It took him a while to calm down, but once he did, they settled in the living room for Round Two. He put the phone on speaker so Sunny could hear also. And she didn’t like what she heard.
“All right, so I might have told a little white lie,” Tansy admitted after he confronted her.
Little? More like a big fat whopper.
“But I was just covering for Bella. She hates going over there and she hates these stupid parties your dipsy wife keeps thinking up.”
Dipsy!Sunny was sure the steam coming out her ears was going to scald her husband.
“Okay, you are now way over the line,” Travis snapped. “Sunny is not dipsy. She’s trying hard with the kids, and she doesn’t need you sabotaging her.”
“I’m not!” Tansy protested.
“Oh, yes, you are. And you’re messing with me, too. This was my weekend to have the kids and you deliberately screwed it up. Unless you want to end up back in court, you need to cut this shit out.”
Tansy’s only response to that was to end the call.
Sunny heaved a sigh. “She won’t do anything different.”
He clawed a hand through his hair. “She’ll never forgive me for finally having enough of her crap and getting out. And she’ll sure never forgive me for ending up with someone as great as you. You show her up and she doesn’t like that.”
“I don’t care about what she likes. It’s the kids.”
“They’ll come around, I promise,” he said.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Sunny thought.
Travis wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry, babe. I really am. You know why she’s doing this. She wants to get to us, wreck what we have.”
“Well, she’s not going to,” Sunny vowed.
“Don’t give up on us.”
She studied his face, saw the worry in his eyes. “I’m not. We’re in this together. I meant those vows I took. For better or worse.” She only hoped the situation wouldn’t get too much worse.
Alden was home so Arianna took over some cookies. Delivering cookies didn’t count as fishing anymore, she decided, not when he’d come forward as a friend to help them. This was simply one friend taking cookies to another friend.
“Whoa, what’s this?” he greeted her.
“The cookie express,” she said, and bent to pet Buster who was jumping up, madly vying for attention.
“Want to come in?” he offered, swinging the door wide.
Mia was ensconced on the couch, crocheting, and Sophie had gone to Ava’s house for a sleepover with Paisley.
“Just for a minute,” Arianna said. “Mom could probably use some alone time.”
“How’s she doing?” he asked as he led the way into his living room.
Like hers and many of the houses in Manette, his was an older home. It had a modest-sized living room with hardwood floors. He’d modernized the fireplace surround and a flat-screen TV hung over the mantel. An M.C. Escher print hung on the wall opposite a leather couch, two matching leather chairs under it. A dog bed occupied prime real estate next to the couch and several dog toys lay scattered around. The coffee table held a half-empty glass of pop, along with the TV remote and a half-read book, lying face down. The room looked masculine and lived in.
“I love what you’ve done with the fireplace,” she said. “Ours could use some updating down the road. Who’d you use?”
“Myself.”
“Wow,” she said. Hunky and a handyman. “Impressive.”
“Not really. You watch enough stuff on YouTube and you can do anything.”
