Page 84 of Gifts

She nods. “It’s late. I need to get home and make dinner.”

I’ll stop on the way to pick something up so she doesn’t have to cook, but I don’t want to have that argument here. Looking over her head, I see a man standing in the doorway.

“Next month, Keelie?” he asks.

She looks over her shoulder and doesn’t answer, but gives her head a little shake with a weird shrug. “I’ll call.”

He nods. “Very well, then. Have a nice evening.”

I put my arm around her shoulders to get her the fuck out of there. This is a weird sensation. I’m used to knowing what I want to know. If there’s information I need—I get it. I don’t like it when I don’t have control, and right now, not knowing what’s going on in her head, I sense she’s on the edge. I need to figure out why.

I direct her out of the office with a rock in my gut.

Chapter 21

Promise

Keelie

Asa closes the book and tosses it to the sofa beside him. It doesn’t matter how wiggly the fur ball in my lap is, I can’t look away from Asa holding my daughter after he just lulled her to sleep by reading The Black Stallion.

When he puts his arm around her, she shifts into him farther as he looks across the room to me.

“You’re hard to resist, Asa Hollingsworth,” I whisper as I let Emma’s new puppy chew on my fingers.

His voice rumbles quietly over Saylor’s head. “You’re hard to figure out, Keelie Lockhart.”

I’m not quite sure what to say to that.

After having six people in my house, it’s been strangely quiet with just the four of us. Levi and Emma flew to California to see Danielle Friday morning and won’t be back until tomorrow night. It’s been a busy day but a good one, and I haven’t once thought about it being a Saturday until just a little bit ago.

Asa tends to do that—pave the way in all we do together, yet still somehow, it’s always about others. He has a gift for it.

Once the kids woke up this morning, I realized Jimbo wasn’t hammering away for the second Saturday in a row. When I noted this, Asa told me not to worry, that he worked something out with Jimbo and work would resume first thing Monday morning. Jimbo told him it would be done in two weeks while working on it full-time instead of the twenty years it would’ve taken working for me for free.

Full-time!

I didn’t have to ask who was paying for Jimbo to work forty hours a week. The Infiniti sitting in my garage was proof enough of Asa providing expensive solutions to my problems.

We argued. Then I argued some more while he ignored me.

I lost.

Jimbo is starting full-time come Monday morning.

After all the arguments, Asa announced over breakfast our task for today was to pick out a puppy to surprise Emma. You’d think it was Christmas morning as happy as this made my kids. We were out the door faster than Saylor could say chew toy, and I think we petted and loved on every dog at the shelter.

We came home with this little guy. He’s a terri-poo—part Australian terrier and part poodle. They think he’s almost three months old. He’s light brown and is as sweet as they come. I could tell Asa wanted a poodle about as much as he wanted a hole in the head, but when my kids saw this little guy, they knew he was for Emma.

We spent the rest of the day shopping for puppy necessities, which included three doggie outfits from the pet store because it seems Asa can’t say no to my daughter. This puppy now wants for nothing besides a name. We’re leaving that task to Emma when she gets home tomorrow night.

Knox took his iPad and book up to his room a little while ago, so now the house is quiet.

I put the puppy on the floor so I can take Saylor upstairs. When I move to take her from Asa, she wraps her arms around his neck and her voice comes out sleepy. “Nooo. I want Asa.”

Asa stands and hitches her up in his arms like a rag doll and not dead weight the way she feels when I carry her. She lays her head on his shoulder and her eyes close again.

I give in. “I’ll put the puppy in his kennel and be right up.”

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