Only In His Sweetest Dreams(39)
“Honey, I’ve told you to ask for a sandwich if you’re hungry. You need more than just bread in your body.” She tried to recall if she’d already fed him tuna this week while she took tomato and lettuce from the fridge. “How about a cheese sandwich?”
“‘kay.”
“Yes, please,” she corrected, then said, “Open the back door for Ayjia, please. She ran over to L.C.’s.”
“Can I go?”
“Not right now.” They would be over there for dinner later. How had Paige bait and switched her into that?
“But why is Ayjia allowed?”
“She’s not staying. She’s coming right back.” Mercedes pushed her hair off her sweating face. “Actually, she should be back already. All right. Run over and tell her it’s snack time and she should come home.”
He took his sandwich, thanked her without prompting, and zoomed out the door.
Mercedes sighed, had a glass of water, sighed again and cleaned her kitchen. When twenty minutes had passed and the kids still hadn’t returned, she worked up the courage to go after them. L.C. stood on his side of the patio out back.
“Dayton and Ayjia?” she asked.
“Ayjia’s playing dolls. Dayton’s playing a video game with Zack.”
“Could you ask them to come home?”
“They’re fine. Ayjia’s keeping the little one busy so I can stand out here with...” He shifted his gaze from glancing inside the unit to the bricks of his own patio, where his daughter stood.
The toddler leaned on the stone blocks that made up the half-wall between their patios.
“Paige and Sterling are picking up the take-out,” he explained.
“Mmm,” Mercedes said, not looking at him, too fascinated with the little midge blinking up at her. “Hi,” Mercedes said, because she wasn’t mad at the sweetheart. Who could be? She was adorable with her soft round cheeks and kissy doll’s mouth and sweeping eyelashes.
“Lindsay, this is Mercedes,” L.C. said conversationally. “She hates my guts.”
Mercedes leaned on her elbows so she was closer to the little girl. “I don’t hate his guts,” she confided. “Your Auntie Paige made excuses for him, so now I just pity him.”
“She did not,” L.C. said with the grim tone that reminded her he wasn’t a man to be trifled with, even by those whom he loved.
“Where Mamma?” Lindsay asked.
“Sorry, sweetheart, I don’t know where she is,” Mercedes said.
“Work.” Lindsay answered her own question.
“You’re probably right. How old are you?”
“Two,” L.C. said.
“Dadda work,” Lindsay said.
“Mmm. Well, he hasn’t done much today, but he had a hard day yesterday. It’s understandable if he’s goofing off today.”
“Are you enjoying yourself?” L.C. asked, arms folded, chin set, voice grim.
“Hardly.” She straightened and brushed the dirt specks from her bare forearms.
“Lindsay, who’s this?” L.C. pointed at his own chest.
“Dadda Liah.”
“Daddy Liar,” Mercedes repeated, impressed. “You’re one smart cookie, aren’t you?” she said to the little girl.
“Cookie?” The girl reached up. “Pees?”
“The cookies are all gone, Linds. Auntie Paige went to buy some with the Chinese food. We’ll have one for dessert.”
“Tell my kids to come home, would you?” Mercedes said.
“They’re fine. Totally comfortable hanging out with an asshole like me.”
She sighed, not liking to hear him call himself that.
Not moving to go in, she relented and let him see the hurt boiling inside her. “You should have told me.”
He flinched. “I know. But you would have told me to go see her.”
True. Mercedes watched the little girl squat to poke at an embedded rock. “How did you stay away?” she asked, kind of rhetorically. She was just too sweet to resist.
“Staying away from that town is easy.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But I knew once I’d seen her, that would be it. I wouldn’t be able to leave her again.” He trailed off, lifting his head to look at her, both of them hearing what he hadn’t quite said.
He was leaving. Going home.
It hit like a punch in the gut.
Mercedes cupped her elbows, pressing her arms to the sick, lingering knot in her stomach.
“Merce,” he whispered, showing her a helpless palm.
She shook her head and shifted her gaze back to the little miracle the woman he didn’t love had given him, the kind of miracle that the woman who did love him never could. A sob choked into her throat.
