I stood there for a moment, enjoying the thrill running through me as I watched his ass while he walked away.
I strolled out of my room just in time to see Elin and Elena grabbing their backpacks, bagels in hand, and heading for the door.
“Have a good day at school,” I called, causing them to pause and turn toward me. “Love you guys.”
“Love you too, Mom,” Elena replied.
“Yeah, me too,” Elin said, then added, “And don’t forget to look for puppies.”
I rolled my eyes, but they were already out the door.
Ever since they’d found out we would be moving into Moose’s house, they’d both been hounding me to get a dog. They loved Rufus, Cade’s black lab, but were dying to have a puppy of their own, full time.
I knew I was going to get them one, I just hated the thought of training a puppy and having to deal with piss and shit all over the house. Still, I knew once we got passed the training stage, a dog would be a great companion for us all.
I walked into the kitchen to rinse out my empty cup, noted that it was clean and the dishes were done, and thought again how grateful I was to have Cade in my life. For a motorcycle badass who’d never been in a relationship or had kids, he was great to have around. Utterly thoughtful and totally helpful.
Shit, my ex had never done have the things that Cade did while we were his family, and because of that, I knew I’d never take Cade for granted.
I was one lucky woman.
Once I was showered and dressed, I locked up our apartment and headed into town to Amy May’s.
We lived in The Heights, on the outskirts of Greenswood, which is where Amy May’s, Moose’s, and just about every other business nearby was … which was just one of the other reasons I was happy to be moving.
“Hey,” Amy May said in greeting when I opened the door to her bakery. “How are you feeling this morning?”
I groaned at my friend, who looked fresh as a daisy this morning, even though I knew she drank as much as I did last night.
“Not one hundred percent yet,” I moaned dramatically as I sat on the stool in front of her.
“I have just the thing,” she said with a sunny grin that made me hate her just a little.
Then she placed a pretty blue and white plate with a decadent-looking cupcake right in front of me.
“Is that a chocolate-covered pretzel?” I asked on a groan.
“Chocolate cake filled with fudge, topped with peanut butter whipped frosting, and a chocolate-covered pretzel,” Amy May announced.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” I said reverently as I gently peeled the cupcake wrapper, mouth watering. “You’re a goddess.”
“That’s what they all say,” she replied with a laugh, but I was too busy devouring the cupcake to notice.
I put the finishing touches on the new pretty blue walls of the kitchen, placed the brush back in the tray, and looked around my new, updated kitchen with a happy sigh.
The inside was done, and honestly, it looked like a totally different house.
Moose had never been neat, or clean for that matter, and he’d lived in clutter. When we’d first walked through after deciding to keep it, the work had seemed overwhelming. I’d almost broken down, thinking I’d made the wrong decision. Four months later, I was ecstatic.
I hadn’t done it alone. Cade, Amy May, Bea, Shannon, and Carmen had all helped out whenever they could. I never would have been able to flip it in such a short amount of time without them, and I was eternally grateful.
I hadn’t brought the kids to the house yet; they’d never seen it. I wanted it to be move-in ready before they did, although, honestly, I hadn’t wanted to give them nightmares by showing it to them earlier … That’s how bad it had been.
The neighborhood wasn’t the best, at least compared to what we’d lived in when I’d been married to my banker ex, but there were lots of kids, the yards were tidy, and a new Starbucks was going up on the corner. That had to be a good sign, right?
I walked through the rooms, upstairs and downstairs, and pinched myself when I realized that at this rate, we could move in by the end of the month. Once Cade was done with the porch, and my lease was up on the apartment, we could finally come home.
I heard a beeping sound come from the back, which signaled a fax coming through. Moose had used the screened-in back porch as his office, and since it was the only space that hadn’t needed an almost complete overhaul, I’d been using it for the same thing.