Page 7 of Finding Forever

What I found was enough to send my heart racing again. In my absence, Maverick had served dinner. The table had been set almost as though a professional had done it. With forks and knives where they should be beside the plates and glasses. All four plate settings had a heaping of spaghetti.

Sheesh, how long was I gone?

I didn’t think I’d stood in front of the mirror giving myself a pep talk for that long, but I’d clearly been missing long enough for him to get everyone seated and started on dinner. He looked up at me when I arrived at the table. Mycah was so excited to see me that it saved me from having to confront the look in Maverick’s eyes when our gazes collided. I took my seat and picked up my fork.

“Mycah was right. You do make the best spaghetti ever.” Maverick smirked at me, his stare intent on me as I began eating.

Mycah looked thrilled by Maverick’s assessment and looked up from his plate with a saucy grin. Now that I was seated, I noticed that the sauce framing his mouth was identical to Penny’s. They looked so adorable. I was almost sad when Maverick swooped in with a paper towel and cleaned them up one-by-one.

One thing I had noticed about Maverick was how attentive he was. Even though he was busy, he gave Penny plenty of undivided attention and care. To see that he’d extended some of that care to Mycah made my heart flutter, even though I was supposed to be playing it cool. Penny looked up from her plate again and her eyes were brimming with uncontained enthusiasm.

“Do you wanna come to my pool tomorrow?” she asked Mycah just as she bit into some garlic bread.

A light entered Mycah’s gaze at the mention of a pool, and I hated to be the one to put it out, but I needed to jump in before they got carried away. They’d already orchestrated spending the entire day together. We couldn’t just surrender to their will. No matter how much I enjoyed the thought of spending more time in close proximity with Penny’s father.

“Honey,” I said, looking at Mycah. “Your dad may have plans for you tomorrow. Why don’t we hold off on agreeing to things?”

My heart ached when I saw the light in his eyes dim a bit.

Not letting me go down alone, Maverick jumped in and told Penny, “Your mom may also have plans.”

Penny thought about this only briefly before she twisted her mouth at his statement and shared innocently, “If mommy and Mycah’s daddy have plans, they’ll probably make us play inside while they go to the bedroom.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the moments following her revelation. Penny immediately went back to eating her food, unaware of the bomb she had just dropped.

Not be outdone with the jaw dropping news updates, Mycah piped up and said vehemently, “I don’t want to play inside tomorrow, mom! Wealwaysplay inside.”

I gulped, too shocked by what I’d just heard to have a proper reaction. Well, the reaction that came naturally wasn’t appropriate in front of kids, so I held it together.

“You’ll play outside tomorrow, sweetie. Don’t worry.”

“Promise?” Mycah looked skeptical.

“I promise.”

Maverick

The next morning, the first thing on my mind was talking to my ex-wife. That got derailed when a call from my business partner, Leon, came through. Since I’d missed his calls last night, I knew he’d just keep calling back until I answered, so I bit the bullet and accepted his call.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t sound so excited to hear from me. How’s vacation with the ex-wife going?”

I could hear the annoying grin in his voice and only refrained from calling him on it because the trip wasn’tallbad now that Gina was involved.

“Did you call to gloat, or do you have actual business to discuss?”

“Judging from that catty response, I’m gonna assume things are going bad. Real bad.”

The asshole. He was the only person I would let get away with calling anything I did catty. And that was only because I knew he did it to get under my skin. I pressed him to get to the point of his call. It was eight o’clock, so I was surprised he had anything worth reporting already.

“You know I can’t start work unless I get in my daily ‘I told you so’.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and held back a laugh.

Leon was annoying. A royal pain in my ass, to be honest. But he was right. He had tried to warn me about Victoria and I still ran full steam ahead.

Finally, Leon brought up the subject of work and spent the next half hour filling me in on developments with some of our most pressing projects. Stuff that couldn’t wait a full two weeks until I got back. By the time we reached the end of the call, I had my laptop open and was in the middle of a Discord chat with my team of engineers.

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