Straining to get the words out, she said, “Call me when dinner gets here,” and went back to her empty unit, closing the door behind her.
It was odd to be miserable and happy at the same time, but L.C. couldn’t help it. Paige might have spent her entire life trying to nag him into being a better man than he could ever hope to be, she might have married a man L.C. had hated down to his last red blood cell most of his life, but they were family. It was good to be with them.
“So what you’re telling me,” L.C. said, watching Sterling unload Chinese food and paper plates onto the end of the ping-pong table, “Is that you’re trying to knock up my sister before my ex-wife’s new husband gets a bun in her oven.”
“It doesn’t sound as sporting when you say it like that. Oh, hi.” Sterling flashed his golden grin past L.C.’s shoulder.
L.C. closed his eyes in a cringe, aware of Sterling stepping up to open the gate for Mercedes, making apologies in that obscenely perfect way of his. “Please excuse our scene earlier. I take full responsibility. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”
“Oh, get real,” L.C. said, opening his eyes to see Mercedes had changed into a sundress. She must have showered because her hair was damp and when she sent a curious look over her shoulder at him, he saw her lashes were dark and her lips glossy.
Dragging his gaze off her flushed cheeks and somber mouth, he said to Sterling, “Seriously, did you have anything to do with this plan at all?”
Sterling touched his tongue to his bottom lip. “I barely made it into the van before it left town.” He treated Mercedes to another killer grin. “But it doesn’t change the fact I’d like to smooth things over with Mercedes. Is there anything I can do?”
“Help L.C. replace the windows in the office,” she joked.
“I can do that. Here, why don’t you dish up for your kids? Paige was worried about allergies.” He handed her a plate. “Now who is Elsie? One of the senior ladies?”
Fuck. L.C. closed his eyes. He was never going to hear the end of this one.
Mercedes swung her gaze to L.C. and her mouth twitched. She started to laugh, but he didn’t care. At least she was smiling again.
Mercedes didn’t want to like Paige and Sterling. She didn’t want to linger through dinner and talk and make nice. But the time flew and watching L.C. interact with them was fascinating. They cracked jokes, they teased each other, and Mercedes gleaned there was some family factory where L.C. and Sterling had worked together, because they talked extensively about a capacity problem on some machine or other.
Meanwhile, Paige and Sterling operated like a single person, passing babies back and forth, wiping faces and hands, disappearing to change a diaper or fetch a toy, communicating without words, touching with natural familiarity.
Mercedes watched Sterling’s hand reach for Paige’s yet again, toying with her fingers while she offered Dayton and Ayjia fortune cookies and asked them to keep the pieces away from Elizabeth. “She’s too little,” Paige explained, then looked at Zack as he snapped open his own. “What’s it say? Anything about romance? How’re things with your girlfriend, by the way? You should have invited her. I want to meet her.”
“Girlfriend?” L.C. broke off his conversation with Sterling to swing his attention to Zack. He so rarely missed anything that Mercedes couldn’t help biting back a grin.
Zack gave Paige a pained look. “Thanks.”
“Hashtag spoiler-alert? You haven’t met her either?” Paige asked L.C. “How is that possible? They’ve been seeing each other for ages. Don’t tell me you’ve broken up,” she swung back to ask Zack. “She’s the reason you stayed here.”
“We stayed here so you could chase a skirt?” L.C.’s voice dropped to a dangerous tone that made Zack sink deeper into his lawn chair.
“She’s not just a skirt,” Mercedes volunteered. “She’s really nice. The kids like her a lot.”
“This is the one who’s too young, right? The Dean’s daughter?” Sterling asked, openly piling on.
“The Dean’s daughter?” L.C. repeated. “How young? How do you all know about her and I don’t?”
“You guys are not helping!” Zack protested.
“She lives four blocks from here,” Mercedes stated mercilessly. “That’s why he came to this side of town the night he was arrested.”
“Mercedes,” Zack bit out through his teeth.
“Are you kidding me?” L.C. played it up with mock rage, making them all grin.