She deserves to be happy, and I’m gonna do my best to ensure she is, every single day.
I lean in to kiss those soft lips again, maybe grab her and carry her to the bedroom, when the doorbell rings.
Dammit.
Tessa extricates herself from my hold, sends me a wink that makes my dick twitch and goes to answer the door. For myself, I turn to the oven and run the multiplication table through my head, so I don’t scare Tessa’s mom off with the monstrous tent in the front of my pants.
As I check the ribs and mix the sauce into the drained pasta, I hear footsteps enter the kitchen.
“Hi, Dylan,” an unfamiliar female voice says from behind me.
I take a bracing breath. After all that happened—the sickness, finding the courage to ask Tessa for forgiveness and a second chance, the fire, Dad’s death—this meeting shouldn’t seem too daunting.
“Mrs. Leon.” I take the hand she offers me, small and white like Tessa’s, decorated with a diamond ring and several plain golden bands. “How are you?”
See? I can be civil even when I don’t feel like it.
“Fine, thank you.” She glances at the stove. “Whatever it is Tessa made, it smells delicious.”
“Dylan cooked,” Tessa says, helping me carry the pots to table in the living room. “For you. He’s a good cook. Better than me.”
“Don’t listen to her,” I say, carrying the dish with the ribs. “She cooks just fine.”
Her mother is looking at us, her gaze bouncing from one to the other, her eyes a bit wide. “Really?” she finally manages.
“Mom is just shocked I can cook at all,” Tessa winks at her. “Right, Mom?”
“But she thought you were the one who cooked,” I protest, confused and hating how out of my depth I feel. I’m uneasy enough without contradictory statements flying around.
“She was teasing me,” Tessa says and takes a seat.
Her mom sighs and takes a seat across from her. “It’s true. I was shocked.”
This is promising to be a long, long evening, I think, as I serve the food and sit down with them. Gotta have patience. Gotta be Zen, like Zane. Fuck.
I open a bottle of wine for them, but I stick to water. Not allowed to drink alcohol yet, as I’m still on antibiotics, not until I beat the damn disease one hundred percent.
Tessa devours the food, so I know she likes it, and her mom also digs in, which is reassuring.
As for me, I’m too caught up in watching Tessa eat and the way her bra shows through her cleavage when she lifts her fork. My hard-on is back with a vengeance, and all I want is to push her mom politely but firmly out, sweep the dishes off the table and enter Tessa here and now, pound into her until she comes, and I spill inside her, marking her. Filling her.
Tessa nudges me with her leg, and I tear my gaze off her tits, aware I’ve missed part of the conversation.
“Yeah?” I pretend to be busy eating, toying with my food.
“Dylan, I was sorry to hear about your father,” Tessa’s mother says, catching me by surprise—not so much at the words spoken as at the emotion they convey.
I look up and find her studying me, her eyes kind. “Thank you.”
“Tessa told me a lot about you.”
“Yeah?”
“Good things,” Tessa says, correctly interpreting my horrified gaze. “Promise.”
“She says you’re a quarterback.”
Used to be. The words are on the tip of my tongue—but Coach says I can go back to training as soon as I feel better, and he has a funding plan lined up for me, so who knows? “Yes, Mrs. Leon.”
“Please, call me Karen.”
I glance sideways at Tessa, hoping for guidance, and she nods, her eyes sparkling. “Karen. Fine.”
“And you’ve been taking care of your two little brothers.”
“Yeah,” I say, not sure where this is going.
“And you can cook. And most importantly, you went into a burning house to pull my daughter out.”
“Yes.” She doesn’t make it sound bad, but I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Well.” She leans forward, smiling, and raises her wine glass. “I think you sound like a great guy, Dylan Hayes. Obviously my daughter has really good taste in men, much better than her mother’s.”
Tessa raises her glass too, grinning at me, and I don’t know if I’ll ever recover from the shock. Tessa’s mom—Karen—just approved of me.
A weight lifts off my shoulders, and when Tessa elbows me in the ribs, I raise my water glass and offer a smile.
A historical moment. God, I could sure use a stiff drink right about now.
***
Karen leaves just before midnight, and I’m surprised to realize I’ve had fun with her. She was nice to me, polite, and as it turns out, she can be quite funny after two glasses of red wine.