Hold (Gentry Boys, #5)(30)

After I pulled some clothes on and got around to picking up the phone, Saylor wandered in and slipped her arms around my waist. She buried her face in my neck while I stroked her hair.

“Writing today?” I asked her.

“Hopefully. Once I get the girls off to preschool I’ll have the luxury of a few uninterrupted hours.”

She kissed my neck and I felt the familiar thunder rumbling low in my belly before shooting straight to my dick. My mind started making a deal with itself over sparing a few minutes to hike up her nightgown and get some relief.

Say tilted her head back and smiled up at me. She knew exactly what I was thinking and she was all for it, already letting her hands travel lower and search for my zipper while I slid one nightie strap over her smooth shoulder. I let her cup the thick arousal in her palm, focusing on the way she wet her lips and the impatient set of her mouth. I was going to have fun with that mouth. I was going to invade it and own it and make it do whatever I wanted, just like I’d done a thousand times before and then –

CRASH.

SMASH.

“CAMI!”

“I didn’t do it! It just fell!”

Saylor automatically pulled the strap of her nightie back up and hurtled through the bedroom door to discover the source of all the panic. Since there wasn’t any screaming or crying I figured there was no emergency so I took a few extra seconds to clear my head and tame my third leg before following.

The unfortunate victim of the crash was a ceramic cactus statue that typically sat atop the sideboard. It was cheap and cheesy, a joke gift from our wedding. But painted on the front was a silly face that had appealed to the girls since they were babies. They named him Mr. Cobb for some unknown reason.

Saylor was picking up the pieces while Cassie looked on with a mournful expression and Cami stood nearby with her hand over her mouth and her eyes filling with tears.

“It was an accident,” she wailed when she saw me, one tear spilling over her round cheek. Cami wasn’t a child who cried often so her tears always hurt a little more to see.

“Hey,” I soothed, putting a hand on her back while Saylor finished gathering the pieces. “It’s okay. I’m sure we can glue Mr. Cobb back together.”

“Sure we can,” Saylor agreed brightly even though I saw the doubt in her eyes. We exchanged a look and understood each other. We’d search for a new Mr. Cobb on EBay or wherever.

Cami was hiccupping lightly and swiping at her eyes. It had been purely an accident, I was sure of it. The girls liked to run their little fingers over the thing’s smiling mouth, that’s all. A sudden unwelcome memory invaded of how accidents were dealt with in the house I’d grown up in but I forced it away.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I told my daughter as I bent to her level and pressed my cheek against her forehead while Saylor carefully placed the many pieces of Mr. Cobb in a Ziploc bag.

Cami threw her arms around my neck and gave a little sigh that made me think of when she was a tiny baby. Like many infants she had spells where she was fretful, colicky. Sometimes the only way she’d fall asleep was on my shoulder where she’d stay for hours at a time.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“Love you too, little one.” I gave her a comforting squeeze, patted Cassie on the head and kissed Saylor quickly on the lips because by that time I really did need to take off. Aspen was capable of opening on her own but Brick wouldn’t be in until late morning so there was no one to handle any walk in clients.

It wasn’t until I was halfway there that I thought to check my phone. The buzzing I’d heard when I was emerging from the shower was actually just a text from Creed. Texts from Creed were like harvest moons. They happened but were rare. He once called texting ‘* speak’, whatever the hell that meant. Creed was a direct kind of a guy so I suppose that was his way of saying that if you wanted to say something you should just say it rather than tapping an emoticon-heavy message into a tiny keyboard. He wanted to swing by the shop for lunch because he had ‘stuff’ to talk about. I texted back.

“Sure. Between noon and one is fine. But what kind of stuff?”

The reply was immediate.

“Just stuff.”

Well, all right then. There was no prying anything out of my brother if he wasn’t in the to mood to be pried. As I set my truck in park and hopped out I wondered if he was stopping by to say that he and Truly were pregnant. Saylor and Truly talked a lot and she’d hinted a while ago that they’d been trying but then I never heard another word about it. I had to shake my head and grin over the thought of Creed as a daddy. Yeah, I would love to see fatherhood soften that guy’s lingering rough edges.

Aspen was already installed behind the front desk when I walked into Scratch.

“Sleep in?” she inquired, batting her long eyelashes.

“I’m not late,” I argued, although there was nothing to argue about since this was my shop after all.

She laughed and pulled a headband out of her blue hair. “I made coffee already.”

“Thanks,” I said and meant it because I didn’t consider taking care of my caffeine needs to be part of her job description. I headed over to the closet-like room that served as the informal break area. “Brick still going to be here in a few hours?” I called out as I poured a hot cup while Aspen started on what sounded like a manic stapling spree.