When we had laid in bed last night, kissing and touching each other all over, his dark brown eyes were so warm that I just couldn’t look away. And that scar on his lip still gave me the shivers. For some reason, I found it so sexy the way his grin was lopsided because of that scar. And when he pulled away from our kiss and grinned at me? I got a rush at the memory and realized that I was so turned on that I wanted to shut my door and take care of the problem really quick rather than deal with this longing for the rest of the night. Hell, probably the rest of the week considering we would have our kids with us 24/7.
“Mom, should I take my pillow?” Lexi interrupted my steamy thoughts just in time.
“Yes!” I yelled back at her. “And run down and grab Leia so she can help us carry things. If she’s with us, we might make it in one trip.”
“I’ll be right back!”
I pulled a handful of the pretty underwear, all matching panties and bras, out of the drawer and stuffed it into the corner of my suitcase before I rushed to the bathroom to grab some necessities.
Once I was finished, I hurried into Lexi’s room, marveling at how clean it was compared to Leia’s that I had seen earlier today. I chose enough t-shirts, jeans, and underwear to last her more than a week and then took them and put them into my suitcase with my things.
Through the years, I had gotten good at packing on the fly. Even though it had been less than half an hour since I’d left Rowdy and his daughter downstairs in the truck, Lexi and I were both ready to go.
I heard the girls laughing outside the door as I dragged our suitcase down the short hall and into the living room.
“Hi, Sierra,” Leia gave me a little wave as if she hadn’t seen me today and I smiled at her.
“Hi, honey,” I picked up mine and Lexi’s pillows along with an overnight bag that had our toiletries in it and handed it to Leia. “Can you carry this down for us?”
“Sure,” Leia took the stuff from me and I saw that Lexi had her backpack loaded up with things to do during the car trip and still carried four books in her arms. I handed Leia a grocery sack full of snacks for the road and then walked behind them out the front door. “Dad said he’s sorry he can’t come help, but he’ll meet us at the downstairs gate.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” I told Leia. “The rules say that non-residents can’t come in, but since you’re Lexi’s friend you get a pass.”
“Is it to protect you from something?”
“My uncle,” Lexi shuddered. “He’s the villain from every movie all wrapped into one person.”
“Oh,” Leia’s eyes were wide. “Where’s your dad?”
I listened to the girls as we walked down the stairs and it hurt my heart to hear Lexi be so nonchalant about her lack of family.
“He died before I was born. And his parents were crazy anyway. That’s why my uncle is such a bad man. My mom’s parents aren’t nice either, so I don’t have any contact with them.” Lexi told her. “I was named after my real dad, though.”
“What was his name?”
“Alexander.”
“I was named after my dad’s crush from a movie,” Leia groaned. Then she did a perfect imitation of the character when she said, “You’re my only hope.”
“Our names fit together though,” Lexi pointed out. “Maybe our parents can have some more kids and make their names like ours so we all match.”
“I like Lana,” Leia put in her vote. “I can’t think of any others though.”
“I brought stuff to write on, so we can make a list while we’re in the car.”
“Oh, I know - Lisa!” Leia said excitedly.
“Yeah, but what about a boy's name?” Lexi said as we walked out of the gate.
Rowdy watched the two girls walk past him toward his truck and looked at me, confused.
“They’re naming our future children.”
“Don’t we get to do that?”
“Have children?”
“Well, yeah, but I mean shouldn’t we get to pick the names?”
“You want to start over and have a baby around again?”
“I’ve put some thought into it. By the time we get to know each other and then decide to go for it, we’ll have two children on hand that are the perfect age to babysit. It will be so much different than when the girls were born and we were both alone.”
“If we wait at least two years, they’ll only be 13. Isn’t that a little young to babysit?”
“I did it 24/7 at 14, so I don’t think so,” Rowdy laughed. “They’d probably be much better at it than I was anyway.”
I was terrified at the thought of having another baby and I told him so.
“It’s not set in stone, Sierra. We’re just joking about it right now. You might never want another one and that’s okay, too. Right now, let’s just worry about the two we’ve got.” Rowdy put the suitcase down by the truck and put his hands on my shoulders so that I had to look up into his face. “You and I will both have to get used to having someone else that we can depend on. It’s not just you that’s terrified right now.”
“It’s not?” I asked him. “You seem so sure of what we’re doing.”
“Fake it ‘til you make it, sweetheart. Let’s just take it one hurdle at a time for now,” Rowdy leaned down and kissed me softly, but it wasn’t enough for me. I leaned into him and wrapped one hand around his neck to hold him to me as I put every emotion I had running through me into my kiss.
“We need to talk about birth control,” Rowdy whispered in my
