A Father's Name(33)
“Bart,” she scolded. “You weren’t supposed to tell him. I wanted to leave Tyler with the illusion of—”
“When you showed up with everything, I’d already figured out I was at your mercy. So what color are we…” His question trailed off as Bart started coughing. Well, actually, the coughing was an attempt to cover his laughter, but it didn’t work very well.
“Color, Tyler?” Bart shook his head. “You really have never met Angelina Dorothy Tucker, have you.”
“Wait a minute, Dorothy? Your middle name is Dorothy?”
“After Pop’s mom. She was a very nice lady. Sweet and easygoing. They hoped some of her attributes would rub off on me.”
“They didn’t,” Bart assured him. “Mom’s sweet like a Sweet Tart. Big emphasis on the tart.”
“You’re calling your mother a tart?” she asked, her voice challenging.
“No one uses that word the way you’re taking it, Mom,” he assured her.
She stopped her mock squabble with Bart when she spied Jace sitting in the middle of the living room floor.
Jace stood and hurried across the floor, raised his hands at Tucker and babbled what was obviously baby orders to pick him up.
“Hey, big guy. What do you think about your bedroom getting a quick coat of paint?”
He reach out, grabbed one of her short curls and pulled.
“I take it that’s a yes. Let’s get to it, boys.”
LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Jace was napping on a blanket on the floor in the living room as Tyler worked on painting a dresser on the porch. Bart had long since left, and Angelina was doing something on the two-toned blue walls in Jace’s room.
She’d asked if he minded a surprise, and he’d said no, so she’d banished him to the porch with a can of paint, the dresser and instructions.
He thought about her t-shirt and grinned. She was definitely pushy, but in the best kind of way.
He wouldn’t have thought about painting the baby’s room.
He glanced at Jace sleeping peacefully and despite the fact he continued to call him a baby, he wasn’t. Jace was a toddler.
And Jace belonged to him now.
He understood the Matthews weren’t capable of raising their grandson.
He understood it, but he was scared. Scared to his bones that their trust in him was severely misplaced.
What if—
“Hey, slacker, you done yet?” Tucker asked, pulling him from questions he couldn’t answer.
He took another brush at the drawer for effect and nodded. “Done, ma’am.”
“So am I. Come in and see what you think.”
They tiptoed past the living room and the sleeping baby.
At Jace’s bedroom door, Tucker asked, “Remember the other day when Jace was eye-eying all over the place?”
He nodded.
“Well, pair that with the fact we live on the doorstep of one of the great lakes, and…” She opened the door with flourish.
Tyler stepped forward and took it in. She’d had him help paint light blue on the upper part of the walls, and a darker blue on the lower half. On her own, she’d painted in waves, and clouds. The sun shone brightly near the window, and there was a huge sailboat taking up the biggest wall. He got closer and saw it was named Jace-Racer. And there were two people on the deck. “Me and Jace?”
She smiled.
“Angel, it’s amazing.”
“Thanks. My friend, Laura, has a big mural on her baby’s wall. I thought it was cool. I wish I’d have done something like that for Bart. Since I didn’t…” She shrugged.
“Laura. She’s the one with…Jamie?” he asked, remembering the blond woman from the Keller house.
“Yeah, that’s her. Her husband’s the cop who grilled you. One of her students painted the mural as a gift, and I loved the idea, so…” She shrugged again.
He studied the walls and turned to her. He schooled his face into a serious expression. “I only have one complaint.”
“Oh?”
“You should be on the boat with us. And Bart. You both did more of this than I did.”
“We don’t need to be on it, too. We’re…”
“Unless it’s too much work?” He knew Angelina would take that as a challenge.
She snorted. “No, it’s not too much work.”