Chapter 4 #2
That present hadn’t sucked, even though there had been an initial concern about broken bones and trampoline-related accidents and how it would fit. Eventually, she’d let it be, because Rachel could handle a lot. She rolled with it, rearranging the backyard furniture so it would fit.
The trampoline didn’t require food and shelter and love and…
She set the knife carefully on the cutting board, then worked to untie her apron.
“I think it happened,” Travis said to Molly where he probably thought Rachel couldn’t hear, but she could totally hear.
“Seriously, what is happening?” Molly melodramatically stage whispered.
“He pushed her last nerve,” Travis said, deadpan.
They had no idea. Nada. She was so done.
Rachel started toward the dining room. “Let’s go have that chat, Gavin.”
Gavin, however, didn’t follow.
He seemed to be in some state of shock. Probably because of the zucchini sitting there diced up nicely next to two slices of watermelon shaped like the number eight.
“Now.” Rachel used the tone that always worked on the boys, hoping her take-no-shit tone covered her utter distress at her ex-husband and what he’d pulled with the puppies, not showing up in time to help with the birthday party set-up, and sending his brothers to ambush her into taking their kids on the family vacation that lasted two-freaking-months.
Seriously, what kind of family vacation lasted two whole months? Four days was plenty. Her family managed to do all the socializing they needed to do each year in four days.
They’d all get together. They’d have some dinners. Maybe hit the beach. Then they’d all go home.
That was how family vacations should go.
Not with the Puffle-Yum Franks. Oh no. They had to well and truly drive one another up the wall for sixty full days.
Rachel did her best attempt of a saunter out of the kitchen to the dining room.
Gavin, thank goodness, finally followed her.
Unfortunately for him, he started to speak before they reached the dining room. “Rach, you’re being un—”
“Do not.” She whirled on him, shoving her pointer finger in his face. And yes, it was kind of comical, but no, she didn’t care. He had pissed her right the hell off.
Given that before Dakota, and before the puppies, they’d had a lovely co-parenting relationship, he was ruining everything.
“We are going in there”—she moved her pointer finger from his face to the dining room—“to discuss your harebrained idea about giving our sons puppies that will live at my house.”
Dakota decided it was her place to say something. For the record, it wasn’t. “Rachel—”
“No.” Rachel turned to Dakota. “If those dogs were your idea, then they can go live at your house.” Rachel brushed by Gavin’s fiancée. “But we both know that won’t happen, because you travel too much,” Rachel said to herself. The pettiness felt indulgent for a change.
Once in the dining room, she pushed the French doors closed, shut the blinds, shoved her hands on her hips, and paced from one wall to the other.
“Rachel,” Gavin said in that placating way he had.
The one she’d thought was cute the night he took her home and knocked her up.
Before the exhaustion of twins. There wasn’t time for Gavin’s cute anymore.
She had a birthday party to get back to, and she had two kids, and two dogs, and an ex-mother-in-law who—
Fine, Evelyn was getting a pass, since she was totally helping. But the rest of them needed her.
“You gave them dogs,” she said finally, tossing her hands wide.
Gavin didn’t say anything.
“Do you want to explain to me why you sent our children animals?” She expanded on her previous statement.
Gavin didn’t sit. Instead, he pulled out one of the high-backed dining room chairs that looked really nice but stained really easily, crossed his arms over the back, and stared at the seat. “You always said you loved dogs. Golden retrievers, as I recall, are your favorite.”
Wait. Oh damn. Dammit.
She took in a quick breath. Her heart pausing for three solid seconds.
He’d remembered that? Even she’d forgotten that.
She let out a long breath of air.
He was not wrong, and, apparently, he had been paying some attention to her when she spoke.
“I do love dogs. And yes, on the golden retrievers.” She crossed her arms, but most of the anger fizzled away as she began to understand that he hadn’t gone off half-cocked.
He’d apparently listened to her the one time she’d said something without thinking it through.
“But this is the type of thing we talk about before you go balls deep and have two of them delivered.”
He raised his gaze to hers, his eyes pinning her. They were the same brown as Dane’s, but his were darker.
“I thought you’d like the surprise,” he said. “You’ve always loved surprises.”
Dammit. Correct again. Except…
“I love it when people bring me margaritas unannounced. I love it when your dad drops random chocolate deliveries. I love it when—”
“You said you love surprises, Rach. All the time.” He pressed his hands against his hips. “I thought you’d love this surprise. I mean, when we were together, all you talked about was getting dogs. Two of them. One for each of the boys.”
“I didn’t mean…” She thought back on that first year with the boys. She’d wanted so much back then. That was before she learned the motherly art of settling for what she could get. There was a conversation when the boys were really little, she started talking about dogs, and… “Shit.”
“I should’ve talked to you. That’s on me.” He didn’t apologize, but his tone said it for him.
“You should’ve talked to me about the summer sabbatical, too.” She held his brown eyes with her blue ones and felt…nothing.
He stood straight. “Did Mom talk to you? I asked her to wait until you and I could find time to communicate about it.”
Rachel pulled out a chair and sat. “No, your mother sent your brothers.”
“Fuck.” He sat in the chair he’d been leaning against, their knees nearly touching but not quite.
“When were you going to tell me that you aren’t taking the boys this summer?” she asked.
“As soon as we could have a conversation alone.” She waved an arm around the room. “We’re alone.”
They were. Funny thing, she couldn’t really remember a time when they’d been alone since he’d proposed to Dakota.
That was odd. It was odd, right?
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dakota has a four-week gallery thing. I’m going with her. It’s important to her and it’s important to me.”
Rachel’s blood cooled. For herself, for Evelyn, for her boys. “What about what’s important to your kids?”
