hesitation, I pick him up in my arms and place him across my lap, then turn to look over to her. She’s watching us, no, it’s more than simply watching. She’s observing us.
“I really care for Landry, Lucinda. I was content being alone. I never planned on dating anyone. I turned Laurent down because I didn’t want to date. I haven’t dated since I found out that I was pregnant with Holden. I’ve focused on school and him, nothing else.”
She presses her lips together, not speaking right away. I wait, wondering what she’s going to say, if anything. Then she surprises me.
“You haven’t dated, at all?”
Shaking my head, I close my eyes for a moment, then reopen them. “I tried to resist him, just as much as he tried to resist me. I know that the divorce isn’t final and it makes me sick to think of him as still married. I am so sorry that I’ve upset you and your brothers. I never wanted to, not ever.”
There is a moment of silence, then causing me to jump, Lucinda bursts out into laughter. She shakes her head, wiping the tears from her eyes as she attempts to calm down her breathing. When she finally does, she giggles again.
“We don’t care about that. Our mother has been cheating on him for years. I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of their marriage, but I do know that it hasn’t been a true marriage for years. When he said he wanted to start dating a few weeks ago, I was excited. That is, until I realized he meant dating a girl younger than me and now, moving in together?”
My lips turn up into a small smile. “Sorry to surprise you like that. It just…”
“Happened?” she asks, arching a brow.
A laugh escapes my mouth. “Yeah.”
“Seems a lot between you two just happens.”
“Have you ever felt unable to control your own body around someone? Like you’re trying to hold yourself back, but then something else takes over and you’re doing things, in places, that you would never ever have imagined?”
Lucinda leans forward, wrinkling her nose. “That, I don’t want to ever hear about.”
My shoulders shake as I try to hold back my laughter, but I can’t. Together we find ourselves in a fit of giggles and that’s when Holden joins in, a few moments later the door opens and Landry finds us giggling like real girlfriends.
LANDRY
As much as I want to call the evening a total fucking waste and not a success, there were a few bright spots. Like when I walked into the women’s lounge and saw my two girls and Holden giggling together.
However, that was the only happy part of the entire dinner. Once the cat was out of the bag that I’d given Susan my company, Laurent was furious with me and Lawrence wasn’t much happier.
Thankfully, Tennessee picked out a bed for the master bedroom and she promised to stay the night with me. Holden will be in his new room, and we will be two doors down from him.
She was worried about him and the stairs, so I installed a gate so that he couldn’t get down if he woke up before us. I know something though, she says it all of the time, but she’s not thinking about it right now.
Holden always, always, gets in bed with her when he’s trying to wake up in the mornings. They cuddle for a few minutes up to an hour before they start their day, so he probably won’t ever even venture to the staircase without one of us.
Pulling into the garage, I look over at her and notice that she’s staring out the window. “You okay, honey?” I ask.
Slowly, she turns her head, her gaze shifting over to meet mine. She gives me a small, sad, smile. “They’re really upset that you’ve given it to Susan. Really upset. If I would have known, I wouldn’t have said anything.”
Shaking my head, my lips twitch into a small smile. “Honey, they were going to find out eventually. I just can’t tell them the rest of my plan, yet.”
“You don’t want it to get to Susan,” I say, guessing.
“Thirty-one days,” I rasp.
“Thirty-one days,” she says, nodding her head in agreement.
Lifting my hand, I cup her cheek, my thumb sliding across her smooth skin. “Let’s go to bed,” I murmur. “First night in our new bed,” I say with a grin.
“I’m not officially moved in and I never really did answer you.”
I let