Chapter 8
PACE – MID-SEPTEMBER
Home Sweet Home
The Quinns’ collie, Bear, briefly barks before he recognizes me, the bearded giant, and I guess he’s getting used to me because he nudges into my leg for a scratch behind his ears.
“Where are Annie and the others, Bear?”
Oddly enough, the dog doesn’t answer with words, but he does encourage me in the direction of the house.
I don’t call out my arrival at the porch in case Nelson’s sleeping. I’m here for a social visit, not a driving lesson, tagging along with Colton and Sas, who’ll need to give me a ride home later, after Annie has seen the gift I’ve brought for her.
Since Colton and Sas haven’t arrived yet I hesitate before heading through the skeeter guard into the house, but Annie always tells me, The door to this ranch is never closed.
As quietly as an elephant bull can do, I step into the kitchen, where I’m instantly hit by the smell of fresh coffee, cinnamon and baked bread.
There’s a tempting stack of sliced sourdough on the kitchen side, which I’ll happily gorge on when I’m invited to do so because the Bears have got a Monday night game this week, which means I’m perfectly entitled to carb load today and tomorrow.
Hell, I’ll take home-baked carbs any time if I can get away with it.
I hear the murmuring of Nelson coming from the lounge-diner and round the corner to see the source of the sound is not the baby himself but a monitor set up next to Annie on the dining table.
She’s face-planted in what looks like a college text, forehead resting on her arms, deeply sleeping and doing the kind of tiny snores that are more insanely charming than grizzly.
Her hair is braided in two even parts that meet in a hair tie at the top of a very delicate neck.
She looks young, which serves as a reminder that I ought not to be considering wrapping those braids around my hands as I nibble the skin beneath her lobe, no matter how fucking sexy she looks, even sleeping, in a short denim skirt and a pearl snap shirt.
Evans was dead right on the pod; there’s something about a cowgirl’s get-up.
But not this one. Not Quinn’s sister who is Gen Z to my Millennial. Twelve years this veteran’s junior. My teammate’s sister. Who must have more shit going on in her head than the CIA could figure out.
Out. Of. Bounds.
Nelson murmurs again, which finally causes me to stop ogling the woman I have no business ogling.
Not wanting to wake her, I take the liberty of kicking off my sneakers and climbing the stairs to find Nelson.
I’ve only ever been upstairs in the ranch one time, when Caroline a.k.a.
Mama Quinn showed me and a few of the guys on the team where we could shower and change ahead of the spring dance, so I’m wandering aimlessly around the second floor, searching for the baby.
The walls are papered with floral patterns that feel homey and on every square yard of the walls there’s a family photograph.
A mom, a dad and a couple kids. Dogs, horses and longhorns.
In some there are more people who look like Sonny or Caroline, their siblings perhaps, and in others, kids that I’d guess are fosters based on the ages of Annie and Colton in the same photographs.
Every surface is covered with love and memories and even if it weren’t for the fact Annie is sleeping downstairs, that this is my buddy’s house, that there’s a constant smell of homey baking and oak in the air here, there’s so much warmth and homeliness that I feel as if I could’ve lived here in a past life.
It’s a million times different to my bachelor house on the edge of San Antonio city.
I hear murmurings again and remember what I should be doing.
Nelson’s nursery looks like something out of a Disney movie.
His crib sits in the middle of the room that’s been decorated with stencils of animals all over the walls and stars and a big moon on the ceiling.
Cream rugs rest on the polished wood floor and the smallest wardrobe and drawers sit in the corner.
What makes it even more magical is the canopy overhanging his crib.
The chiffon drapes are most likely practical to keep the skeeters off him, but his place of sleep is the kind of bed every parent wants for their child. Safe, cozy, beautiful.
The room is decorated with affection. Not for the first time, I consider what an idyllic childhood Colton and Annie must have had growing up on this ranch. So different from my own experiences of being passed from pillar to post while my mom was forced to make ends meet on her own.
Nelson pulls himself up on his crib side and turns those doe-eyes like his mama’s on me. He has a wide smile to match them. He’s so damn sweet, I’m hit by an urge to give Annie and Nelson the life they deserve, even if it’s not my place to do so.
