Page 16 of Single Mom for the Mountain Men
“She’s never played Uno before,” I whisper to Aiden, but judging by my daughter’s unamused glare and Tanner’s grin, the whisper carries clearly, despite the sound of the wind.
“It’s Sophie. I trust her to immediately be good at it,” Tanner announces, and Brody agrees with an affirmative grunt.
We all get the cards passed out, and then, the game starts. My luck is as bad as usual. Perhaps it’s even worse than my strategy. Brody’s hand is the cleanest, with Aiden being the wildcard, and Tanner the analytical player. The last two come as a shock to me.
After I lose a few times, I quit playing, and Sophie carries the Sanders into victory. I can tell that they let her win, but they do so without making it too obvious.
It’s very cute. Sophie continues her competition with them as Aiden swaps his seat with Tanner, so that he can teach Sophie the real rules of the game.
“I thought you would wing it at Uno, too, you know,” I tease Tanner as he watches the scene before him with fond eyes.
“It may look like everything I do is a wild stab in the dark, but it is an educated and well-thought-out plan, Lena.” The corners of his lips lift. “Feel like a beer yet?”
I part my lips to reject, but all of a sudden, I think again.You know what? Fuck it.
“Yeah, I’d love one.”
His brows rise momentarily as he gets up. “And I didn’t take you for a beer kind of woman.”
“What kind of a woman did you take me for, then?” I pretend to be falsely offended, crossing my arms in mock outrage.
He smirks. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Tanner gets up to retrieve the rest of the beer from the house, and when he gets back, he hands bottles over to the other two men and then one to me.
Sophie’s eyes are on the beers as she sees them being passed around, her attention momentarily drawn away from the cards. Tanner, the man that he is, already came prepared with a way to deal with Sophie’s pout that she can’t have one herself.
He hands her a Capri Sun, which he whips out from his pocket. Sophie gasps as she takes it, smiling as she starts slurping from the packet.
“Quick thinking,” I say to him quietly as Aiden gives him a thankful glance.
“What can I say? I’m always prepared, Lena.”
“That you are. I can’t imagine you ever being unprepared for something,” I add in teasingly.
“No, there have been instances,” he refutes.
“That can’t be. Tanner, not ready to seize the day? Nonsense.”
“Well, there was this job I had as a mechanic. I wasn’t built for that life at all.”
“Hmm, but you must have learned something while you were there.”
“I was there for three days. I quit and never looked back.”
I laugh silently before taking a quick sip of my beer. “What is the one thing you found the hardest to quit?” I ask him, expecting something along the lines of a profession.
“Gambling,” he admits. The fire crackles between us, Sophie’s amused yelps breaking through intermittently. “Lost everything to it, but even then, I couldn’t quit. The biggest addiction of my life. Sometimes, I still fear that I’m gonna fall back into it if I’m not careful enough.”
Unsure of what to say in response, I make a noise of sympathy, not expecting this kind of serious answer.
“The debt I collected because of that shit was immense.”
“How did you get rid of the debt, then?”
“Ran away. That’s the Tanner way, after all: when you encounter a problem you can’t solve, you run away instead.”
He gives me a toothy grin that doesn’t reach his eyes as he gets up and announces that he’s going to get more marshmallows. I watch his back as he leaves, feeling a strange emotion in my chest. It’s like disapproval mixed with sympathy for the struggles this man must have faced. He stands tall and proud now, but he has things in his past that he clearly still struggles to accept.
