Page 20 of Breathe Again

“Ah, c’mon, it’s just pasta.”

“It’s just pasta,” she mimicked. “It smells divine. I can’t wait.”

“Let’s go to the sunroom with the kids. Willa won’t be here for another hour at least. She said four, but you know how late she usually is.”

“Barrett is picking her up, so she won’t be that late.”

I stopped in my tracks, turning to give big eyes to Bex. “What?”

“Cool your jets, ladies.” Rhys’s husky voice drifted across the room to us. “They are apparently just friends.”

We both turned to look at him, and Zale grinned at whatever he saw on our faces. Rhys threw his hands up in a placating gesture.

“Don’t shoot the messenger! I’m just relaying what I’ve been told.”

Bex and I looked at him, and then each other. We had identical, ‘oh you poor, naive man’ looks on our faces. We burst out laughing and Bex and I grabbed onto each other’s arms.

“Just friends,” she huffed. “One does not want to be just friends with a man like Barrett.”

“Can you believe this?” Zale asked incredulously. “They were the same when they were talking about you.”

“Zale!” I yelled, embarrassed.

“What? I’m starting to get a complex!”

“Oh, so you want to be in a position where Bex and Willa are trying to convince me to give you a shot?”

He shook his head in a sharp no, at the same time as Rhys rumbled to Rebecca, “They had to convince you?”

Barrett was Rhys’s younger brother and a veterinarian who worked with the animals at the shelter where Willa worked. She first met him when Bex and Rhys had gotten together. They’d become friends, but Bex and I were holding out hope for more.

Bex and I laughed at Rhys’s expression, and she refused to answer him. Instead, she grabbed my hand and we headed to the sunroom to play with the kids until Willa and Barrett showed up, on time, which was almost unheard of for Willa. Something which Bex and I were quick to tease her about.

“So, if you have Barrett as your babysitter, or your chauffeur, then you can be on time?”

Barrett shook his head but said nothing on his way to the fridge to grab his own beer as well as two more for Zale and Rhys. Bex and I relieved Willa of her platters and waited while she discarded her coat and boots.

“Ah, another man of so very few words,” I commented to Bex. “Rhys must be exhausted by the time you guys get home, having to carry the conversation,” I joked.

We all looked over, watched while Rhys leaned forward listening as Barrett and Zale talked animatedly.

“Maybe it’s just you guys he doesn’t want to talk to,” teased Willa.

“Humph!” I glared at her, then smiled. “What did you bring?”

“Bruschetta bread and antipasto skewers, bocconcini balls for the kids.”

“Nice!”

“Where are the kids?” she asked.

“Sunroom,” Bex replied.

“I’ll go say hi and then come do the bruschetta?”

“Sounds good,” I said, “and while you do the bruschetta, I’ll help them with the indoor snowmen.”

“And I’ll lounge like a lady of leisure!” Bex laughed.

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