The kids who looked forward to going to the lake house with their dad each summer? Who talked about it nonstop starting in freaking February?
“I’m trying here, Rach.” He looked up then and she saw it, saw the man who was genuinely trying and somehow managed to screw it all up anyway.
She wanted to hug him. But that was no longer her place. Not anymore.
“Then try harder,” she said instead of offering comfort.
She wasn’t his wife anymore. Her priorities were to her children and herself.
“The kids can’t go without one of us. Your mom will fill them with sugar, your dad will teach them to smoke cigars, and Travis will teach them how to tree surf. Even Dane will get in on that.” She ran her hands through her hair, gripping the strands at her skull.
“Can you go for me, Rach? Just this time?” Gavin asked. “You can work from anywhere. And you deserve the break.”
Break? This was not going to be a break.
She looked up, turning her eyes to slits she hoped would have the right effect on him. “Seriously?”
Gavin ran his hands over his hair. “If you can help me out this time, I’d be really grateful.”
Just what she needed—Gavin’s gratitude. It filled her up and made all the sarcasm come right out.
“Gavin, there’s no more of me left to give,” she said, because there wasn’t.
He said nothing in return because…dammit, she was going to go to the lake.
“I’m not saying yes,” she added quietly. “Yet.”
He grinned his Gavin grin. “But you will.”
“I’ll figure something out.” She always figured something out. Which, they both knew, meant, yes-but-I’m-not-willing-to-admit-it-yet.
The French doors squeaked, and Travis gently set one puppy and then the other on the hardwood.
How long had he been there?
“Don’t mind me, they were just…uh…they finished their little project outside.” He flashed Rachel and Gavin a grin and then, for what seemed like good measure, gave them two thumbs up. Gah, did he ever take anything seriously?
Thankfully, he left as quickly as he’d shown up, pulling the squeaky door closed behind him.
“Rach.” Gavin lifted Re-Pete when he tried to climb his leg. “I want to be here for the boys.”
“Then be here.”
He studied the puppy, not lifting his eyes to Rachel’s. “But I also want to respect what you need and what I need.”
Look at this, communication was the bomb. She told her clients the same thing all the time. Communication opened pathways you never knew existed.
“Then help me out sometimes,” she said. “Even when it’s not your weekend for them to come to your house.”
Gavin nodded and set Re-Pete back on the ground. The pup immediately whined for him. “Can the boys come hang with me tonight? I wanted to ask, but then I wanted to ask in person and then the whole puppy thing and you being pissed thing…”
Yes, they could totally go spend the night with their dad but, “Where the boys go, the puppies go.”
“Fair enough.” He nodded, a barely there smile at the corners of his mouth. “You don’t mind them spending their birthday night with me?”
Did she mind? No.
Did she care? Of course.
Their birthday was important to her, but if Gavin was willing to try, she could use a break from the puppies. It might mean a lot to the boys also to be with their dad.
Bonus, if they were at their dad’s house, then she could sleep.
Sleep sounded wonderful. Maybe it’d even be uninterrupted, and she’d turn off her cell phone and forward client calls to her answering service. It’d practically be a momcation.
“I think the boys would really like that,” she said.
That got her a Gavin grin. The good kind. The full kind. The kind that had the power to make a woman change her mind about (nearly) anything.
“We good?” he asked.
“You’re going to take the dogs frequently.” It was both a question and a confirmation. Mostly a confirmation.
“I’ll even come by and walk them.” He made an X with his finger over his heart, just like she often did.
She held out her hand. “It’s been a pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Frank.”
“Likewise, Ms. Gibson.” He took her hand and gave it a shake, studying her. His expression reminded her of something that had made sense once upon a time, but now it didn’t quite click.
That expression was not the stuff of happily ever afters, and the realization smacked her in the chest like a full-grown golden retriever chasing its ball.
“How many people do you think are at the door listening?” she asked, hopefully distracting him from whatever he was thinking that made his eyes warm like that.
She released his hand and gestured to the closed doorway.
“All of them, if I had to guess,” he said, seriously.
She smiled. “Should we give them a minute to scurry away?”
“You’re too nice, Rach.” He gave her a smile that made her glad he was the father of her children because, maybe, they’d inherit an ounce of his magnetism.
Without further comment, he pulled open the door.
Evelyn was wiping down the picture frames in the hallway, a bottle of Windex in one hand and a microfiber cloth in the other.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Things are great.” Gavin showcased his charisma-soaked smile.
The one that somehow made Rachel experience a solid bout of nostalgia.
Not in the romantic way. More like reminiscent of the girl she’d been before kids, before the mortgage, before clients, before responsibility ran smack over the top of her.
“You convinced Rachel to come to the lake?” Evelyn asked, hope clear in her tone.
“Don’t push it, Mom.” Gavin patted her arm as he started to move past, but with an ease of obvious practice, he herded his mother along beside him.
That was nice. Really nice.
The smile. The nice. Together they nearly had Rachel wondering why on earth she and Gavin hadn’t worked.
Then her toe was wet. She glanced at her foot. Her big toe was being munched on by Pete as though the red nail polish were super delish.
Right. That right there was why they hadn’t worked.
Gavin never really understood who Rachel was. How an offhand comment about puppies didn’t mean she wanted them delivered seven years later.
She picked up the culprit currently licking her feet. Apparently, not wanting to be left out, Re-Pete quickly bounded toward her. She picked him up, too.
“I guess you boys are staying,” she said, stroking their fur while keeping her focus on Evelyn and Gavin as they moved to the kitchen.
The dogs were staying and she was…well, whatever this was, she wasn’t sure she liked it.