Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(90)
“But you managed to get married.”
“We did,” Kona said, hiding a huge grin behind his glass. “Thing about marriage I’ve learned over the years?” I nodded, welcoming his advice. “Just make your partner happy. That’s all you can do. If you both manage to do that, then you’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t wrong. I’d seen him and Keira stick to that unspoken rule for years. Kona had messed that up just a few months back, but they were better now than I’d ever seen them before. Still, despite my father-in-law’s apology and Ransom’s promise he didn’t care about anything but being with me, in the back of my mind was the guilt I felt about not being able to help the Riley-Hale clan expand.
I moved the champagne around in my glass, not bothering to look at Kona when I spoke. “You sure that the whole no babies thing won’t keep Ransom from staying happy?” I looked at him, regretting the frown he wore. “Or you?”
Kona took a moment to just watch me, nodding twice before he swung his arm around my shoulder. “Remember a few years back when we hired you to chase around that loud little pēpē, then his even louder sister?”
I laughed, shooting my gaze across the room to Koa and Mack as they ate food that was probably too rich for them and laughed with a table full of Hawaiian cousins I didn’t have a hope of knowing by name. “Vaguely.”
“As far as I know, they’ve got plenty of my DNA and, a long, long, long time from now when I’m very old, possibly when I’m on my deathbed, then my other children can have kids. When they’re forty or fifty or so.”
I leaned away from Kona, mouth hanging open. “But you said…”
“Aly Cat, I was drunk and feeling a little sentimental that night.” He squeezed my shoulder, nodding to two of his friends as they passed by. “When will you learn? Ohana isn’t about blood. It’s about family. You know there’s a difference. Adopt. Don’t adopt. Have fur babies or fish. Kaikamahine, it doesn’t matter. Just do whatever you need to keep yourself and my keiki kane happy. Don’t worry about me. Keira takes care of what keeps this constant smile on my face.” I wrinkled my nose when he said that, his eyebrows waggling and pushed him away from me when Ransom and Keira returned from their dance.
Keira kissed me, held me tight and I smiled, catching the hint of wine on her breath. No one had been happier than Keira when Ransom announced we’d officially gotten engaged. She’d always been in my corner. Keira had been my friend and a lot of times, a real mother to me. But that didn’t ease her into the realization that her oldest son was grown enough for a wife. Keira squeezed my fingers, eyes a little watery as Ransom pulled me to his chest, inching me toward the dance floor.
“Slow down,” she told him and a few of those tears leaked out of the corner of her eyes. “Slow down, baby,” she whispered and I didn’t think she meant how quickly Ransom tugged me toward the dance floor.
But he won out, getting me to dance, something I’d never get enough of with him. The song was slow, one of my favorites, Crazy Love by Van Morrison, and I hummed against Ransom’s chest as he moved us, loving the smell of his cologne, and how tiny I felt with those large arms around me.
“You like this one, don’t you, makamae?” He moved his chin toward the band. When I smiled, gave him a quick nod, Ransom kissed my ear, whispering low. “Show me what the music does to you.”
That smile grew bigger when I looked up at him, shaking my head when he repeated the same thing he’d told me decades before. I’d worn a mask then and danced for him for some quick cash.
“If I did that, cheri, your mother would have Koa and Mack out of here in ten seconds and Kona would likely lecture me for corrupting his sweet keiki kane.”
“Ha, no, baby,” he said, pulling me closer. “My father knows I was corrupted way before you came along. Hell, I’m his kid, right? That shit is genetic.”
“You get a lot from him,” I said, moving against my husband with the press of my body tight to his. “Stubbornness.” I yelped a little when Ransom grabbed my ass. “Thick headed…hey now!” That little thrust against my hips had me yelping for a different reason.
“Something else,” he said, still smiling as he looked down at me.
“Yeah? What’s that, cheri?”
Ransom kissed me softly, just a brush of his lips over mine. “The unyielding genetic mutation of being totally and completely under a woman’s spell.” Another kiss and Ransom drifted his fingers down my back. “The pathetic, weak-kneed way our women make us completely useless without them.”
“That’s genetic, you think?”
He laughed, shifting his gaze around the room until he spotted Kona and Keira a few feet away dancing right along with the music. But unlike every other couple on the dance floor, their focus was on each other. Kona held tight to his wife, large hand spread on her lower back, his grin easy, soft as he watched her, but those eyes, duplicates of the ones I’d fallen for so long ago, held within those endless irises a need that I realized would never be met. These men could never be sated, never satisfied enough to look away even once from the women they loved.
“Yeah,” Ransom said, looking back at me as his parents kissed, a sensual, hot thing that made others around them either laugh or look away, mad with jealousy. “I think it’s genetic.”