Hopefully forever.
* * * * *
“T minus two freaking seconds before we’re out the door, baby,” Mitch called impatiently from the front door. Billy and Billie were standing with him, Billie bouncing on her toes and even Billy was fidgeting with excitement.
I was rushing around.
“I need to get sun block,” I told him.
“You can buy that stuff at the park,” Mitch called to me because I was running down the hall.
“Bud, did you get a hat?” I yelled from the bathroom, ignoring Mitch and grabbing the kids’ sun block from their medicine cabinet.
“Yeah, Auntie Mara,” Billy yelled back.
“Billie, honey, did you –?”
“I have a hat!” Billie screamed. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
I shoved the sun block in my big purse while rushing down the hall.
I got to the door.
Then I took them all in and muttered, “Right, let’s go.”
“Yippee!” Billie screeched, Mitch opened the door, she raced out of it, Billy raced after her and I tipped my eyes up to his smiling ones.
“Yippee,” I said softly, smiling huge.
Mitch’s eyes dropped to my mouth then his arm hooked me at the waist, he pulled me to him, his mouth came down on mine and he gave me a short, hot, wet kiss.
Finally he let my mouth go but not my waist, guided me out the door and held me close as we stood outside together while he checked to make sure it was locked.
And there I was doing what I never thought in a million years two months ago I would be doing ever in my life. I was standing in the breezeway pressed close to Ten Point Five Detective Mitch Lawson waiting for him to check to see if my door was locked.
Then, at thirty-one years old, my man took me on my first family visit to an amusement park.
I was wrong.
I didn’t like the real world.
I loved it.
Because it felt like a dream.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Our Kids
I jumped down from Mitch’s SUV, slammed the door and watched with a small, tired smile as a Zombie Billy jumped down from the backseat.
The park was a hit. The kids had a freaking blast and I had one too.
But, best of all, all day Mitch’s eyes were lit with a light that was new to me but it was a light that I liked. It was not his normal sense of humor which was usually easy to trip for Billy, Billie and me. And it was not because it was a sunny day, we had the day off and we were at an amusement park.
It was something else.
I loved him, this I knew. He was my dream man. He thought we were made for each other and I loved that he thought that. As the days and weeks went by and we clicked naturally into each other’s lives, the kids clicking with us, I was even coming to believe he was right.