“What’s wrong?” The soft feminine voice in the darkness was almost a relief. Even as he tensed with the question.
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. Played with a strand of her hair.She’d laid her head on his shoulder minutes before and rather than putting his arm around her, he’d had his forearm up, lying beside her head.
“You ready to be done?”
Scott froze. Hadn’t even considered that possibility. But if she was… “Are you?”
“No.”
His fingers returned to fooling with her hair. “I’m not, either,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Positive.” Maybe to the point of being the exact opposite. He just had no idea what that meant, practically speaking. He wasn’t comfortable at the thought of having her at the table for family dinner but felt like something was missing when she wasn’t there.
How in the hell did he fix that?
“I heard that Leigh spent a couple of hours with you and Angel the other day, making macaroni necklaces.” He’d heard from his sister and then Leigh, not Iris.
“Sage and Gray had a doctor’s appointment.” And Scott, of course, had been at work and not available to babysit. He’d heard that, too. Not that Sage would have put him in charge of the rambunctious little girl while he was still on crutches, even if he’d been home. He’d have been fine watching her, of course, but Sage wouldn’t have thought so.
And Iris watching Leigh was not a new thing. Or even at all unusual. In fact, it was completely normal.
He listened as Iris went on to tell him about some of the things Leigh had said. Including something about having seen Daddy’s butt by accident and it having hair on it not smooth like Mommy’s and she thought it was gross. She’d scrunched up her nose as she’d said it. Iris chuckled as she shared the news.
Scott smiled, too. His spirits lifted some. Not much.
“I told her that family stuff was private, just between us at home, and not to take that particular tidbit to school with her,” Iris said, humor in her tone. “I wanted to say that she’d likely be changing her mind about finding the male body gross in a few years but didn’t want to encourage her to grow up too fast. We sure as hell don’t want to have to start thinking about Leigh interested in dating for a whole lot of years yet.”
We.Iris had been part of Leigh’s life—an honorary family member—since the little girl’s infanthood. He’d once heard Iris say that Leigh was the love of her life.
He remembered because, since he knew he wasn’t going to ever be in a serious relationship and have a family of his own, he’d agreed with her. Leigh was it for him.
Nothing more full time than a niece who went home to her mother’s house.
The example of a father that he had to live up to—as all in with him and Sage as his father had been—there was no way Scott would even try to take on that kind of task. No kid of his was going to have an absentee father.
Which meant—no kid for him.
But Iris…she’d make a great mother.
“I get why marriage, or a committed permanent relationship, isn’t in your future, but what about kids? You’d make a great mother.”
The words came of their own accord. Had he thought about them, he’d never have let them out. But having said them, he relaxed some.
Because they were honest. Right.
He and Iris—they were alike in a lot of ways. And currently their lives meshed well. But current didn’t hang around forever. It led to the future.
Andthatwas what was bothering him.
He’d had his future mapped out since the year after his divorce. He knew his course—driven by his career. Hoped to be California’s attorney general someday. Or something on a federal level. He’d dedicated his life to making the world a better place by putting away those who hurt innocent people. To stop them from hurting anyone else…
Iris hadn’t answered him.
She hadn’t taken her head off his chest, either.
But he felt a change. Like the air had been infiltrated with something that caused it to stiffen.
