Page 50 of Reckless Single Daddy

Mia looks on, clearly waiting for me to continue.

I sigh, running my hands over my head, groaning. “I don’t know, Mia. I’m confused,” I admit.

She places her hand on my knee encouragingly. I put my hands down and look at her. “He told me he was falling in love with me this morning.”

She gasps and stares at me goggle-eyed. “What?”

I nod and smile, though it doesn’t quite reach my eyes. “I couldn’t say it back, though.” I feel a surge of guilt again, even though I shouldn’t. “I was perfectly fine allowing us to be in our bubble and letting things flow withoutthathanging over us, but then he said it, and I froze.” I look at her sadly, feeling the weight of his words hanging over me.

“Do you love him?” she asks.

I close my eyes as the question runs through my mind like a never-ending record player. I’ve been asking myself this same question all morning, only to find several reasons why I believe it’s too early. I should have at least one valid answer by now.

Do I love Cade Hart?

“I do…” I whisper, staring down at my hands. But I feel just a small bit of that weight lift from my chest at that first admittance. I meet her eyes and nod. “I do,” I say, my voice firming with resolve.

She chuckles a little and shakes her head. “Then why are you worried?”

I sigh deeply. It should be obvious, but she doesn’t know all Cade and I have gone through to get where we are today. It isn’t like she and Killian walked the same path Cade and I have, so naturally, she’s going to be confused. Killian and Mia have the love story that every writer portrays when it’s set in a small town. They literally just worked from the moment they met. The only path they didn’t follow was getting married young—that was Mike and his wife, Camilla.

“I’m worried because what if I don’t live up to his expectations?” I finally say. “Laura was the love of his life, and I’m just a struggling artist in her late twenties. I don’t know the first thing about being a partner, let alone a stepmother.”

Mia licks her lips and nods. “I get it, but I promise you, Sloane, if Cade didn’t think you were worthy, you wouldn’t be here. I’ve been here since Cade came back to Rose Valley. Liam was barely a year old, but that man was a shell of who he used to be. Once he built up his company and started helping out the community, you could see the light in him slowly begin to restore itself. He needed his community to uplift him, but we could only do so much.”

I swallow, deep in thought.

“Dating for him became less about being casual and more about finding his person,” Mia continues. “Laura was an amazing woman. And yes, she isn’t you, but that’s the point. Cade doesn’t want another Laura. He wantsyou.”

Cade wants me—as me. Again, my younger self would be screaming with joy, but putting Mia’s words into perspective makes it all come together. Maybe that’s why he kept Laura hidden from me for so long. He didn’t want her memory to sway how we approached our own relationship.

“Thank you,” I whisper, and Mia smiles, pulling me close to hug me tightly. She places a kiss on top of my head, and I relish in the moment for a little longer.

“Are you prepared for marriage, and maybe more kids?” she asks.

I jolt in her arms, my eyes flying open, and she laughs. “Okay, okay, no more questions about you and Cade,” she says. I laugh as she gets to work taking out the materials for making the table arrangements.

“To answer your question, though, I could be,” I tell her, and she looks up from the box. “Marriage and kids, I mean. I could be open to all that with him. Not now, obviously, but perhaps one day.”

She hands me the first set of materials so I can start working on them. “Perhaps one day we’ll be sitting here working onyourwedding preparations,” she says with a grin.

I grimace a little as I work on twisting a ribbon around lace. “I think I’m going to hire someone to do all this for me, though.”

She laughs as she works on her own arrangement. “Trust me, if I had the money and could go back in time, I’d do the same.” She looks at me with a tired expression. “But not all of us can be lucky to be with a billionaire,” she says, grinning at me so I know she’s joking. I mockingly flip my hair at my luck.

The front door opens, and we both look up to see Cade walk in with another man. I’m guessing that’s his friend from back in his CIA days.

“You can put your things in the room down the hall there,” Cade says to the guy, and he walks off. Cade walks into the living roomwith a content smile. “Look at you two, hard at work,” he says, leaning over the couch to kiss me like it’s something he’s done a dozen times. And in front of Mia, no less.

“Yeah, thanks for finally making her readily available for the final arrangements.” Mia’s tone says she’s teasing, but the words are definitely as honest and cutthroat as they come. She’s still irritated by Cade’s lack of understanding that I needed to be at her side, but he isn’t completely at fault.

He grimaces at her, but she winks at him—no hard feelings. “I was hoping I could get my friend David here to be a bartender in your rehearsal dinner, Mia,” he says. “He’s gone undercover in the past, and I’m thinking the dinner would be the perfect place for Sloane’s stalker to blend in.”

Mia nods. “As long as it doesn’t conflict with anything wedding-wise, I’m fine with whatever you need to do,” she says, though she raises a finger. “Oh, I also put out the wedding announcement you suggested in theRose Valley Times.”

At the mention of that, my stomach starts to churn. They’re announcing the wedding in the paper to bait my stalker, who’ll know I’m in the wedding party.

“Good, thank you,” he says, dropping a kiss on the top of my head. “I’m going to go over the plan with David so he understands what we’re doing.”

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