Annoyed, he turned on the TV and channel surfed until he found a basketball game. Sometime later—he wasn’t sure because he’d dozed off—his phone buzzed with an incoming call. He glanced down, fully prepared to ignore whoever it was, but his heart leaped clear into his throat when he saw Liv’s name on the screen.
He scrambled to sit, nerves shredding his gut. They hadn’t spoken since the kiss. “Hey,” he finally answered, then grimaced. Hey? That was the best he could do?
“Hi, um . . . Shoot. Hang on.” Liv’s voice grew distant as if she’d pulled the phone away. “It’s okay, Ava. I’ll clean it up. Just help your sister with the crayons.” She returned to the phone. “Sorry. I have the girls.”
“Right. Gavin mentioned something about that. Everything all right?”
He heard her suck in a breath, and he pictured her standing tall like she always did when she was about to blurt something out. “Rosie was wondering if you and your mom want to come over to the farm tomorrow to see the goats and have dinner.”
The nerves settled into a different sensation. Relief maybe. Definitely anticipation. And something else too. A healthy shot of lust.
“Hello?” Liv said, annoyed as ever, and damn but he loved the sound of that cranky voice. It meant they were back on normal ground. “Are you there?”
“Rosie wants to know, huh?” Mack kicked back on the couch and crossed his legs at the ankle. “You’re sure this isn’t you inviting me because you miss me?”
“Yeah, pretty sure.”
“Well, gee, I’ll have to check our schedule tomorrow. What time were you thinking?”
“Rosie said she can have dinner ready whenever you are.”
“Ah. Wow. That is super nice of Rosie.”
“Right? I told her I didn’t want to you to come, but she insisted.”
He laughed low in his chest. “How can I turn down an invitation like that?”
“You probably should. It won’t be any fun whatsoever.”
Mack hmm’d. “Let’s not be hasty. The girls probably want some Uncle Mack time.”
“Why would they want that when they’re having Aunt Livvie time?”
“Because I’m way cooler.”
“Those are fighting words.”
Upstairs, he heard footsteps in the kitchen. Mack stretched his arm over his head and yawned. “I’ll go talk to my mom about tomorrow and let you know, okay?”
“Whatever. I don’t really care.”
He laughed again and hung up. He jogged up the stairs and found his mom standing at the stove, getting ready to start dinner. “You really don’t have to cook, Mom.”
She looked over her shoulder. “I want to.”
“But if you’re tired—”
“Let me do this for you, Braden.”
The words hit him like a punch. Bile rose in his throat along with a memory he’d tried so hard to forget.
“What are you doing up?”
His mom looked up. “Making coffee.”
“I can do that. You’re supposed to stay in bed.”
“Braden, I’m fine.”
She wasn’t fine, though. Her arm was still in a sling, and her face was still purple in places.
“Go back to bed. I’ll bring you coffee.”
She gave him a stern look that had zero effect. “I’m going to make your breakfast.”
“I can make my own damn breakfast.”
“Braden Arthur. What did you just say?”
Liam shuffled into the kitchen. His hair stood on end, and he was still in his pajamas. Braden scowled at him. “Get dressed. We’re going to be late for school.”
Liam went to their mother’s side. She tucked him against her with her good arm and kissed the top of his head. She looked up then.
“Let me do this for you, Braden.”
Mack blinked out of the memory, walked up behind her, and hugged her. His mom laughed, startled, and said, “What’s this?”
“Just glad you’re here.” He kissed the top of her head.
“Are you okay?” she asked, looking over her shoulder.
“Fine.” He coughed and forced a grin. “Just hungry. You’re going to cut up the carrots really small, right?”
She smiled. “Of course. I know that’s how you like it.”
“Liv needs to know what time we’re coming for dinner tomorrow. You still up for that?”
His mom smiled over her shoulder again. “Of course.”
A few hours later, Mack went to bed, his stomach full and his heart doing weird fucking things in his chest. He hammered out a text to Liv.
We should be done looking at houses by 4. Be there by 5?
She responded with thumbs-up emoji.
He sent a gif of a man picking his nose.
She fired back with a gif of a woman twerking.
You right now? he replied.
