The next day was just as chaotic as I’d thought it would be but, as I kept reminding myself, nobody died. Every time Tammy freaked out over a box going in the wrong room, every time Kitty got emotional over the fact she even had a room, every time Dolly tried to do cartwheels down the main hall, every time Conway—quiet, sweet, easygoing Conway—screamed because somebody touched his doll, I reminded myself that if nothing else, nobody had died.

It was a mark of how stressed I was that the thought wasn’t nearly as comforting as it should have been.

When Abraham showed up on my front porch around eight on Saturday night with five pizzas, I didn’t know whether to kiss him or weep tears of gratitude. I settled for simply saying, “You’re my hero,” and opening the door wider, stepping to one side so he could come inside. “If you’re here, who’s at the bar?”

“I closed down early.” He brushed a kiss over my forehead. “You look like you’ve had a rough day.”

“I’ve definitely had better days.” I swung the door shut, turning to him and opening the lid on the top box. “But you brought me pizza so it’s getting better.”

“I’ve seen you eat a time or two so I know you can put some food away but I don’t think you can eat all of this by yourself.” He nudged me out of the way, taking the pizza with him, forcing me to trail behind him like a lost puppy. “Besides, if you did you’d have to find something to feed the kids and something tells me you’re too tired for cooking.”

“Oh, for sure.” I frowned at his back as he made his way to the kitchen without asking for directions, leaning against the doorframe and watching as he set the pizzas on the kitchen island, the grease spotted boxes a jarring contrast to the shiny granite countertop. “How did you know where the kitchen was?”

“Uh, I might have snuck in here once or twice in my wild and misspent youth.” He moved to the row of cabinets hanging over the sink, shooting me a grin over his shoulder. “Had a few daydreams about the girl who ran the school newspaper.”

“Aunt Jeannie has a magazine, not a newspaper.” Dolly streaked in to the room, throwing herself at Abraham hard enough he needed to grab the counter or risk falling over. Wrapping her arms around his legs, she looked up at him and said, “Hi. Where have you been? I missed you. You should have come to see us.”

“Dolly.” I swallowed back a laugh at the shocked look on Abraham’s face. You would think after two days with her in Savannah he’d be a little more used to the fact that she didn’t have anything even close to a filter. “A simple ‘hello’ would have sufficed.”

“Well, I did miss him and he should have come to see us.” She sent me a quick glare and pout before turning back to him, all smiles. “We have a new house. I have my own room. And my own bathroom.”

“That’s pretty cool.” He recovered quicker than I thought he would, bending down and picking her up, settling her on his hip as if she wasn’t a solid sixty plus pounds of excited, wiggly kid. “So cool, in fact, that I thought we needed to celebrate so I brought you pizza.”

“Pizza!” Her shout was loud enough to have both me and Abraham jolting. He lost his grip on her and she slid to the floor, which turned out to be for the best since as soon as her feet touched the tile she was running out of the room yelling that there was pizza for dinner. Abraham and I stared at each for a moment before he said, “If you’re looking for some sort of school activity for her, I would recommend choir. Or drama.”

“She definitely wouldn’t need a microphone.” Crossing the room, I rose up on my toes and took his lips in what was intended to be a short kiss. Of course, the instant I was pressed against him, he wrapped one arm around my waist, sinking his other hand in my hair and deepening the kiss. I drew back enough to murmur, “The kids are going to be down here any second.”

“And?” He kissed the corner of my mouth, scratching my scalp lightly. “I don’t know how to break this to you but they should probably get used to the sight of me kissing you because I plan to do it as often as you’ll let me.”

“Still.” My brain went fuzzy when he flicked his tongue over my earlobe before giving the sensate skin a quick bite. “Uh, still. We should probably not be so... obvious.” I was pretty sure that was the word I was looking for but I wasn’t certain. I’d never met a man who could wipe out all thought processes with so little effort. Actually, if I was being honest, I’d never met any man who could turn my brain off the way Abraham did. Pushing that thought aside, I whispered, “Why did you close the bar?”

“Because I wanted to come see you—and the kids—and there was nobody to run things while I was gone.” He turned us until he was able to trap me between his body and the counter, continuing to massage my scalp as he moved on to kissing my neck. “It’s okay. The bar can stand to be closed for a night. I couldn’t stand not seeing you for another day.”

