“Yeah? Sharks are pretty cool.”
“Yeah! Have you seen Jaws?”
Elliot raised an eyebrow. “Yes. Have you?”
“Yeah. But don’t tell my mommy. I’m not ’posed to watch stuff like that. I saw it when Uncle Oz fell asleep watching me.”
“Ah. Okay. I won’t say a word.”
“Do you have music?”
Wow. The kid was barely taking a breath. “Yeah,” Elliot said. “I’ve got some in here. You want to listen?”
“You got Johnny Cash?”
That one had Elliot’s eyes widening again. “You like Johnny Cash?”
“Oh yeah, he’s the best. But Mommy says I can’t play him for a while ’cause she gots a headache. So maybe we shouldn’t listen to him right now, since she doesn’t feel good.”
“That might be a good idea.”
“She likes the face song, though.”
“The face song?”
“The one where he sings about seeing her face. Mommy likes that one. But she says when you hear it, you have ta dance with a girl. I dance with her in the kitchen sometimes.”
It had been just five minutes and exhaustion already pulled at Elliot. Where the hell did all the energy come from? Another hour and he’d probably be down with a migraine from the sheer volume of words coming out of the kid’s mouth, but Tyler was kind of a crack-up. And Elliot could envision the beautiful woman currently lying in his bed dancing around the kitchen with her son. It was an appealing picture.
“You do? Well that’s very nice of you,” Elliot said.
“Yeah. Mommy says I should be a gentleman.”
“Well, she’s right. A gentleman is a good thing to be.”
“Yeah.” He put his head to the side, his little nose scrunched up. “But I don’t wanna dance with other girls. Just Mommy.”
Elliot laughed. “It can be fun dancing with girls.”
Tyler grimaced like someone was trying to force feed him lima beans. “Do you dance with girls?”
“Every chance I get,” he said, wiggling his eyebrows.
Tyler made a gagging face. “Girls are gross.”
Elliot thought about the woman sleeping in his bed. “You won’t always think so.”
“I just dance with Mommy, if she wants.”
“Well, I’m sure your mommy loves dancing with you.”
“Yeah. Hey, do you have a car? Does it go fast?”
Elliot opened his mouth to answer, but Tyler kept talking. “I’m going to get a real fast car when I’m bigger. There’s a couple of us at home that are going to race when we get cars. Only, one kid backed out of the race so far. He fell off his bike when we raced those, so his mom won’t let him race anymore.”
Elliot’s ribs were beginning to hurt from the laughter threatening to erupt. If he let it out, he was never going to stop, and he didn’t want to hurt the kid’s feelings or anything. “You’re going to race, huh?”
“Yeah, I set that up already. Don’t tell Mommy that, either.”
Elliot nodded with exaggerated solemnity. “Deal. Hey,” he said quickly, before Tyler could start off on another tangent, “why don’t we play the game?”
“Oooh, yeah, I wanna play!”
Elliot handed him the controller. “Okay, little man. Let’s get our game on.”
Lena woke in a strange bed, buried deep in pillows with a cool breeze from the air conditioner blowing over her. She sat up slowly, a horrific headache pounding away at her skull.
Tyler!
All her aches and pains were eclipsed by a rush of panic. She swung her feet out of the bed, pausing when she heard Tyler’s laughter ringing through the room. She jumped up and hurried through the open double doors into a spacious living room. The hotel suite was decked out like a luxury apartment. In fact, it was bigger than the apartment where she’d lived before she and Tyler had moved in with her brother.
Tyler laughed again, and she looked over the couch to see him playing video games on a huge widescreen TV with a gorgeous man. Correction—the gorgeous god from the pool. Who apparently passed the time playing video games. Okay.
“Yeah! High five me, buddy,” the man said.
He held his hand up for Tyler to slap and then looked over his shoulder and saw her standing there. He passed the game controller over to Tyler. “Take over for me, buddy, okay? I’ll be right back. I wanna talk to your mom.”
Tyler looked over his shoulder. “I’m going to build a new room in the castle, kay? Hey, Mom!” He grinned at her, showing a mouthful of Oreo-encrusted teeth.
She sucked back a groan. “You okay?”
“Yep!”