Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120838 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 604(@200wpm)___ 483(@250wpm)___ 403(@300wpm)
I burst out laughing.
When I was finished, I didn’t feel like laughing, more like skipping, after I caught the expression on Dair’s face as he’d watched me do it.
“Get your woman and yourself a drink,” Kenna ordered Dair. “And get your sister to shut her mouth. Ye just won her back, we dinnae need Blake taking a runner again.”
With that, she swept off toward the kitchen.
“Do you need help?” I called.
“I’ve got it!” she called back.
“Dad’s coming?” Dair asked Davi.
“Apparently, they had a very civilized dinner at The Dome after Dad told her Blake’s plan to stop Signe from further embarrassing herself, and Mum realized Dad was stepping up for ye,” Davi replied. “They’ve hashed everything out. They’re getting a divorce. But we’re all still going to be one big friendly family.”
I watched with concern as Dair’s head slowly turned toward where his mother disappeared.
Distracted, he looked down at me. “Wine or a cocktail, darling?”
“Whatever’s easiest,” I said.
He nodded, glanced at his sister’s glass because he was a gentleman, and gentlemen ascertained the need for drink refills before they left a room, then he followed his mother.
I moved and sat in the armchair next to Davi’s.
“Are you okay with this friendly family stuff?” I asked.
“Not even a little,” she told me. “I think Dad should squirm for as many years as he made Mum put up with his cheating.” She shrugged. “But it can’t be denied he went all out to help Dair deal with Signe. So I guess he’s still a dad.”
He did go all out.
And he’d always be a dad.
Last, the thing with Signe was good and over.
I’d had a peek, and when I saw she’d taken all the videos down on all her platforms that had anything to do with Dair, I’d shown him we’d won.
This victory was sweet.
I let my questions about Bally coming to dinner go, and Davi and I made small talk for a few minutes before Dair came back.
After handing me a glass of white wine, with his Scotch, he sat on the sofa cattycorner to Davi and my armchairs, both that faced the lit hearth.
The two sofas that flanked the fireplace were smaller than couches, bigger than loveseats, and presently, Dair was glancing at the space beside him, that glance came to me, then he pointed a finger at the space beside him.
With a long-suffering sigh, I got up and sat next to Dair.
He draped an arm around my shoulders and tucked me to his side.
Okay, so it was worth putting up with his bossy.
“Bloody hell, he’s such a man,” Davi grumbled, but her eyes were bright and happy as she watched us.
“Mum says she told Dad to be here half an hour after we got here so we can adjust to the fact he’s going to be here,” Dair announced.
“Are you okay with that?” I asked him.
After Hale left, and I’d unearthed some pictures of us when we were kids someone (not Mum, for certain) had put in a scrapbook, and arranged for them to be overnighted to his dad, while I was on enforced rest on a heating pad, he’d told me his thoughts had grown even more confused about how he felt regarding his father.
I could see why it would be difficult to wrap your head around loving a man who was as protective and supportive of you as ever, the same man who had done what Bally had done.
“This is who we are now, I reckon,” Dair answered me.
I wasn’t fond of his answer.
Kenna came in carrying her own wineglass, the dishtowel was gone, and she arranged herself elegantly in the sofa across the plaid upholstered coffee table from us (yes, it was an upholstered coffee table with a bench area around the coffee table part, it was huge, and it was fantastic).
“Everyone have what they need?” she inquired.
“Outside of an explanation of why we have to put up with that man, sure,” Davi replied.
Kenna sent her daughter a soft look and said, “Love, if ye feel I’m forcing this too soon, then I’ll meet your father at the door and tell him we’ll have to do this some other time.”
She took a sip of her wine and then addressed the whole room.
“But ye must know, I’ve come to terms with the fact I’ve been mourning my marriage perhaps since it began. What was upsetting me was that I allowed it to go on as long as I did. I should have ended us long ago. When I was younger.”
Davi shifted agitatedly in her chair, and I sensed this was because, if Kenna had done that, their family would not have had what it had all this time. A father and mother who did indeed love each other—it was just messed up by my mother being, well…Helena, along with Bally’s flaws—that mother and father loving their children.