Dreaming of His Snowed In Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,37

Not going to happen. She had some kind of weird thing going on with her sister, whatever that was, and he had enough junk in his past to fill a barge.

If only he could ship it somewhere like Antarctica.

Chapter 13

It took forty-five minutes to clean up the toilet mess. A good pair of rubber gloves would have been very welcome.

She’d been at the hospital visiting new moms, and she’d seen the samples of formula, the packs of diapers, and even baby bags and clothes that were showered on the proud new parents.

Parents were not even allowed to leave the hospital without a car seat.

Personally, she felt parenting without rubber gloves should be illegal.

Still, the mess was cleaned, the toilet scrubbed, and Trevor had been dealt with.

He was little, and he was going through a hard thing with his mom and having lost his dad, but she had no intention of ever cleaning up a mess of that proportion instigated by Trevor again.

Probably Gabriella would do the same thing at some point. All kids seemed to.

But she was pretty sure Trevor understood that it wasn’t to happen again.

West seemed to be a little more concerned about keeping track of the children as well.

Maybe by unspoken agreement, they’d both reached to shut the door as they were leaving the bathroom.

Their hands touched, and they shared a smile. And she’d made an interesting discovery.

West was gorgeous when he smiled.

That was a discovery, but it wasn’t the biggest one.

The big discovery was, when West smiled, it made her heart do somersaults.

That was unexpected. And disconcerting. And not entirely welcome.

It felt good. It’d made her hand want to turn in, her fingers to trail across his palm and his wrist.

Not that she had done such a thing. Of course not. But it made her want to.

An entirely new desire that she wasn’t quite sure what to do with.

She was certain, though, it wasn’t welcome.

Regardless, the mess was cleaned, and now they were back in the kitchen. Garrett stood on a chair, Warren stood beside her, and Trevor sat on the counter.

As long as she was here, Trevor wasn’t leaving her side.

West had Hazel in a chair. Hazel was in heaven, with Gabriella in her arms.

Love swelled in her chest for her sister. She didn’t know what to do about her mom, wasn’t sure there was anything she could do, and wished things were different, but she could say with her whole heart and soul she was thrilled that her little sister was staying with her and that she got to spend some time with her.

She wasn’t entirely comfortable with the knowledge that there was pain ahead. In fact, she couldn’t think about it, or it scared her.

But yeah. She loved her sister.

“Let me. Let me.” Garrett held his hand out for the egg that she’d just taken out of the bowl West had set on the table counter when she’d asked about eggs.

A quick look in the refrigerator hadn’t yielded any egg cartons. She hadn’t considered looking for her eggs in a bowl.

Apparently, he had chickens in the barn, and these were gathered from there.

West had never struck her as the egg-gathering type, but appearances were deceiving, apparently.

“What we’re going to do is crack it into this bowl first. That way if we get any shells in it, we can scrape them out. Eggshells in pancakes are yucky.”

She wrinkled her nose, and Garrett stuck out his tongue.

“And we can also make sure it’s a good egg.” She didn’t think about her childhood on the farm very often, deliberately, but she knew from experience that sometimes an egg got missed for a week or so, and it wasn’t any good when it finally did get found and taken to the house. No point in ruining the entire batter because she cracked a bad egg directly into it.

“Now, I’ll hand you the egg in a second, but I want you to listen first. What you’re going to do is gently tap it on the corner of the counter until the shell cracks, and then you’re going to put both thumbs into the crack and pull it apart over the bowl.” She used her hands to kind of show what she meant with the egg, even though she hadn’t cracked it.

She eyed Garrett.

“Make sure you tap it gently,” she emphasized that word, “on the counter to crack it. Okay?”

“I can do it. I can do it. That’s easy,” Garrett said, his pudgy little hand held out for the