Chapter 11 #3
“Everyone has a past,” Brock said. “How long you were with him, or how long you were married, means nothing to me. But everything that was bought during the marriage is something that should be divided evenly between you, and that includes material household items. Mama-Bear-in-law doesn’t get a say.
She also doesn’t get to tell you you’re horrible when she’s stripping you of everything you own, and throwing you and her grandbaby out the door so she can have her little boy all to herself again. Got it?”
The furrow in her brow deepening, Stace nodded, but she could tell instantly that he didn’t believe her.
To be honest, she wasn’t sure she believed herself, either.
Brock meant well, she was sure. But he hadn’t been there, and she’d never really talked to him about it, not more than the snips and pieces she’d accidentally allowed to slip free before she caught herself.
So while yes, it felt kind of good to be sitting in his lap like this while he got grumpy in defense of how she’d been treated, that didn’t automatically make her in-laws wrong or herself a good person.
It did, however, make Brock a good person, and she couldn’t help herself. Wrapping her arms around him, she leaned in to rest her head against his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispered. He wasn’t right, she decided, but his heart was the right place.
“For what?” he countered. “For telling you the truth? For holding you when you cry? For wanting to be the man that holds you every time you cry for the rest of our lives? I want to be with you, baby girl. I want to be your Daddy and watch you grow up into the proud, confident woman I see lurking beneath all this uncertainty. All I need to know from you, sweetie, is do you feel any drive at all to get to know me better? Because if you do, I’ll give you all the time in the world, but I need you to tell me we’re on the same page. If we’re on the same page.”
Hugging his neck, Stace stared into the side of his neck. She didn’t know what to say, how to respond. “I don’t know, Daddy.”
Except she did know, or at least, she knew enough to know she absolutely did want to get to know him better.
But that was a double-edged sword. Getting to know him, meant he’d get to know her.
And so far, she’d been lucky enough to spend this much time with him without his getting a good feel for the bad parts of her.
The longer they were together, though, the less successful she’d be about hiding it.
Sooner or later, he was going to see her in-laws had been right.
Sooner or later, he was going to get tired of all her manipulations.
He was going to find someone else, someone who didn’t have dependents, someone he could have sex with at the drop of a hat without having to worry about where to put the baby while they were screwing.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
His arms around her tightened that much more, giving comfort which she soaked up like a sponge.
“You know more than you think,” he murmured, his hot breath caressing the side of her neck. “If you really didn’t know, baby, you wouldn’t have just called me Daddy.”
She blinked. Was that true?
She almost asked him, except the entire car rocked as Pops jerked open the back door, getting in with a loud, “Brrr!” before slamming it again.
“It’s cold as hell out there. I—” He stopped suddenly, frowning over seat at them while she crawled out of Brock’s arms and off his lap as surreptitiously as possible.
She didn’t make it, and the scowl that crossed the old man’s face had her blushing furiously as she moved back into her own seat.
“Someone in this car needs a chastity belt,” Pops grumbled.
He smacked his son on the back of the head, which Brock didn’t respond to. She hid her face, mortified.
“One more time,” Pops told them both, “for those who seem to be hard of hearing. Take. It. To. The. Bedroom. Got it?”
Brock nodded once, his hands resting on his thighs.
“I’m sorry,” Stace added.
Snorting, Pops turned his attention to putting the baby back in her car seat.
She still had a paper goat treat cup in her clenched hand and what looked like her fist in her mouth, although it was just as likely to be a goat treat.
“No one’s asking you to be sorry,” the old man grumbled.
With the click of Lily’s seat belt, he turned to pat Stace’s shoulder.
Just as meaningfully, he gave Brock another slap up the back of his head.
”Just get her into bed already. Hell, I had your grandma in the hay on day three of making her acquaintance.
She had my ring on her finger fifteen minutes later. ”
“Fifteen minutes?” Brock drawled. “You should be ashamed.”
“Ha, ha,” Pops fake-laughed back. “We didn’t waste time back then. There’s just no knowing when the next horny guy on a better looking tractor might happen by. Believe you me, if you can’t curl her toes, the next guy will.”
Sinking lower in her seat, Stace covered her eyes with both hands next.
“You’re embarrassing her, dad.”
“I ought to be embarrassing you. Take your damn pants off already.”