“Abraham.” Something skittered over my nerves and I started to pull away, freezing when he tightened his grip. Meeting his gaze with mine, I said, “I’m trying. But I need you stop pushing. I’m not too proud to admit when you say things like that, some part of me starts to panic.”

“You ever think maybe it would be good for you to panic? Let go of some of that control you’re so proud of?” He stroked his hand up and down my back, scraping his thumbnail over the vertebrae with each pass. “I get you’ve been on your own for a long time and maybe you don’t think you have anybody to lean on but you do. I’m right here.”

Before I could ask him for how long, I heard the already too familiar sound of footsteps clamoring down the stairs. This time when I tried to pull away he let me and I gave my hair a quick finger comb before Dolly and Conway ran in to the room, Tammy and Kitty following at a more sedate pace. Forcing my lips up in a smile I hoped was more easy than macabre, I said, “Look, our first guest. And he brought us food.”

“Pizza.” Tammy didn’t sigh but her shoulders slumped and her face darkened. “I can’t eat—.”

“Hold on there, kid.” Striding over to the island, Abraham pulled the bottom box out of the stack, spinning it around opening the lid, presenting it to Tammy. “Very, very light sauce and I had Sally cut back on the spices.” He held the box out to her, waiting patiently while she stared at him as if he’d grown a second head. “Had to listen to her complain about how I’m committing sacrilege and destroying the sanctity of food but she did it.”

“Thank you.” She took the box, continuing to stare at him as if she was actually noticing him for the first time. After a moment, she turned to Kitty and said, “Do you want to share? You were saying earlier you had some heartburn.”

“Oh, that probably would be for the best.” Kitty shot me an apologetic look, as if she should be ashamed over a basic bodily function. I noticed she did that quite often, something which only made me dislike her parents all the more. “If I don’t nip the heartburn in the bud, the baby will spend all night kicking me and I won’t get a wink of sleep.”

“Conway wants cheese tonight.” Dolly looked at him for confirmation, waiting until he nodded before turning to me with her hands on her hips. “Me, too. Please.”

“At least you remembered to say ‘please’.” I scrubbed my hands over my face before turning a slow circle. “And now I have to remember where we put the plates.”

“One of those boxes doesn’t actually have pizza.” Abraham nudged me out of the way, spreading the boxes over the counter and opening each one. “I told Sally you probably weren’t going to be in the mood for dishes so she loaded you up with paper plates and napkins. And there are drinks in the car but I didn’t have enough hands.”

“Oh.” I tucked my tongue in my cheek to keep from asking him how much everything had cost. Something told me it would start an argument I didn’t have the energy to see through to the bitter end. “Tammy, why don’t you and Kitty go get the drinks while we get everything sorted out in here?”

“Sure.” Shooting Abraham another suspicious look, she set her pizza box on the dining table, hooking her arm through Kitty’s and dragging her toward the hall. I stared after her for a moment, wondering what the hell was going on in her convoluted mind, before shaking my head and turning to Dolly, still standing with her hands on her hips. “You said cheese, right?”

––––––––

THREE HOURS LATER, I collapsed on the sofa next to Abraham, leaning my head back against the cushions with a groan. “I don’t think I’m ever going to move again. I don’t remember it being this much of a headache when I was younger.”

“You probably had less stuff. And no kids.” He reached down and grabbed my ankles, lifting them and swinging me around until my back was against the arm and my feet were in his lap. Running the heel of his hand over one arch, he said, “But nobody died.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.” I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from groaning again, this time in ecstasy, when he started massaging the ball of my foot. “I’ll give you a hundred or so years to stop that and then I’m going to get mad.”

“Funny girl.” He smiled but it seemed to not quite meet his eyes but he shifted his gaze to my feet too quickly for me to be sure. He was silent for a few minutes, all his concentration on his work, before he cleared his throat and said, “I know we’re supposed to go eat lunch with my parents tomorrow.”

