28. Tess
TWENTY-EIGHT
TESS
The second day Ian fills in as August’s babysitter, I arrive home to them working in the kitchen, both wearing aprons. Sugar canisters and baking ingredients are spread out across the countertops, along with cookie sheets, measuring cups, and extra mixing spoons. Flour coats everything in a fine dust like ash after a volcanic eruption.
The Type A in me wants to start cleaning immediately. My softer side wants to just memorize this moment.
“What’s going on here?”
They turn around to face me. August has a streak of flour across his forehead and one cheek like he tried to follow a contouring video but got it all wrong. Ian’s equally covered in flour, the streaks in his beard making him look almost as wild as he did the day we first met. But he’s got a glimmer of mischief in his eyes he sure didn’t have then.
He points a finger at August. “Blame the kid.”
“Mama! We wanted to make cookies for you, so Ian found a recipe and we followed it exactly!” August’s bouncing on his heels, a cookie scoop raised in the air. “We’re bakers just like you!”
He runs to the table and plucks a cookie from a cooling rack. “Try it, Mama.”
I’m still stuck on Ian wearing my pink frilly apron with his red hair tied up in a bun. The two sights clash so much, I can’t tell if I want to laugh or take a picture and set it as my phone’s wallpaper. But August’s watching me sweetly, waiting for approval. Obviously, I’m going to eat the cookie. I take a bite and am pleasantly surprised to find they achieved classic chocolate-chip-cookie perfection.
“Isn’t it good?” he says.
“So yummy!” I high-five him and come away with a sticky hand. “You guys did a great job.”
“We shared a cookie to test our work,” Ian tells me. It’s a small thing, but the hint he hasn’t been letting August gorge himself on sweets is reassuring.
“I’m impressed.” I know how easy it is to forget steps and ingredients when you’ve got a small helper.
“My plan was to finish and clean up before you got home.” Ian must catch the way I’m cataloguing the mess, trying to contain my freak out. “But we had a small setback.”
“Our first batch of cookies is in the garbage can.” August gleefully points at the stainless steel container in the corner.
I step farther into the kitchen, one eyebrow raised. “The garbage can, huh?”
Ian shares a look with August. “I thought we were going to keep that between us.”
“Oops.” August giggles over his eager confession.
“What happened to the first try?” A dozen scenarios dance through my head. I’ve had a lot of experience with failed bakes.
“The butter was too soft?—”
“It melted!” August cuts in.
“The cookies spread everywhere.” Ian ticks his head to the side. “And we added too much salt. They’re raccoon food now.”
“Our bandit friends had better get their dinners somewhere else.” I put the lid on the flour canister intending to get a head start on the clean up while they finish baking the last of the dough, but Ian puts his hand over mine.
“This is our mess. We’ve got this.”
“Your helper will probably give up on cleaning after five minutes,” I whisper. August has turned his attention back to scooping out balls of dough and dropping them willy-nilly on the baking sheet.
“I can handle it.” Ian’s warm hand on mine tightens, his voice dropping into his I mean business register. “Go sit down and relax. I thought I’d make dinner, too, if you don’t mind hamburgers.”
“Dinner and dessert? I can help?—”
“Not this time.” He shifts his hand around mine until his thumb brushes the inside of my wrist. If this is his signature move, I’m all for it. “Let us take care of you.”
His words curl around me like the coziest sweater, even as his thumb at my wrist sends a shiver down my spine. I don’t know how to sit back and let someone else take over. Other than Mom and Wren, nobody’s ever offered.
But Ian makes me want to let go. Just a little.
“Okay,” I finally concede. “I will sit down. But first?—”
It feels like a crime to pull my hand from his, but I have a goal. I lift both my hands to his face and gently rake my fingers through his short whiskers. A few gray hairs glimmer among the red. “You have flour in your beard.”
We’ve barely touched since I wound up in his arms a few nights ago after the raccoon incident. It might be a flimsy one, but I’ll take any excuse I can get.
I dust off his beard long after it’s clean. This close, the fire in his eyes is melting all my defenses. I want to bask in it like a sun-warmed cat.
“There,” I say when I can no longer reasonably justify touching him. “The flour’s gone.”
Without breaking eye contact, he reaches behind me, runs his fingers through the small flour pile on the counter, and drags his hand over his beard. His eyebrows quirk.
That little move sends heat coiling through my belly. One part command, one part plea, he’s telling me what he wants. I’m not bold enough for that.
But I can follow directions.
I run my fingers through his beard again, shaking out the fresh spots of flour. Scraping my nails lightly over his jaw. Tracing the smile lines framing his mouth. I want to explore the freckles coating his face like an explorer mapping uncharted waters, but for now, I can be content with surveying his whiskers and jaw.
“Is this enough dough?” August asks behind him.
Right. Because I am not, in fact, alone here with no objective in life beyond fondling Ian’s beard.
“I’ll check, buddy,” Ian says. His hands come to my hips, and he walks me back a step. “Rest.”
After touching him all over his face? Not likely. But I do as told and sit on the couch in the living room. Breathing slowly, I will my rocketing pulse to calm back down. Close proximity to Ian Vaughn makes it impossible.
The way the apartment is laid out, I can’t see them from here, but August’s questions and Ian’s gentle answers as they finish up the cookies carry to me. I stretch out on the couch and rest my head on a throw pillow, smiling over their conversation.
“Have you ever been arrested?” August wants to know.
Note to self: work on his “asking appropriate questions” skills.
