lemonade once he was ready to relax on the back patio with them. Will climbed out to join him while Katie kept playing in the water.
“Frank told me you went over to explain things to Jasmine last night,” Gareth said. “Did everything go okay?”
“Yeah. I apologized for forgetting to cancel with her. She forgave me for being an idiot.”
“Oh, good. Maybe she’ll make that chicken meal for you another night this week instead.”
“Chicken? How’d you know what she was planning to make?”
Gareth’s eyebrows lifted. “Jasmine must not have mentioned she came over here for a bit after finding Carol Ann in your kitchen.”
“No, she didn’t.”
“I see. Well, I found her sitting in her car. She was visibly upset and I didn’t want her on the road like that, so I invited her in. I put the groceries in my fridge to keep them fresh while she was here. She explained what happened.”
“Oh.” Hearing that Jasmine had been upset enough to alarm Gareth made Will want to kick himself again.
Seeing his expression, Gareth said, “It’s done now, right? What’s important is that you talked about things between you.”
“Sure.”
“And did you get the answer you wanted to hear?”
“I did,” he said, thinking again how grateful he was that Jasmine had forgiven him.
“That’s great news,” Gareth said with a wide smile. “I told her everything would work out if she just shared her feelings with you.”
His reaction seemed out of proportion for the conversation. Will started to wonder if they were discussing two different things.
“Yeah,” he said, his gaze trained on the other man. “I brought her flowers, but now that you mentioned how upset she was, I’m thinking maybe I should do a little something more. Maybe a gift certificate somewhere.”
“A gift certificate?” Gareth chuckled and shook his head. “A woman tells you she loves you and you think a gift certificate is a proper gift?”
Will did his best not to choke on the mouthful of lemonade he’d just ingested.
As he focused on swallowing, his brain ran back through the past two minutes of conversation. It finally clicked that Jasmine must have shared more than just her feelings about finding Carol Ann in his kitchen with Gareth.