She responded with a picture of herself sitting on the floor with a help me expression in her eyes. Ava and Amelia hung over her shoulders from behind, grinning devilishly with red stains above their lips. Me right now, Liv wrote beneath it.
Something squeezed his chest to the point of pain. Mack wasn’t sure when he’d lost the capacity for humor or sarcasm, but it was gone.
He typed a question. We gonna talk about that kiss?
She didn’t respond.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Liv didn’t need to bother listening for tires in the driveway to know Mack and his mom had arrived the next day. Ava and Amelia announced it like they’d been waiting for Santa on Christmas Eve.
“Uncle Mack is here!”
Liv sent them outside to greet him in the driveway. Rosie dried her hands on a dish towel. “I hope his mom likes fried chicken.”
“Everyone likes your fried chicken,” Liv said.
“I’m just nervous for some reason,” Rosie admitted with a little laugh. “It’s not every day that you meet the parents for the first time.”
Liv’s heart did a weird thud-thud thing. “I’m not meeting the parents.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Rosie said.
The back door opened, and Mack walked in with a twin bent over each shoulder. “I caught some stray cats,” he said, catching Liv’s eye.
The girls laughed. “We’re not cats, Uncle Mack!” Ava laughed.
“What are you, then?”
“We’re girls!” Amelia said.
Mack set them down but let them wrap around each of his legs. Behind him, the woman Liv recognized from the picture in his office walked in.
Rosie rushed forward. “You must be Erin.”
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” Erin said, taking Rosie’s hand. “Your farm is so beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Rosie backed up and looked at Liv. “And this is Liv.”
Liv offered her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
The level of awkward in the introduction rivaled the waiting room at a sperm bank. Mack was too busy entertaining the girls to notice. Hop, who’d been sitting in the living room as if afraid to wrinkle his shirt, walked through to do the introduction thing too.
“It’s a pleasure,” Erin said.
“Dinner is almost ready,” Rosie said. “Would you like something to drink? Or maybe Liv and Mack can give you a small tour of the farm?”
Rosie wasn’t even trying to hide her matchmaking. Liv met Mack’s gaze, and he smiled. Not his normal kind of lady-killer smile, but a softer smile. It did weird things to her insides. “Let’s go see the goats,” she blurted.
The girls took off for the door, promising to teach Erin how to feed them. Outside, Erin laughed and tried to keep up. “They’re delightful,” she said. “You must love being able to spend so much time with them.”
“I do,” Liv said, relieved to be on safe conversational ground, which still didn’t do much to calm her racing heart. Mack’s presence was taking up more space than normal, and he’d barely spoken a word. “I try to see them as often as I can.”
“Your parents don’t live around here, is that right?”
“No,” Liv said quickly. “They, um, my dad lives in Atlanta with his fourth wife, and my mom is currently living in the Virgin Islands. She moves around a lot.”
A brush of fingers against her back made the breath lodge in her lungs. She wasn’t sure if it was intentional, but either way, it made her insides turn to jelly.
“I miss my grandkids,” Erin said wistfully. “My other son, Liam, he has two children, but they moved to California.”
Liv nodded. “I’ve seen a picture.”
“It was the right thing for their family,” Erin said with a shrug, “but I miss those kids.”
“I’m sure you can play grandma as much as you want with Ava and Amelia when you move here,” Mack said.
Liv looked up quickly and then away.
Ava and Amelia called for them to hurry up. The girls had taken the top off the feed can for the goats and now cradled large handfuls of the pellets.
“We can show you how,” Ava said to Erin.
Liv and Mack hung back while Erin let the girls fill her hands with treats and they taught her how to hold still for the goats. They stared silently at each other for a moment, like two awkward middle schoolers who didn’t know how to ask each other to dance.
Mack is true-blue. I’m telling you. I think you should give it a chance.
“She’s a good grandma,” Liv said suddenly to cover her own thoughts.
“The best.” The warmth in Mack’s voice made her heart do the thud-thud again. He smoothed a hand over his hair. “The sooner I can get her here, the better. She’s got no one in Des Moines.”
A question that had plagued her since the first time he came to the farm finally got the better of her. “How old were you . . . when your dad died?”
Erin looked up and back at the question.