“Never. Have you?”
August giggles. “No. But I met the sheriff the other day. He was nice to me and Nana.”
A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Sunshine is a small town, and you’re bound to run into the mayor or a town council member on any random day out. But now, I suspect the sheriff was more than just nice to Mom.
And really, good for her. From everything I’ve seen, Daniel O’Grady seems like a decent guy. Handsome, too, even if I prefer redheaded mountain climbers…
“Angel?”
I open my eyes to find Ian hovering over me, one hand lightly touching my shoulder.
“I guess I fell asleep.” I stretch like a cat across the couch and sit up again. “I didn’t snore, did I?”
“Tiny bit.”
“Ugh.” I drag my palms over my face. “You’re not supposed to know about that yet.”
His eyebrows hitch up to his hairline.
Clearly, coming home from work was a bad idea all around. With any luck, I’m still asleep, and this is just a nightmare. I lightly pinch my forearm. Nothing.
“I meant to say at all. Ever. You will never know about that.” Definitely making things better, Tess.
He holds a hand out to me. Reluctantly, I slip mine into his, and he helps pull me to standing. We are way too close like this, practically pressed together, but he doesn’t back away.
“I can live with yet ,” he says. “Come on. Dinner’s ready.”
My thrill over the promising possibility of yet is tempered by the reminder I’m behind schedule. “I have to give August an insulin bolus for his meal first.”
“Already did it. Double checked his numbers and plugged in the values.”
“Oh. Thank you.” August’s blood glucose numbers are the never-ending background noise in my head. Sometimes, they’re accompanied by alarms, both figurative and literal. Too high, too low, pump out of insulin, one of the cannulas has come loose—no day is ever completely free of a minor complication.
The best days, they’re only minor.
He tilts his head to the side. “August did it all, anyway. I just supervised.”
We go into the kitchen, which has undergone a miraculous transformation. The supplies from their baking extravaganza have been put away, the surfaces shiny and pristine. The only evidence of their afternoon fun is the plastic container full of cookies on the counter.
“Wow. It looks better in here than it did when I left this morning.”
He side-eyes me. “That’s because I got a solid five minutes of work out of my helper.”
“Told you.”
He leads me through the open back door to the patio table, already laid out with our dinner. There’s a fat, juicy hamburger topped with a slice of cheese on each plate, condiments, and a bowl of watermelon chunks in the center of the table.
August sits in his chair, his plate already served up. “I watched Dutch! He didn’t sneak a bite.”
The dog’s right next to the table, eyes locked on the food like a fluffy shark waiting to strike.
“You did good, kid.” Ian ruffles August’s hair as he passes him.
This can’t be the same man who glared at us when we first pulled up to the duplex a few weeks ago. Yet here he sits, ready to eat a meal he made for us after spending all day with August. He’s not fully smiling, but the slant to his mouth tells me he’s inching closer.
Inching closer . I don’t mind the theme.
August tells me about his day while we eat. My kid loves a good recap. He goes into detail about the games they played, the Lego buildings they made, the stories Ian read to him.
I’m sorry I missed that part…and also should probably never see it again. Watching August snuggle up in Ian’s lap last night was like a too-tight bear hug—cozy and warm, but it left me hurting in unexpected places, too. Everything I want mixed with everything I’m afraid of.
And the silly voices? I had no idea a man reading tongue-twister rhymes in an affected British accent would be so attractive.
“Ian, what’s your favorite kind of cake?” August asks, switching gears.
Ian seems to need a second to catch up. “Lemon, I guess.”
August turns his big blue eyes my way. “Mama, can you make us a strawberry-lemon cake for our birthday next week? We’re going to share a party.”
Now I’m the one left behind. “You’re sharing a what now?”
“We have the same birthday! July sixth. Ian said he wanted to share my presents, but I think maybe we should just share a cake.” August shoots him a look like he wants to be sure Ian’s okay with that. “Strawberry-lemon would be good. Can you make that?”
“Your birthday is really the sixth?” I ask Ian.
“It is.”
Fate? Kismet? Or sheer dumb luck?
“So fun for you, turning forty.”
His eyes sparkle at me in the evening sun. “Flirt.”
“My best friend, Jake, will be there, and friends from my Kindergarten class,” August tells him. “We can invite your friends, too!”
“Oh.” Ian’s sudden frown is a stark contrast to August’s enthusiasm. “That’s sweet, kid, but we don’t need to do that.”
He’s already admitted he hasn’t really tried to get to know anyone in Sunshine beyond his aunts and August and me. Honestly, from everything Amy told me about him before we moved in, he hasn’t spent much time with them, either. But even turning thirty-seven, nobody wants to sit at home by themselves.
Ian won’t be alone for his birthday. Not on my watch.
“What if we have August’s party with his friends in the park, and then we have a barbecue here in the evening?” I offer. “We can invite Ian’s aunts and my mom and Wren. Maybe a few other friends. We’ll celebrate you both together.”
August is all for it, as I knew he would be. But Ian’s vote is the deciding factor. He’s watching me like he’s looking for a trap. Smart. I’m definitely planning one. My encouraging smile is maybe too obvious. If he’s against even this much, I’ll drop it. But if he’s on board…
“Sounds fun,” he finally says.
Perfect. I’ll make some phone calls tonight. Hopefully, we’ll introduce Ian to a few more people around town. Maybe rebuild his community a little. Remind him he’s worth being celebrated.
And if I’m really lucky, I’ll get to see this pirate in a party hat.