“Can I go now?” I asked.
“Only if you promise a first thing in the morning phone call explaining the reconciliation and details about the meet the kids dinner.”
“Done,” I agreed.
She said nothing.
“Jerra, I have to go.”
“Are you sure about this, baby?” she whispered and I pulled in a soft breath.
Then I let it go.
Then I said softly, “He’s been unhappy for eighteen years, a bad marriage, babe. Really bad. And last night he told me I’d made him happy for the first time in those years. Truly happy without it being f**ked up. He had issues. He took those out on me. He regrets it. And he apologized and explained them. So, yes, I’m sure about this.”
“Okay,” she said softly back.
“Now can I go?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she answered.
“Love you, honey,” I whispered.
“Love you too and miss you already.”
“I miss you too, Jerra, babe. Later.”
“Yeah, later.”
I touched the screen and sighed.
Then I bent and pulled on my other boot.
Mike, having been married to a designer label whore of the worst variety, knew to phone me to give me the all important information that tonight was casual. We were going to The Station. Not the police one, the semi-nice restaurant that had popped up in one of the semi-nice shopping areas that popped up at the north end of town in the years after I’d been gone from The ‘Burg. I’d been there once before. The food was excellent. The dress code was jeans.
So I had on a pair that were in the middle of my Jeans Fade Spectrum, a spectrum that was wide considering I owned a lot of jeans. Not nearly white with lots of fraying bits. Not dark either.
I added a slash neck cream top that had a hem that smoothed over my h*ps and very long sleeves that had a small opening in the seam that hooked over my thumb. Over that I wore a drop belt made of a wide expanse of fawn suede that had a big, round silver buckle that hung low on my hipbone. I added a bunch of silver over the shirt at my wrists as well as at my neck and ears. I did subtle makeup and earlier that day I’d changed my finger and toenail color to a dusky, near sheer pink. I left my hair long at the back but pulled a hank of it away just at my forehead and pinned it about an inch back with little bobby pins painted cream, rose and brown. And last, I’d spritzed on perfume.
I got up, went to the mirror over the dresser and surveyed myself.
I was ready to meet Mike’s kids.
“They’re here!” Rhonda shouted sounding as ecstatic as she had that morning.
Okay, no. I wasn’t ready to meet Mike’s kids.
But I had no choice.
I pulled in a deep breath and exited the guest room telling myself kids liked me. Finley and Kirby liked me and they were Mike’s kids’ ages. And Hunter and Jerra’s kids liked me and they were six and eight. So there. Kids of all ages liked me. Mike’s kids would like me too.
Shit.
I started to walk down the stairs and saw Rhonda had the door open and Mike and his kids were coming through. Kirby was standing in the big front foyer. And Finley, my hot boy, cucumber cool older nephew, was leaning a shoulder against the double-wide pocket doors that led to the living room.
Finley was killing me. Like his brother, he got his mother’s coloring, dark hair, blue eyes (though Kirb’s eyes were dark brown, like mine and Darrin’s). But he got his father’s everything else, tall, built, strong. The expressions on his face, the way he held his body, the way he moved were all his Dad.
But I wasn’t thinking about that.
I wasn’t thinking about anything, not even Mike’s kids, both of whom looked directly up the stairs at me coming down them.
No, my eyes were glued to the handsome blond man in the foyer as I walked down the stairs of my childhood home to go out on a date with Mike Haines.
I’d wanted this was a ferocity that was consuming when I was an adolescent girl. I’d seen my sister do this time and again and I coveted it so much, seeing her do it was like a form of torture. I’d daydreamed of it day after day and night after night before falling asleep.
And now, thirty-eight years old with my dead brother’s family and Mike’s kids by another woman looking on, I was doing it.
And even with that time and our audience, finally having it, it was no less beautiful than I expected it to be.
Because Mike was standing there wearing jeans as only Mike could wear them and that fabulous brown leather jacket. His gentle, warm, dark brown eyes were tipped up at me with a gentle, warm look on his face saying he liked what he saw. Not only that, we had an audience and I knew they’d melted away and I was the only person Mike could see.
“Hey,” I said when I had one step to go.
“Hey,” he replied then his arm came out my way as an invitation and I took it. I moved into its curve, it wrapped around my waist and my arm returned the gesture.
This, too, came naturally.
I was at his side, my neck twisted, my head tipped back to see his neck twisted and his head tipped down.
“You look good,” he muttered.
“Thanks, you do too,” I muttered back and his mouth twitched.
Then he turned his head, I followed suit and I finally took in his kids.
I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I wasn’t about his boy Jonas. Jonas looked a lot like Mike. He wasn’t the spitting image but he had his father’s coloring and his build. In fact, he was only maybe an inch shorter than Mike. And he had a lot of Mike in his face.
I was surprised about his girl Clarisse. She had Mike’s coloring but either she looked like her mother (which would be disappointing since Audrey, in my head, looked like a she-demon with horns, fangs, acid green eyes and matted hair) or she was all Clarisse.
She was out-and-out beautiful. So much so I’d never seen a girl her age that striking.
“Dusty, this is my son, Jonas. He likes to be called No,” Mike started to introduce, I pulled my eyes from the beautiful Clarisse and looked up at No who was offering a hand to me.
I took it, squeezed and smiled up at him. “Hey, No. Cool to meet you.”
“Yeah, you too,” he replied, grinning an easy but lazy grin that I was certain the high school girls all creamed their pants over. Then he let my hand go, looked to his sister and declared, “Told you Dad would nail a hot babe.”
Clarisse’s eyes got big and her face flushed in a way that was so becoming I felt the desire to find a camera immediately and capture it on film. Then daggers formed in her eyes as she glared at her brother. I wasn’t certain what this meant. I was certain the daggers were imaginary because her brother wasn’t felled instantly.