Page 76 of Dust Storm

I chuckled. “Yeah, Gretchen got like that when she was pregnant with Gracie.”

Nate leaned on the doorframe, then quickly stood straight when it cracked. “What’d you do?”

“Took Bree to work with me and made sure there were peanut butter cups in the freezer at all times.”

“You still miss her?”

I sighed and looked down at my hands. I had stopped wearing my ring somewhere around two years after Gretchen had passed. Bree told me it made her sad to see it, so I put it away in the box where I kept Gretchen’s wedding band and engagement ring. Someday I’d pass them on to the girls.

I nodded. “She was my best friend. I think it’d hurt more if I didn’t have the girls. I get to see all her goodness in them.”

He nodded, looking around as he rubbed the scar tissue on his arm. “How has it been with Cassandra under your roof?”

I pitched the crowbar onto what was left of the countertop. “Fine.”

Nathan scoffed. “Try again.”

“It’s fine,” I said defensively. “She mostly keeps to herself.”

“Right,” he said as he eyed me suspiciously. “Keeps to herself until midnight when you two go on a casual horseback ride?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It wasn’t midnight.”

“For you it was.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting sleep now while you can?”

He laughed. “You think a woman that’s in her third trimester can sleep?”

He had a point.

“Becks just so happened to look out the kitchen window and saw you two out there. She wanted to cash in on the little bet we made, but I said you hadn’t slept with her yet.”

I swore under my breath. “I’m not hooking up with her.”

Not that I didn’t want to.

He held his hands up in surrender. “I’m not making accusations or saying you didn’t love Gretch?—”

“It’s been a decade. I’ve… been with other women. It’s fine.”

“I know.” He rubbed at the scar tissue again. “How do the girls like her?”

I chuckled. “The other night Gracie told me that Cass looks like a real-life Barbie doll. Bree looks at her like she’s an angel.Pretty sure if you ask them what they want to be when they grow up, they’ll say they wanted to be publicists.”

“You trust her around them?”

“I don’t think Becks would have recommended her if she wasn’t someone I could trust.”

Nate nodded.

I crossed my arms. “What are you trying to get at?”

“Just asking questions.” His voice was as innocent as a baby lamb, but it was bullshit.

I laughed as I turned and left the mess of dilapidated wood for another day. “Just asking questions my ass.”

“I’m just trying to catch up with my brother.”

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