Dream Keeper (Dream Team 4)

I didn’t have time for whatever was up with Corbin.

He looked beyond me with his attractive mostly-green-but-still-hazel eyes, then down went his gaze to the mums and gourds on either side of the door, and finally up again to me.

“Cute pumpkins,” he said on what was once (to me) a panty-melting grin.

Someone was in a mood.

And it was a mood I was suspicious of because, after I’d preliminarily lost my mind at our breakup, I’d gone cold, he’d gone alternately cheerful (to get his way) and remote mingling with asshole-y (when he wasn’t), and we’d sometimes gotten along and other times (that being most times) not.

Therefore, there had not been any panty-melting grins.

“Thanks,” I replied shortly. “Now, what’s up?”

“Can I come inside?” he requested.

“Corbin, I haven’t had the greatest of days. Just tell me what’s up that you couldn’t text or phone about, but instead, you’re a surprise guest at my house.”

“Yeah, Pepper, I get bad days considering today some other guy showed at my daughter’s career day, that guy not her dad, that dad being me.”

Well…hell.

I stepped aside.

Corbin came in and did not have issue with the abode of sin my sister thought my house was, therefore she didn’t let full immersion blemish her pure soul.

He walked right to the great room in the back.

I had failed to share that our backyard was practically nonexistent. It was just a patch of grass and a small, covered porch surrounded by a high dark-gray fence with interesting horizontal slats.

The view over the fence was to the units on the next block.

But since the entire back wall of my lower floor was windows, and my daughter needed cool outdoor space for her and her buds, my backyard was also dotted with big pots filled now with autumnal mums. Farther, on the patio, we had a corner sectional sofa with plenty of seating and lounging space with some poofs for feet or asses and neutral-colored stools to put down drinks or books. Rounding this out was a calming blush-and-powder-blue rug. And for evening times, there were not only more fairy lights (these with pretty shades), but also ground lighting against the fence.

And it sucked in a huge way that Corbin, standing in his nice suit in my kickass kitchen with the backdrop of my small but totally awesome yard, looked like he belonged right there.

Auggie might look like he belonged there too. Woefully, I’d never know. But odds were high he would, considering he’d looked like he belonged in front of a third-grade classroom and I wouldn’t have called that either.

Corbin started it.

“So, apparently, our daughter has a stepdad.”

Dammit.

“Corbin—”

“Baby, did you think I wouldn’t find out?”

At that, my shoulders jerked back, and my head bounced on them because of it.

He had never stopped calling me “honey.”

But he’d stopped calling me “baby.”

That was the first “baby” I’d gotten since I kicked his ass out three years ago.

“Juno plays her cards close to her chest with us,” Corbin continued, then he raised a hand, palm out to me. “And I’ll own it, that’s on me. I’d been stupid. I’d fucked up. And after I fucked up and lost you, I realized how badly I really fucked up. I then slid into denial. But I can no longer deny the parade of women since we ended was to try to hurt you like I thought you’d hurt me after you refused to try to work things out between us, when I’m understanding now that I hurt myself. And you. And Juno.”

I wasn’t proud of it, but my mouth had dropped open.

And I was so stunned with the stuff coming out of his mouth, I couldn’t close my own.

He took a step closer to me, which didn’t bring him close-close, but the gesture was not lost.

“But I know my girl,” he said, his voice quieting. “If you had a man that was going to assume that role in Juno’s life, you’d tell me. Face-to-face.”

“I would,” I forced out, still stuck on being called his girl.

Something shifted in his face that I was not sure about.

“Right,” he said. “So who is this guy?”

“He’s…in my crew. A friend of Lottie’s husband, Mo. And he’s a veteran. A former marine.”

Corbin’s lips tipped up as he said, “Ah. The cool guy. Dads are rarely the cool guys.”

“Corbin—”

“So the teacher got it wrong,” he stated. “Just a friend. But Juno didn’t tell me because she didn’t want to hurt my feelings.”

Once he’d worked that out on his own, something he could have done through getting the necessary info he needed by texting me, he took another step toward me and this one made me brace because he had long legs and it brought him close-close.

I didn’t know if I should retreat because of what that might say about how I felt regarding his proximity, or if I should stand my ground and declare that his being close didn’t affect me at all.