“I can be cool Uncle Tanner though, right, Nellie Bellie?” I ask the baby boy as he holds up his hands for me.
I’ve always thought of myself as a tough guy. I block defensive linemen all season long, yet Nelson Quinn can reduce me to goo in an instant.
I reach down and hoist him onto my waist. “Hey, kiddo. How was your nap?”
I’ll take the giggle and pulling of my facial hair as confirmation that it was a good one.
“Your mama’s having a snooze and I vote we should leave her to it, so why don’t we choose one of these interesting-looking books from your shelf here and sit in that rocking chair by the window until she wakes up?”
Book in hand, I hook him onto my lap as we gently rock in the window seat and Nelson unhelpfully prods the pages.
I decide to switch out the name of the dog in the story for Nelson’s. It’s the tiniest, stupidest thing but it makes him chuckle every time I say, “Nellie Bellie the dog is lost.” I swear something in my heart that I didn’t know needed it is sewn back together by the sound.
“Is he under the stairs?” I ask Nelson as he works his chubby little fingers under the book flap.
I honestly don’t know how long we’re reading the book – the same book, which I now know by memory – before Annie clears her throat, where she’s leaning on the door frame.
The smile she gives me makes me feel bigger than the universe. Just because, you know, she should smile, and it’s a lot for her to be happy with everything that’s happened and is happening with her mama and Auston the Focker.
“Hey, girly,” I say, not managing to sound casual at all when I should be casual because why wouldn’t I be casual?
“Nellie Bellie?” she asks, one eyebrow cocked.
Now I smirk. “You heard that, huh?”
“His name is Nelson, after my mama’s maiden name. Never Nellie. And never ever Nellie Bellie.”
“Understood, Annie Bannie.”
She scoffs and comes over to us. “Mama!” Nelson says, bouncing on my lap.
“Hey! He said it again! He’s refused to say it since the very first time days ago. Haven’t you?” She picks him up and slips him onto her hip. “Thanks, Tanner. How long have you been here?”
I stand, not realizing how close we are to each other until I’m literally towering over the pair of them, so near that Nelson’s baby powder smell is blended perfectly with the sweetness of Annie’s perfume.
I’ve been this close to a hell of a lot of women who smell of luxury and sex, but there’s something about Annie’s scent that makes my lungs hitch when I inhale.
“Not long,” I manage, like there’s a frog in my throat.
“You beat us!” Sas and Colton appear as if from nowhere and though I’m not doing anything wrong, I take a quick step back from Annie, not sure why I was so close to her in the first place. Or why I even care what this looks like.
She’s a friend. I was helping her with her kid.
“Where did you go?” I ask. “I thought you guys set off when I did?”
“I needed a drive thru, I was starving,” Sas says, still holding a takeout soda, eyes brightly shimmering and blonde hair knotted on top of her head. “Where’s my favorite boy?”
“I’m right here, baby,” Colton says, receiving a scowl across her shoulder as she makes a beeline for Nelson and whips him from Annie.
Almost immediately, there’s a sound like a very squelchy fart, then a stench like a rat died days ago fills the room.
“Perfectly timed for your Aunty Firecracker to change you, buddy, good job!” I tell Nelson.
Sas whacks my arm and opens her mouth to doubtless throw abuse my way but Annie holds up a finger and tells her, “Na-ah, not in front of the baby.”
So Sas settles for giving me a filthy frown and I tell Nelson, “That’s why I call her a firecracker, buddy. She’s always ready to explode. Just like you.”
Annie laughs as she takes Nelson to change him.
“I’ll see y’all downstairs. I’ve smelled my nephew’s number twos enough times to know when to leave,” Colton says, and because a sports guy can’t resist chirping, he adds, “Doesn’t smell as bad as Pace covered in cow crap, though.”
As I mutter a retort under my breath to spare the baby’s ears, Sas and Annie smirk to each other. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been the butt of all jokes for days after that first driving lesson.
“Speaking of that road splat, have you shown her yet?” Sas asks, looking at me.
I shake my head. “Annie, come on downstairs when you’re done,” I tell her. “I’ve brought you something.”
Her lips curve up despite the fact she’s opened Nelson’s nappy, as if she’s immune to the stench of rotten vermin. “You have? What?”
“You’ll see,” Sas tells her, grinning.