Page 148 of Savage Brothers MC: Tennessee Chapter

“Yippee!Alright!We’ll have popcorn and taffy!And we can see who can throw popcorn up and catch it in their mouth.Can you do that, Rory?”

“I uh… well I’ve never… I don’t think I can,” I tell Ryan, confused and frustrated and if we were alone I’d probably throw the pancakes—that Ryan is currently putting eyeballs on—at Noah.

“I’ll teach you!”Ryan says, like getting to do that was the greatest thing in the world.

“Go get dressed for school, Ry.While you’re doing that Rory and I will thaw the whip cream.”

“Okay, Dad,” he answers without even a hint of an argument this time.Then, Ryan surprises me.Before he jumps off the stool to run to his room he turns around and wraps his little arms around me, burying his head into my chest.

“Thanks, Rory!This has been the best day ever!”he says, causing my heart to completely melt into a big puddle of goo, as I return his hug.

“I’m having a great time, Ryan.I love making pancakes with you.”I tell him this while I’m hugging him tight and breathing in the baby shampoo scent in his hair.

“Me too!”Ryan says, jumping off the stool with the exuberance only a five-year-old could muster.He runs to his dad and gives him a hug too.He may have said something to him, but I can’t hear it because my head is buzzing in my head that I’m in real danger here.

Once Ryan leaves the room, I turn away from Noah, stacking the dishes in the sink, feeling even more uncomfortable, and pissed off that he put me in the position to hurt his son.

“I’ll get the topping thawed out,” Noah says and I close my eyes trying to figure out where the man was that laughed with me so easily last night and now he’s just an asshole.

Like all the other men in my life.

I took a deep breath and then turned to watch Noah open the freezer compartment in the bottom of his fridge.While I did this a stray thought ran through my mind.

Why would a single father keep whipped topping in his freezer?

The only people I knew who put those in the freezer were women who baked a lot.Then I remembered how he worked my body last night, how playful he could be when he got a mind to be, and I shut down the why.Then, I looked at the whipped topping with a whole other thought and none of it good.He had a drawer full of condoms too.I was probably just a woman in a long line of women.It didn’t matter that he made me feel pretty or that for a minute I felt special to someone.

It was just sex.

“You can’t microwave topping, Noah.It will just become like water,” I warn him.“I’ll just go to the house and get mine, then make up some excuse to Ryan as to why I’m leaving.”

“You can microwave it, Rory.You just have to do it slowly,” he says, plopping the tub in the microwave.

“If you say so, I’d say you have more experience with that than I do,” I shrug, turning to finish the dishes.

“Why would you say that?”he asks, sliding up to sit on the counter like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

“No reason.”

“Right,” he says, clearly not believing me.

“Whatever.”

“Never figured you for a wimp,” he says and that pisses me off.

“I’m not a wimp.I’m just trying to clean up the dishes so I can leave with a clean conscious after you and Ryan head out to the school.”

“You’re going with us,” he says.I snag a dish towel and dry my hands and then look at him like he has three noses on the center of his face.

“I’mgoing with you?”

“That’s what I said, Gorgeous.”

“Don’t call me that,” I growl, at my limit with him.

“Are you this pissed off because I know how to thaw out whipped topping?”he asks, having the gall to laugh.

The beeper to the microwave just keeps going off and he’s ignoring it.So, I walk over to take it out, trying to figure out how to get away with killing Ryan’s father without Ryan getting mad at me.Fortunately for Ryan, I can’t think of a way to do that.

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