"Thanks for everything." Her eyes flicked from him to me and back again. "You can go now."
"Him or me?" her brother asked, outraged, and fuck if he was the only one wondering. Still, I said nothing. I figured silence was my best bet.
She seemed to make a decision then, and I didn't even have to guess if I was going to like the answer-I wasn't.
"Both of you, actually. It's been a long night. I just want to get Lex to bed and me to bed, and I'd really like to do it not in this costume."
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her I'd be happy to assist in ridding her of any and all apparel when her brother's knowing eyes jerked to me.
I kept my face carefully blank.
"I'll talk to you tomorrow," she told us, ushering us toward the door. "And before you ask, I mean both of you."
As we stood shoulder to shoulder on her porch, Winnie shut the door with a smile and a wave. Neither her brother nor I moved an inch for several, long seconds.
Remy's body seemed to hum with what was coming, the very energy of his words reaching out in warning before he uttered even the first syllable.
"I own a shotgun, a shovel, and have three very eager helpers for the disposal of your body."
My eyes closed in a mix of everything at once-humor, surprise that the first threat of this kind was coming to me at such a late age, and uncertainty about whether or not I could be the man who didn't deserve a body bag.
"Noted," I replied finally, but he was already on his way down the steps and he didn't look back.
Way to go, Wes, I told myself as I descended the stairs slowly. Years of sleeping with anything that moves, and you've chosen to become obsessed with a woman with a child and four brothers.
Goddammit.
"Here, Lex," I said as I handed her a calculator from my desk to fool around with. "Work some numbers while I finish up a little paperwork, okay? And then we can go grab something to eat."
Her blond hair shifted off of her shoulders as she moved across the room and snatched the calculator out of my hands with excitement. My little Lexi was a numbers girl through and through. Hell, she could probably teach mathematics to high schoolers at this point. Which was why a calculator came in handy when I was in the process of trying to occupy her and finish up some work.
I rarely considered bringing my kid to work, but this actually made the second time in a week. Her nanny, Melinda, who attended NYU, had fall break last week and a huge economics exam to study for this week, and I tried not to rule her like a fucking dictator. She was a young girl, working her way through school and doing her best to straddle the line of adolescence and adulthood. I could see her clear as day, her struggles and determination, and when I looked really closely, I saw a younger version of myself rather than Melinda.
My mom had worked like a dog to support the five of us after my dad left, but there were only twenty-four hours in a day, seven days in a week, and fifty-two weeks in a year-and a very finite amount of money to be made.
So I'd been that girl, working my way through college and medical school with two jobs, fighting to find the light at the end of the tunnel that would afford me the ability to juggle one life instead of three.
When Nick Raines had shown up with his quick smiles, easy attitude, and life-lightening humor, I'd grabbed on as tight as I could and ridden the ride as long as he'd let me.
Of course, as all roller coasters do, the one with Nick had come to an abrupt end, and when the high wore off-and the pregnancy test read positive-I'd added responsibility to my life rather than absolved it.
Because being a single mother was a job, probably the hardest one I'd ever had, and by far the least predictable. I didn't go in at nine or leave at five, and the expectations of the job were never-not once-the same.
But if there was one thing that was a constant with my daughter, it was her inquisitive nature and the questions it produced.
Constant, curious, intelligent questions about anything and everything.
That was all well and good on a normal day, but when you were in college and trying to cram for an exam that would equal fifty percent of your grade, the questions were a little hard to manage.
As the person trying to work and pass her test simultaneously currently, I knew. I really knew.
Lexi moved over to the small leather chair in front of my desk and plopped her little butt down, her legs swinging back and forth underneath it. She scrunched her nose up as she focused, and her fingertips tip-tapped across the keys.
Silence-thank God. I loved the sound of her voice, had waited tirelessly to hear the words every mother dreams of when Lexi was struggling the most with her speech delay, but concentration and chatter, no matter how adorable, didn't go hand in hand.
Focused again, I carefully described every detail on the report for Harrison's torn ligament and moved on to the broken vertebrae DeMarcus Bassy had suffered in practice.
I still marveled at the injuries a sport could produce, the overall very real physical roughness of football, and the absolute grit most players displayed when you told them they couldn't play. There was never relief in their eyes or fear in their hearts-they lived and breathed football, and being told they couldn't be out there felt like a death of a part of them.
Five minutes later, the words, "Pen and paper, Mommy?" pulled my attention from my laptop and back to my daughter, but five minutes were better than none. Plus, her sweet face was a happy distraction from all of the gruesome details of the end of a man's dreams-at least for the season. Bassy's ass would be riding the bench for a good long time.
"Sure, honey." I grabbed a small notepad and pen from my desk drawer and set them on the edge of my desk.
Her Mary Jane-covered feet ran across the hardwood floor, and she stopped in front my desk, hand already gripping the pen and scribbling something down on the notepad.
As much as I wanted to savor my time with her, drink in her knowledge and learn all the things she surely had it in her to teach me, I didn't have the luxury. Instead, my eyes went straight back to my laptop, closed out the reports as I typed the final details, and hurriedly tried to finish a few more emails before the six-year-old standing across from me would cause any more distractions.
Mom life, right?
Sometimes, it was real fucking tough to get anything done.
And on top of the obvious time constraints, we were constantly fighting the guilt of feeling bad that we weren't giving our children all of our time, yet still trying to find the balance of not losing ourselves in just being Mom all day, every day.
It was a struggle every single day.
"Knock knock."
I glanced up to find Wes standing in the doorway of my office with a soft smile on his face. Everything inside of me woke up at once.
It'd been just over a week since the Halloween party at Brooks Media, and everything about that stretch of time said Wes and I were something.
Not defined in the slightest, but well above nothing, we'd managed to sneak away during work hours for sex four times in the last eight days. And as much as I expected my desire to die, after we were done, the flame always burned that much brighter.
His smiles came more easily and with much higher frequency, and after the first time I'd had to bring Lex to work, he'd even seemed to warm up to her. I'd noticed his discomfort at first, at not knowing how to interact with her without the manipulation he used on so many adults, but it hadn't taken him long to find a way to talk to her that seemed to put them both at ease.
"Are you stopping by the practice tonight before you head out?" he asked, both hands on the top frame of the door with his body leaning forward.
Good God.
"Probably not." I motioned toward Lexi and shook my head. "I've got a lot of work to finish up and, well, let's just say some things are very distracting." And two of my medical aides were on the field. I'd get a phone call if anyone seriously needed me.
Wes chuckled softly and walked toward my desk to stand behind my daughter, peeking over her shoulder. She was still too enthralled in whatever had her mind busy for the moment and hadn't even noticed his arrival.
His eyebrows rose dramatically at whatever he saw on her notepad. If I had a different kid, I might have feared a dirty drawing or limerick with the way his forehead seemed to disappear, but I didn't, so instead, I prepared myself to be floored. He must have jerked his head from the paper to me and back again a full three times before finally settling his surprised eyes on mine.
I tilted my head to the side with an indulgent smile and asked the question that was almost always relevant. "What am I missing?"
"Do you see what she's doing?"
I bit my lip in an effort not to laugh, as the answer, thanks to a good six feet of space and a lack of superhuman eyesight, was blindingly obvious. Still, I pictured her usual work and ventured a guess. "Writing numbers?"