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)
Duncan slipped his hand around the side of his neck, drawing him close, and then bent and pressed his forehead to Aaron’s. “Your friend is straight, but even if he wasn’t, you know you’re the only one I see.”
Aaron took hold of Duncan’s hips as his eyes slowly closed. “I do.”
Duncan leaned back, grinning at him. “Then?”
“I don’t like you home alone with a houseguest.”
“Then stick around.”
“Yes,” Aaron agreed, tipping his head slightly for the kiss that Duncan bent and gave him.
“None of that,” Sam scolded from the laundry room as he changed.
“Jake kissed Hannah,” I called over to him. “But Aaron won’t tell me what kind of kiss it was. It’s making me very nervous.”
“What?” Aaron groused, turning to me.
“You said Jake kissed Hannah, but that was it.”
“I can tell you what kind of kiss it was,” Sam quipped, walking into the kitchen in a very old pair of jeans and his Daddy T-shirt that Hannah had bought for him years ago.
“You know,” Duncan said with a snort. “I don’t think that shirt’s appropriate, old man.”
Sam flipped him off and turned to me, hands on my shoulders. “And I know because he tried to give her one before I left. He leaned in, had his arms around her and everything, and then he saw me out of the corner of his eye,” he finished with a cackle. “And she got a peck before he untangled himself fast and went back to giving out candy with Kola.”
“Sam,” I scolded him, shaking my head. “If he’s not comfortable kissing her around you, then what will he do behind closed doors?”
He scoffed. “And where will he have my daughter behind a closed door?”
“At his house.”
His smile widened, became evil and mischievous. My knees went weak, and I had to clutch the counter. The man still devastated me even after all this time.
“You mean his house where his mother, Linda, lives?” he asked me, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “The woman who threw a boy off her porch, naked, into three feet of snow?”
Jake’s poor sister. She was still apologizing to her now fiancé. I had to give it to Tony; he really had to love Reese to ask her to marry him even after her mother had nearly frozen off his dangly bits all those years ago.
“Linda will not let Jake have Hannah in his room behind closed doors. I know her better than that.”
He wasn’t wrong. “I don’t want to intrude on their romance.”
“I do,” Sam told me, walking to the front door as it opened and Kola came in to drop off an empty large steel bowl, grabbing the next one in line filled with premade plastic bags of assorted candy. We had all made them the day before, making sure there was an array in each. Jake had rigged a special chute—of course—and was getting it to the kids from ten feet away from the front porch. The front gate was open, as it was every year, and the trick-or-treaters were walking up to our draped-in-orange-and-black, overly decorated card table where the drop-off point of the chute was. Jake had pinpoint accuracy. He and Kola had their masks on because, Kola told me, it was important to model good behavior for the kids.
“You guys all right out there? You need help?” Sam offered.
Kola squinted at him. “You know, I think it might be time for that shirt to be retired.”
“Just pass out candy, will ya?”
Kola snorted, and Sam returned to the kitchen as Hannah came in from outside. She was wearing her Halloween costume, the same one her entire coven was wearing: Ruth Bader Ginsberg, complete with collar, glasses, and wig, and on the back of the robe, embroidered, were the words “I Dissent.”
“Okay,” Hannah announced, smiling at us. “I’m off to deliver Samhain candles, and then we’re going to Cathy’s party, and we’ll be back by ten to start our rites.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed. “Who’s driving?”
“Abbey.”
“Okay. Are you taking Jake with you?”
“No, he’s staying with Harper and Kola for the party,” she explained, walking over to Aaron and passing him a box with four small pillar beeswax candles inside. “These are for you and Uncle Duncan, and I made them without the dragon’s blood oil because last time it gave you a headache. So yours only has the apple, pumpkin, and clove oil, and then mixed in is the marigold, mugwort, wormwood, and the cinnamon stick you can see right there.”
He smiled at her as she leaned in and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Thank you, love.”
The way she smiled when she looked up at him, there was no missing the depth of her devotion to the man. She loved Aaron Sutter dearly.
“Oh,” she said, grinning, glancing at her father and then back. “There’s also a splash of Dad’s good bourbon you gave him, because it’s necessary.”