Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain #3)(182)

Then she was done but before I released the hands I held, I squeezed them tight at the same time they squeezed mine the same exact way.

Then I looked up and down the table and saw my husband’s eyes on me and in them I read it all, everything, all he needed to say, all I loved to hear.

Five Thanksgivings he’d lost to a nightmare.

Five Thanksgivings I’d given him different versions of this.

Looking in his eyes I could see, finally, I was catching up.

* * * * *

Ty

“You sure?”

“Sam, I’m not sittin’ a game,” Ty said into his phone, his body moving through his house, familiar movements, the same every night, these movements to shut it down, lock his girls in, make sure they were safe.

“I’ll cover your buy-in,” Samuel Sterling said in his ear.

Ty turned out the lights under the cabinets of Lexie’s kitchen and asked, “Someone you wanna teach a lesson?”

“Three someones,” Sam answered.

“How bad do they need this lesson?” Ty asked, moving out of the kitchen into the sunken family room to turn off the lamp that was sitting on a side table there.

Lex had a shitload of furniture in that area. Two full couches, four armchairs, two big footstools, four side tables and a coffee table.

When she filled that space, he thought she’d temporarily gone insane.

He’d been wrong.

Between her and her girls sucking back wine while cackling over what he suspected was not the books they were supposed to be reading (he thought this, primarily, because Krystal was a member of Lexie’s book club and Krystal was not a woman to belong to a book club but she was a woman to cackle over wine) and him having the men over for beer and games, that furniture saw a lot of use.

“Some might not think they need this lesson badly,” Sam replied then said quietly, “A brother would disagree.”

Ty straightened from the lamp and looked out at the lights of Carnal.

He didn’t reply.

Sam kept talking.

“It’s in Hawaii. I’ll send the jet for you, Lexie and the girls. I’ve got a house here, you can stay there. They get a vacation, you do too except you take time out to sit the game and take their money, give me back my buy-in, put the rest in Lella and Vivie’s college fund.” He paused, “Though, it probably wouldn’t hurt to use some to buy Lexie more diamonds.”

Suddenly, his eyes didn’t see Carnal. His mind had a vision of his wife cooking, eating and being with their family that day in her clingy wraparound dress, high-heeled boots and the diamonds he gave her last Christmas in her ears and at her neck.

Ty gave Lexie diamonds for her birthday, Christmas and their anniversary, every year. He worked overtime to do it. And he never f**ked around. She didn’t get earrings or a necklace or a bracelet. She got a set. Sometimes a couple of pieces, sometimes three.

For their fifth wedding anniversary that year, though, Bessie and Roland came up from Miami to watch the girls for a long weekend while Ty took his wife back to Vegas where they stayed in the same hotel but in a better room and he topped her wedding rings with a wide band set all around with diamonds. It cost a f**king whack and the stack of rings nearly covered her finger to her knuckle.

She took them off to clean them every day and she took them off to give her massages.

Other than that, they were never off. Not when she was showering, cooking, bathing the girls.

Never.

“When is this?” he asked Sam, eyes on Carnal.

“Two weeks.”

Two weeks. They hadn’t had a real vacation since April when they went to Ella’s for week over Easter.

He bent his neck and looked at his feet, muttering, “I’ll talk to Lex.”

He heard Sam’s chuckle then, “All right then, see you in two weeks.”

Then he had nothing but dead air.

He flipped his phone shut and shoved it in his back pocket knowing Sam was right. Hawaii, a private jet, money in the bank and diamonds, his woman would not be hard to convince especially since this was his first game since the one he sat two days after he met her.

He’d stuck to his vow.

Until now.

He moved through the house, seeing the shadowed pieces on the walls.

Lex was a regular at the frame shop in Chantelle, such a regular, they sent Christmas cards. Glitter pen art done by Lell framed like it was executed by a master. Unusual multi-frames holding family snapshots. Two small shadowboxes displaying their daughter’s tiny hospital bracelets, two others that held the first lock of their hair cut by Dominic, Lell’s tied in a little, pale yellow ribbon, Vivie’s with a pale pink one. Down the main hall, a double line of black-framed, cream-matted, black-ink, tiny but slowly getting bigger handprints, five of Lell’s, one Lexie did two days after Lella came home from the hospital and one for each birthday; three of Vivie’s little hand.

There’d be another row there soon or she might branch out to the opposite wall and he liked that, he liked a décor based in comfort and family but he loved the home his wife made for them.

He checked the outer doors one last time to make sure they were locked, engaged the alarm then he went to the stairs.

But he stopped dead at the foot when he saw the shadowed figure sitting halfway up.

Ella.

He felt her eyes in the dark and gave her his.