Page 63 of Heartbroken Husband
He laughed. “None of us did, but desperate times called for desperate measures. It’s a story for another day, though.”
“Yeah, it feels like there are a lot of those.”
“There are,” he agreed, his voice a little quieter now. “It’s been a long time, though. A lot of things have changed.”
“Ain’t that the truth.” I folded my arms lightly as we walked, heading down a back staircase that deposited us back on the first floor.
The girls’ voices echoed faintly from down the hall, followed by the unmistakable sound of Bear skidding across hardwood floors. “Thanks for bringing us here, Zach. I mean it. The girls and I haven’t had a proper break for a long time.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, but not stiffly. “You’re all obviously free to go anywhere you want on the ranch. The house is yours. There are no rooms that are off limits or anything like that.”
“Thank you,” I said softly, meaning it to the deepest recesses of my being. “They’re already feeling at home here. It means a lot that you’re so welcoming to them.”
“Of course,” he said, then looked at me again. “Did you have a hard time getting off work?”
I glanced up into his eyes and let out a slow breath to steady myself. A couple days ago, I’d taken a leap of faith and now I was about to find out if it had been the biggest mistake I’d ever made. “I quit, actually. I’m going to start cataloging your family’s art. Like you suggested.”
“We’re really doing this, then?” he asked after a much longer pause than I would have liked and I couldn’t tell what he was feeling.
If he was happy or resigned. Terrified. Maybe all the above. But I wasn’t entirely sure what I was feeling either. There was definitely relief and more than a little bit of fear, but there were also a lot of other things.
“I guess we’re really doing this,” I said, the words feeling too small for something this big.
His gaze held mine for a second longer. Then he nodded, and unless I was very much imagining things, there might’ve been a hint of a smile forming on his lips before he ducked his head and started walking again.
CHAPTER 23
ZACH
On our first night in Wisconsin, the girls demanded pizza for dinner. Jennifer climbed onto one of the barstools in the kitchen, her expression completely serious. “We want cheese, but like, fancy cheese. Because this is a fancy house.”
“Fancy cheese is not a thing,” Lu informed her.
“It is too.”
“What kind of cheese qualifies as fancy?” I asked carefully, sensing danger when my brain jumped straight to top-tier blue and aged cheeses. I highly doubted that was what she was referring to, though. “Do you know the name of it?”
Jennifer thought about it for a beat. “The stretchy kind.”
“That’s very helpful,” I said. “What else do you want on yours?”
“I want pepperoni,” Lu announced.
I nodded and ordered enough pizza to feed a small army. In the few hours we’d been here, I’d rapidly started learning that children operated on unpredictable hunger patterns and constantly asked for snacks.
In the meantime, Adeline sat beside me with a serene expression on her face, her blue eyes on the rain pelting theswimming pool outside. She’d pulled her hair up into a ponytail that hung in a smooth, strawberry blonde wave down her back.
Like this, she looked so much like she used to. Even the dark circles that had been under her eyes when I’d first seen her again in that restaurant were lighter now. I didn’t know this for sure, but it definitely seemed like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
I didn’t want to take all the credit for it, but I sure as hell hoped I’d hadsomethingto do with it, at least.
Amber resurfaced from the guest house before I could ask if she’d like to stay here with the girls even longer, walking into the kitchen and immediately starting to throw digs at me again. “My recovery nap was awesome, but your guest house has too many bedrooms.”
“You have too many opinions,” I replied easily, finally deciding that if she was going to insist on dishing it out, she was going to have to take it too. “Especially for someone who drove here in a car that looks like it lost a fight with a Crayola box.”
She scoffed. “It’s vintage. That color was limited edition.”
“For a reason,” I said. “No one wanted to buy them.”
