Written with Regret (The Regret Duet #1)(51)

It was ridiculous, but I cried pretty much every time I left her. I’d missed so much time with her, and two days a week was not enough.

But I was going to roll with it.

I’d given Caven my word.

Surprisingly, Caven and I were getting along too.

Things were still tense, and he never left me alone with Rosalee. But he no longer sat at the end of the dining room table as we worked. He hovered—always within eyesight or earshot, which was relatively easy in his open-layout living area. But, now, he gave us our space, or at least the illusion of it. Either way, I was grateful.

I turned my car off and started inspecting my nails. I missed the days when I could keep a manicure. Painting was hard on my hands, but if I was going to master the R.K. Banks strokes now that I was a one-man team, it required a lot of practice. Like, every-waking-moment-I-wasn’t-with-Rosalee practice.

My phone vibrated on the seat beside me.



Caven: You can come in. No use sitting in the car.



Of course he’d seen me when I’d pulled up. He left the gate open when he was expecting me. I’d been early before, once by about fifteen minutes, and he’d never texted to invite me in.

See? Progress. Sweet, sweet progress.

I smiled and typed out a reply.



Me: Are you sure? I didn’t realize I was so early.

Caven: What project did you bring for tonight?

Me: Paper flowers? Is that okay?

Caven: Glitter?

Me: No.

Caven: More of that slime shit?

Me: Nope.

Caven: Dye that’s going to stain my back deck again?



I rolled my eyes. It was literally three droplets that had splashed off my tarp.



Me: No. Just coffee filters, markers, and pipe cleaners.

Caven: Then yes. You can come in early. She’s been frothing at the mouth for you to get here, and just a heads-up, Ian picked her up from preschool today. They went out to an early dinner and she had her first and last Coke. She’s been bouncing off the walls since she got home. If you can get her to sit down longer than ten minutes, I’ll be impressed.

Me: Challenge accepted.



I’d barely gotten my bag out of the back before I heard her voice.

“Hadley!” She sprinted down the driveway at a full gallop.

Smiling, I cupped my mouth and yelled back, “Rosie!”

She ran all the way over to me, careening into my legs and giving me one of those tight squeezes I adored.

“Guess what?” she shouted, her voice echoing off the brick driveway.

“What?” I replied just as excitedly.

“I drew a picture of a unicorn at school and my teacher said it was the best unicorn she has ever seen so she hung it on the wall and I get an award next week!”

My mouth fell open in both real and exaggerated surprise. “You’re getting an award?”

“Yes!” she screamed, throwing both arms over her head.

I set my bag down and squatted in front of her. “What kind of award? Best drawing? Best artist? Best all-round?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

She wasn’t a baby anymore, but she was still so young.

And she was already getting a freaking award.

In art.

Just like her mother.

Hell, just like her grandmother too.

I opened my arms wide and she didn’t delay in coming in for a long hug.

“Oh my goodness, Rosie. I am so proud of you.”

She kept her arms around my neck as she leaned away. “Can you come? When they give me my award? Will you be there?”

My stomach knotted when I saw Caven standing on the front steps, watching us with his expression unreadable. There was no way he was going to let me go to something like that.

Our sweet progress was not nearly up to inviting me to school functions yet. No matter how much I wanted to go.

“Oh…um, I’m not sure. I might have to work that night.”

Her whole beautiful face fell. “Noooo, I want you to come.”

“I know. I, uh…” God, her puppy-dog eyes were going to be the end of me. “We’ll see, okay?”

Her smile returned. “Okay.”

The loss was staggering when she backed away.

She went straight to my bag and started rummaging through. “What’d you bring today?”

I stood up. “Well, I brought paper flowers, but that was before I knew I would be working with an award-winning artist. Would you like to teach me anything today?”

She giggled and took my hand, leading me to the front door. “I could teach you to make bath bombs. I got a kit for my birthday, but Daddy doesn’t like bath bombs.”

I shot a smile to Caven when we got close. “How in the world does your daddy not like bath bombs?”

His lips hiked into a distant relative of the smile family. “Because Rosie opened the bath bomb kit someone gave her for her birthday alone in her bathroom, without permission, and spilled the powder that you use to make them all over the floor. Then, instead of telling me that she’d spilled it, she covered it with her rug and replaced the crap with kinetic sand. She also failed to mention to me that it was kinetic sand when we made the bath bombs and tried to use them, thus clogging the drain in her tub to the tune of six hundred dollars.”