Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71843 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 359(@200wpm)___ 287(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“And whatever you want, whenever you want it,” he replied before I kissed him. There was always, with us, equal surrender. I never told him no, and I’d never heard the word from him. I shivered suddenly, and he eased back to look down at me. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said, smiling at him. “I’m just happy and feeling really blessed right now, and I really want to go to our room.”
“Oh yeah?” he teased me, letting me go, taking a step back, waggling his eyebrows at me that I could see in the near dark. “You gonna jump me as soon as we’re alone?”
I nodded, because the way he bit his bottom lip made me suddenly ready to attack him.
“Good,” he said matter-of-factly and then left the room.
“Sam!” I yelled after him and laughed when I heard him cackle.
In the living room, Hannah handed him his boots, and Kola had the hat.
“Have Alexa play ‘Footloose,’” he told his daughter.
“I cannot even believe this is happening right now,” she announced, giggling.
Once Sam had on his boots, Hannah started the song and he began the steps. He was dancing in old jeans, old boots, in a white hat that no self-respecting cattle rancher would be caught dead in, and yet…he was adorable. The fact that he would do this for his daughter, in front of her friends, said more about him as a father than if I’d written a thousand words on the subject. Back when we were trying to adopt, I’d written about what kind of father I thought he would be, and of course, over the years, he’d proven to be even better than I could have ever imagined. And I knew he felt the same way about me.
After the song was finished, he reached up to take off the hat, but Hannah and Lucy and Tawny all begged him to show them the steps.
“Footloose” started again.
Around the fourth time, he had Alexa play “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” instead, which were different steps, but by that time, Kola, Harper, and Jake were dancing as well. I wished I could have filmed it, because people would have loved to see what “shelter in place” looked like at our house. But Sam being a chief deputy, it wasn’t allowed. I couldn’t even take video just for us out of fear that somehow our cloud would be hacked. And even though it wasn’t likely, between the marshals and whatever scary firewall Aaron Sutter had installed in our house, I still wasn’t willing to chance it. I enjoyed watching them immensely, though, and even more so looking at the T-shirt my husband was wearing that clung to every muscle in the man’s massive chest, shoulders, and arms. A father enjoying his kids, spending time with them, hugging them, and a man who could dance—was there anything sexier?
When I went in the kitchen to slice the defrosted pie, Sam was suddenly there behind me, wrapping his arms around me and kissing the side of my neck.
“Why’d you leave?”
“To make dessert happen,” I told him, lifting my head to kiss under his chin. “But if they’re dancing and eating, before the Monopoly starts and the TV watching, why don’t you come upstairs with me, cowboy?”
“Love to,” he husked in my ear.
I think there’s a lot to be said for spending time at home.
APRIL 2020
Hello, all, and welcome to He Said, he said for April 2020. Well, I have to tell you that with the pandemic, there’s not a lot happening in the Kage-Harcourt household, but there is still activity, though somewhat limited. The only one still leaving the house is my husband, and since he has to, he’s also taken over some tasks that until recently, he has not done, which has made for some interesting grocery choices.
“He used to eat what?” Kola asked me as he wiped down the various items that had been purchased with Clorox wipes. Sam had put everything in the laundry room, performed his striptease there, and had walked through the house in his bare feet and the now familiar yellow rain poncho.
“So much frozen food,” I told my son from the kitchen table where I was sitting watching Lucy, who was staying with us, clean up a logo in Photoshop. I had been showing her some shortcuts and some of my graphic-designer tricks, and it was fun. Neither of my kids had ever showed any interest in what I did, but Lucy took to it like a duck to water. I was enjoying being her mentor, and she was looking at me differently these days. I had a whole lot of awe coming my way.
“Like pizza and stuff?”
“Like taquitos and burritos and those fried things with the pizza sauce inside.”
“We eat those too,” he defended his father.
“Not for every meal,” I reminded him. “For veg-out days or a long weekend, but not every night as your main meal.”