Page 59 of Fur-Ever Home

After the conference, Sid caught up to me at the airport. "Hey! What flight are you on?" he asked. "Mr. Danbury switched my flight with Brian's, so I'm taking the direct one and he has to hop all over hell."

I laughed at that. "Think Danbury will fire him this time?"

Sid shrugged. "He might. The rumor at the office is, Mrs. Avery is none too happy. Brian's always on his phone, like he was today."

Sid and I compared flights. We were on the same one, sitting next to each other in first class. Since we decided we'd have plenty of time to chat on the plane, we went our separate directions.

I grabbed a bottle of water and checked the bookstore for a mystery for Connor. I found the one he wanted and texted him a picture, and then we texted until it was time to board the plane.

"This is super nice," Sid said when I sank into the reclining seat beside him.

I grinned, thinking about the first time I'd flown in style. "My husband bumped me up to first class two years ago, the last conference I attended before I got pregnant."

"Husband?"

I flashed my tungsten carbide ring with delicate rainbow scrollwork along the top and bottom of the band. Connor and I had gotten married the summer after Jordan's arrival. Ours had been a whirlwind relationship, from meeting him in the airport to bringing him home with me to finding out I was pregnant, having a baby, and getting married. It took me almost three hours to tell Sid the story, thanks to his enthusiastic questions.

"You don't want your job back, do you?" He asked me when I explained how I'd ended up at the conference. "Mr. Danbury still speaks highly of you, and I know you didn't want to work for your family."

"Absolutely not," I said. "I misunderstood what working for my family would mean. Connor helped me see how it was the perfect job for me."

"I'm glad." Sid looked relieved.

"I'll put in a good word with Mr. Danbury for you."

Sid blushed. "What? No. You don't have to do that."

"It's the least I could do. I left you in a bit of a lurch. Did you end up flying to Chicago when I couldn't?"

He sighed and nodded. "Worst trip ever. And I've been doing both my job and Brian's since you left."

Whenever Brian had asked me to do his work, I'd threatened to tell Mr. Danbury he couldn't handle his duties as CFO, and that shut him up. I spent the rest of the flight sharing ways Sid could avoid doing others' work in the future, and he jotted them in his notebook, filling all but the last page.

When we landed, Connor and Jordan waited for me near baggage claim. Jordan wore a lavender dress and her pigtails hung in perfect spirals. She was spotless perfection, while Connor looked like he lost a fight with an alligator in a mud pit.

I pulled them to a bank of empty seats to wait for the luggage carousel to start. "What happened to you?"

"Someone wanted to play in the sandbox at the playground when we got here. Someone had clean clothes for daycare in the back seat, and someone else," he pointed both thumbs at himself, "did not."

I laughed at his story and then leaned over to where Jordan sat in his lap. "Sandboxes are for after you pick Papa up at the airport."

"We go again?" she asked.

"Oh, no." Connor shook his head. "No, no, no. We go get ice cream."

"Ooh!" She clapped, and the sandbox was forgotten.

"Connor?" Someone I'd seen on the flight but didn't recognize beyond that approached our seats. "Connor McKeeler, is that you? How've you been, buddy?"

I patted my lap, and Jordan climbed over to sit with me.

Connor stood and shook the man's hand. "Derek! How are you, man?"

"I'm good, good. Is this your … mate?"

"Yeah," he said, dragging me to my feet with Jordan awkwardly hanging from my shoulder. "This is Ben. Ben, this is Derek, the guy who was with me when we met in New York."

"He ran off talking about his fated mate, and that was the last we saw of him!" Derek must have told himself that lie so many times, he thought it was true.

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