“After I get these paintings done, I’m going to take Lyon. Show him what he’s been missing all these years.”
“That will be good for him.” Landon stopped short of palming his brother’s shoulder. He didn’t need to. Evan smiled knowingly, okay with the dynamic between them.
Landon was glad Ev was starting to do the things he used to love doing. Pursuing his first passion, art, or visiting the lake they’d gone to every summer growing up. Whatever it took to help him move out of survival mode and begin to thrive. Maybe this meant he was healing. Or maybe he had healed. After losing Rae, their mother, Shane’s mother—their aunt—in one tragedy after another, it was a wonder any of them were healed. So many amazing women, gone too soon.
“Oh, and Land, do me a favor?”
Caught up in his melancholy, Landon’s voice came out a little wistful when he spoke. “Anything.”
“Don’t have sex with Kimber until I get my son out of the house. You know, as a courtesy.”
“I wasn’t—I didn’t—”
A rogue grin broke across Evan’s face. “Oh, brother, your colors are showing.” He walked out the door and Landon started to shut it, stopping in time for Evan to poke his head back in and give him a wink. “See you Sunday.”
“Not if I see you first,” Landon said, then shoved him out the door and shut it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kimber’s nerves had settled some since Evan’s unsettling arrival earlier today. By the time he’d returned with a sugared-up Lyon, she’d managed to convince herself that Evan wouldn’t tell on her and that Landon would never be the wiser.
Since Lyon was powered by ice cream for the rest of the afternoon, she’d had her hands full. His dinner had been spoiled as well, so he’d hardly touched the tuna casserole she’d whipped up stove-top. After a bite of it, she knew why. She’d certainly never snag a man with her cooking skills.
Landon hadn’t come home early tonight, either, which disappointed her. Not for her sake, but for Lyon’s. The boy had asked for his uncle Landon and insisted on waiting up. She let him, lying on his bed next to him and watching Man of Steel as promised. He had finally fallen asleep—miraculously during the loudest crash-bang-boom section of the movie—but Landon still wasn’t home when she shut off the television and sneaked out of Lyon’s room.
Back in her own bedroom, she left on her comfy leggings but slipped out of the bra pinching her breastbone. She debated lounging around without one, but thought the gray T-shirt with a beaded owl taking up the front would likely create enough camouflage to hide any nipple protrusion.
Figuring she’d more than earned a glass of wine, she went on a hunt, nearly crying with relief when she found an abandoned bottle in the back of a cabinet in the kitchen. She didn’t think it was being saved for a special occasion. Moreover, she didn’t care. Landon told her to help herself and that’s exactly what she planned on doing.
She unlocked and opened the balcony door, swinging it closed behind her. Abandoning the monitor on a small table in front of the wicker patio furniture, she took to the railing overlooking the lake. Lake Michigan was calm in the warm night air, ripples on the water’s surface reflecting the moonlight like a blanket of diamonds on its near placid surface.
The red wine trickled down her throat, leaving a pleasant trail of heat. She closed her eyes and took what felt like her first full breath of the day. How did parents do this every day, every week? Every year? Everything she’d needed had been at her fingertips, including a housekeeper scheduled for a three-times-a-week visit, and Kimber had needed this glass of wine as desperately as the air she breathed.
She opened her eyes and sipped again, her vision going blurry as she continued to appreciate the moment. This one silent moment where she wasn’t cooking or cleaning or chasing around a little boy with energy to burn. If she had to work and care for a child, and satisfy a lover… how would she manage to do it all?
The thought of a lover shoved last night into her brain, front and center. The way Landon had slipped his fingers into her shirt, brushing a seemingly innocuous part of her body. But it hadn’t been innocuous. As it turned out, the underside of her arm was as sensitive as if he’d touched her somewhere much, much more intimate.
Her neck flushed, her body flooding with desire as she remembered the look in his eyes. The mix of green and blue yesterday against his blue business shirt. He’d looked at her with a hunger that wasn’t meant for nannies or friends of the family. Landon looked at her like she was a woman. Not like Mick had looked at her, like a friend or a fling. And not the way her parents looked at her, like she’d frozen in time at age sixteen and hadn’t yet managed to rope her life in to some semblance of shape.