Javy sighed. “Won’t be long now, though. Mark my words.”
Will just grinned.
“You better make sure she’s as ready to be a mother as she is a wife,” Marco advised. “Trust me, I made that mistake and I’m still paying for it.”
“Oh, she is,” Will said.
He flashed back to the scene he’d witnessed through Katie’s partially open bedroom door as Jasmine talked to her about using her makeup without her permission. It wasn’t just Jasmine’s calm approach that told him she was ready to be a mother. It was her promise to help Katie with makeup when she was old enough to wear it.
And her tender expression as she wiped Katie’s tears.
No, he hadn’t had that conversation with her yet, but he was just as confident in her love for Katie as he was her love for him.
They stayed at the party another hour before Will decided it was time to head home. He took Katie along with him and Ryan so he could say his goodbyes and extend his thanks to Evan and Sierra for hosting. Jasmine did the same from her side of the pool. She had been monopolized by mothers and their kids from the moment she started teaching them the dance from the video. He suspected it would result in even more potential clients for her when she got her studio open.
It took another fifteen minutes to get all the way around the pool deck before Will was clear. As Katie accepted a goodbye hug from her new friend, Lisa, he looked around for Jasmine and spotted her talking to a woman in her forties or fifties through the wrought-iron fence surrounding the pool. Specialist Velasquez stood nearby, but the woman didn’t seem to mind. She was smiling and typing into her phone as Jasmine talked. She waved at Jasmine and walked off before Will, Katie, and Ryan approached.
“Another person who saw the dancing and wants in on that action?” Will guessed.
Jasmine smiled and nodded. “Her name is Ginnie and she lives in the complex. She saw me with the kids from her window and wanted more information about lessons for her granddaughter.”
“That’s great,” he said, reaching for her hand as they headed to the gate. “How many does that make now?”
“Thirty-one including the parents from the Family Fun Day and the couple of others they referred to me.”
“Fantastic.”
The crowd around the house had thinned as the afternoon wore on, but the photographers who remained once again surrounded the car as they pulled into his dad’s garage. Annoyed by it all, Will debated threatening them with a restraining order. Yes, it would be a waste of time, but he’d sure find it satisfying.
Once they parked, he asked Jasmine, “Would you mind waiting here for a minute?”
She gave him a curious look before saying, “Sure.”
“Thanks.”
Having arranged this ahead of time, Will knew Specialist Velasquez would remain in the car and wait for him to return. Ryan, on the other hand, walked with him and Katie over to his house, where his dad awaited them.
“Hey there,” Frank said from his spot on the couch. He leaned forward to accept Katie’s hug. “Did you have fun at the party?”
She smiled and nodded as she attempted to accept Gump’s enthusiastic head-bumps of greeting without falling over.
“All right, kiddo,” Will said. “I’m going to take Jasmine out for a while to show her something. You’ll be staying with Grandpa and Ryan until we’re back, okay?”
She held her arms out, so he gave her a hug and kissed her cheek. Turning to his dad, he said, “Thanks for this.”
“Sure. Can’t wait to hear how it goes.”
When Will returned to the car, Jasmine gave him another searching look. He just smiled and took her hand, not wanting to give anything away.
She played along. They rehashed the conversations they’d had at the pool party since they spent so much of it apart. It was enough to fill the ten minutes it took them to get to their destination.
She looked out the window as they pulled into the parking lot. “Is this the place where we had Katie’s trial lesson back in March?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. It looks so different,” she said as Specialist Velasquez parked. “Didn’t this used to be a restaurant?”
“Giuseppe’s,” he affirmed.
He knew it no longer looked like the nondescript rectangular building it had once been because he’d had a heavy hand in the project’s redesign. Gone was the dated and crumbling red brick exterior. In