“Who did you learn from?”
Those stupid tears were back in his eyes again. “I learned from you.”
He’d learned by watching her, by caring so much he’d studied so he could give her what she needed. His love for her had led him.
“Then we’ll learn how to be parents from her,” Nell said softly.
And then he felt it. He felt something softly move under his hand. “She moved.”
Nell leaned back.
They sat there as the first snow began to fall.
November
“Max, if you say one thing about my wife’s tofurkey casserole and she cries, I will kill you. I will not do it humanely. I will make it hurt,” Henry vowed.
Stef Talbot snorted and let them all in, his hand on his son’s back. “This is on you, Max. Take one for the team. Come on, Logan. Your Thanksgiving dinner is still milk. Henry, I’ll be sure to get a slice of Nell’s berry crumble.”
Max nodded, his eyes lighting with what looked like hope. “Yeah, I could do that.”
But then his problem wouldn’t be solved. And Max deserved it. Besides, it wasn’t that bad. Of course he hadn’t actually eaten turkey in years, so maybe he didn’t understand, but he didn’t care. “No. It has to be tofurkey casserole.”
Nell had wanted to insure she had a protein to eat, but he knew she would also like it if they weren’t the only ones to eat it.
Max frowned. “But it’s wrong. It’s so wrong. Why would I eat tofu when there’s a perfectly good turkey who sacrificed to get in my belly?”
“Get it all out now.” He wasn’t going to listen to Max make fun of tofu.
“I don’t have to taste it, do I? I can hold my nose and swallow it as fast as I can and then stuff my mouth with a real turkey leg, right?”
He pointed Max’s way. They had to get this all out before they joined the rest of the group celebrating with Stef and Jen. It was most of Bliss. “Who helped you fix your truck after you dinged it up when Rachel told you to put the snow tires on but you didn’t?”
Henry’d had to go out in the cold, help Max haul that sucker back to Long-Haired Roger’s, and then convince Roger not to call Rachel, even though everyone else in town would have.
Max went a little pale. “I would have taken the lecture if I’d known my other penalty was fake turkey. Come on, man. Do a guy a solid.”
Nell was nervous about Thanksgiving. Nervous about her welcome here. They typically went up the mountain for the weekend and celebrated with the gang up at Mountain and Valley.
But Mountain and Valley was an adults only resort, and their baby girl would want to play with her friends on the holidays. Neither he nor Nell had deep connections to Thanksgiving. There had been no big family get-togethers in their past, and they’d decided that while they would absolutely explain about the destruction of indigenous people and that history shouldn’t be eradicated with a piece of pie, she could enjoy a holiday with a basis in family.
Max wasn’t going to make his wife cry today by making fun of the food she’d brought.
He narrowed his gaze. “You remember when Rachel thoughtfully made raisin pie?”
Max sighed. “I’ll do it. How you managed to choke that down I will never understand.”
The things they did for their wives…
* * * *
“I’ve been pregnant for five hundred years,” Nell said.
Rachel sighed. “Girl, same. Max, you get Rye and tackle those dishes. All the pregnant ladies are watching a movie.”
“But baby, the game is coming on. I already had to…” Max’s eyes went wide when he saw Nell sitting next to Rachel on the couch. “Yes, baby.”
He turned on his heel and strode right back to the kitchen.
“What did Henry do to make him eat that casserole?” Nell asked because she’d seen tears in the poor man’s eyes.
Rachel sat back. “Whatever it was, he needs to tell me. So you and Henry good? Or are you still signing that postnup thing?”
Stef’s lawyer had drawn up a document that gave her everything, in the event of a divorce. All the money, the cabin, the Jeep. “I tore it up and told him if he ever presented me with something like that again, he would sleep on the couch for the rest of his life.”
Laura had Sierra Rose in her lap. “Thank god. I was worried when I heard he’d done that.”
“I think he was trying to make a point,” Holly added.
The point had been made and rejected. “Anything we made, we made together.”
“So you’re going to share the fortune you made off dreamcatchers at Woo Woo Fest?” Laura asked.
She loved her friend, but sometimes Laura was nosy. She hadn’t given up on trying to figure out Nell’s secret. “Yes. We made them together. We should share in the profits.”
Laura groaned. “You’re never going to tell me.”
“Come on. She can’t. According to the rumor mill, Henry brought a ton of cash from his days working for the CIA,” Rachel replied, a light in her eyes. “It’s why the cartel might come after him.”
Jen nodded. “That’s what I heard, too.”
She knew a trap when she saw one. Now was the time she should leap to her husband’s defense and tell them all the truth. She simply nodded. “I heard that one, too.”
Callie was sitting on the big comfy chair, one of her twins in her arms. Nate was walking around with the other. “Told you she wouldn’t fall for it. You keep those secrets, girl.”
Or maybe it was time to come clean about everything. Henry had always told her it was up to her when or if she ever wanted to talk about her writing. It felt so good to be writing again. At first it had been a chore, but then somewhere along the way, the words had started
