“Yep,” I answered, knowing this to be true even if this was only our sixth date.
But since our sixth date was coming to a cookout with his soon-to-be brothers, a date he had planned from the very beginning, a date that all the other dates led up to, regardless of how few there were, I figured I was right.
I was Low’s.
And that made me happy.
“I like Low,” little Tabby told me.
“I’m glad you do,” I replied. “I do too.”
“That’s good,” she said, her eyes going beyond me.
I felt him before I turned my head and saw him just as Logan settled in beside me, arm coming around my shoulders, leaning into the picnic table... and me.
But his eyes were on Tabby.
“Yo, Tab,” he greeted.
“Your girlfriend’s pretty,” she declared.
“No, she ain’t, little pea,” Logan returned. “Lots a’ things are pretty. Millie here’s loads more than that.”
Little pea.
Loads more than that.
God.
Seriously.
Even if I wasn’t his, I would make him be mine.
But I was.
Which meant he was.
Oh yes.
Happy.
I grinned again and leaned in to him.
“She ride on the back of your bike?” Tabby asked.
“Yup,” Logan answered.
“Rush says I can’t ride on a bike,” she announced, and looked from Logan to me. “That’s my brother,” she explained. “He’s older than me and thinks he knows everything.”
“I suspect most older brothers do,” I shared ruefully, like I felt her pain.
“He’s stupid,” she proclaimed. “I’ll ride what I want.”
“How ’bout you wait about fifteen, twenty years before you do that?” Logan suggested, a smile deepening his voice.
“Well, duh!” she cried like the next word she wanted to use but knew better than to use on a biker was silly. “I can’t do it now,” she went on. “Even if I had an old man, I can’t get my arms around his middle.”
I swallowed laughter but Logan didn’t bother. I heard his chuckle.
“You ever think of getting your own bike?” I asked her.
She tipped her head to the side and stated contemplatively, “Maybe. When I can reach the grips.” She righted her head. “Do you have your own bike?”
“Nope,” I answered.
“Want your own bike?” she asked.
“Nope,” I repeated.
“You like ridin’ with your old man,” she proclaimed knowingly.
“Yep,” I stated, and Logan’s arm around me tightened.
“Tabitha!”
I tensed at the shrill noise, Tabby’s body jerked and whirled, and Logan straightened but didn’t let me go.
I looked up just when a redheaded woman, who was pretty but she had an ugly look on her face and it was directed at the little girl in front of me, shrieked, “Get your ass over here!”
“Gotta go,” Tabby mumbled, and did it hightailing it over to the shrieking woman.
“Naomi,” Logan said, and I looked up at him to see his eyes still directed to the redhead. “Woman’d be okay, ’cept she treats her daughter like shit. Kid’s ’bout five years old.” He shook his head. “Do not get that.”
I didn’t either and didn’t get the chance to comment on it because something took my attention and I turned my head the other way.
There I saw a man Logan had introduced me to earlier called Tack.
He was looking at the redhead, too, and you could tell he didn’t like the way she treated her daughter either.
Not at all.
“Naomi’s Tack’s old lady,” Logan said, and I looked back to him to see he now was gazing down at me. “Loves his little girl like crazy so don’t see that lastin’.”
“What?” I asked. “Her treatment of their daughter?”
He nodded. “That and if he can’t put an end to it, then what’ll end is Naomi bein’ his old lady.”
“Good,” I murmured, looking back to Naomi who was bent over Tabby, wagging a finger in her face, her own expression like thunder.
I watched, wondering what the kid had done. She was just talking to us, and I hadn’t been keeping tabs on her, but before that, she was just talking to other people.
The finger wagging stopped when suddenly Tabby wasn’t standing in front of her mother, head tipped back, face pale, lower lip quivering.
Instead she was in her father’s arms, and without a word, he turned and walked away.
Watching it, I decided I liked Logan’s brother Tack.
Naomi stared daggers at their backs, visibly huffed, and then stormed off in the other direction.
I decided I didn’t like Tack’s old lady, Naomi.
“She’s it,” Logan stated, and I looked to him again.
“What?”
“Naomi. She’s it. Only bitch a’ the bunch.” He bent toward me. “All the rest, all good. Good folks. Good family.”
He wanted me to like them.
I smiled, twisted, and leaned in to him so my breasts were brushing his stomach.
“There’s always one.”
He cupped my jaw, eyes to my mole, and muttered, “Yeah.”
I’d learned what Logan’s eyes to my mole meant and I liked what it meant.
But I had a few things to say.