“Don’t worry, I managed to find a dress which was meet-the-parents appropriate.” And that I hadn’t worn to a funeral. I might have spent the majority of the time in Savannah shopping for the kids but I’d taken the time to get a few things for myself. Cotton Creek wasn’t the type of place where you needed a new outfit every time you went to church or to a school function but you needed to have some sort of variety in your wardrobe and mine had been sadly lacking. “It even has a Peter Pan collar, which apparently is a thing again.”

“Honey, I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about but okay.” He set my foot down and picked up the other, his touch hesitant, as if I’d suddenly become fragile. “And while that’s nice, you don’t have to go.”

“Oh.” I was pretty sure what I was feeling was puzzlement and not hurt. After all, I hadn’t wanted to go in the first place so why would I be hurt that he was giving me an out? “Well. If you think that’s for the best.”

“Jeannie.” He stopped, taking a deep breath and holding it until my own lungs started to ache in sympathy, exhaling slowly. “I know I pushed you in to saying ‘yes’ and I did it because where my parents are concerned I’m a coward. I always have been.”

“Don’t say that.” I straightened, leaning over and resting my hand on his cheek. “You were a child. Every child wants to make their parents happy, to make them proud.”

“You didn’t.” He kept his gaze on my foot, still cradled in his hands. “Do you remember eleventh grade, you got in trouble for forging your dad’s signature on the permission form to be on the yearbook staff?”

“No.” I laughed. “But if you say I did—.”

“The English teacher, hell if I can remember her name, called your dad down to the school to verify the signature and he said there was no way he would have signed anything because all women were good for was making babies and keeping house and if he had his way you wouldn’t even be in school.” He scraped his thumbnail over the ball of my foot but absently, as if he couldn’t quite seem to keep his hands still but he didn’t know what to do with them, either. “And you were embarrassed, I know, because your face was so red, but you just took his arm and led him back outside and then came in and apologized for him—you said something about how he was never at his best before his noon drink—and went back to your desk and nobody ever questioned any of the signatures on your forms ever again.”

“Now I remember.” It was a hazy memory, one of those that had faded over time the way most memories about my father had faded, but it became cleared the longer he’d talked. I pressed my thumb to his lower lip, smiling when he kissed the digit. “That wasn’t some act of rebellion or bravery, Abraham. That was just the reality of my life. It’s a lot easier to shrug off benign neglect than to stand up to outright abuse.”

“Jeannie—.”

“Your parents were abusive. Mine were just... gone.” I shrugged. I’d come to some kind of peace with them long ago. I’d taken classes in college and had a roommate who liked to psychoanalyze me when she was drunk, the way all budding psychology majors do. I wouldn’t say it was a perfect peace but it was better than nothing. “It’s a lot easier to find closure for a situation when you find a way to remove yourself from the situation.”

“Jeannie—.”

“You don’t want me to go because you don’t want me to go, that’s fine.” I shifted until I was sitting firmly in his lap, twining one arm around his neck and pressing my forehead to his. “But if you don’t want me to go because you’re trying to save me from dealing with people who are, by all accounts, in the top ten of worst parents ever, then we have a problem because no way am I letting you spend an afternoon with monsters just to save your pride.”

“Now who’s being all bossy and authoritative?” His voice was a little lighter—not a lot, not even close to his normal tone, but it was enough to loosen the tiny knot of worry in my stomach. He wrapped his arms around me, squeezing me tight, rocking slightly. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” I laughed when he dipped me toward the sofa, my hair slipping out of my topknot and spilling over the cushions. “For all you know, one of your parents will say something which will send me off on a rant and we’ll all wind up yelling at each other.”

“That would make for a far more entertaining lunch than I’m used to having there.” He braced one elbow on the cushion next to my head, brushing my hair out of my eyes with his free hand. “I hope you don’t think it’s presumptuous but I have my clothes and stuff in the car.”

“Are you asking if you can stay the night?”

“Maybe.” His smile faded, a hint of worry creeping in to his eyes. “Unless you’re going to tell me ‘no’, in which case we can pretend this conversation didn’t happen.”

It was probably stupid, letting him spend the night. This wasn’t a hotel room. We weren’t drunk. We couldn’t explain this away as anything other than what it was.

But I couldn’t send him away when he looked so sad and lost and tired.

“I’m going to go soak in my brand new bathtub which, by the way, has multiple jets.” I sat up, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. “Make sure you lock up when you come back inside. And turn off all the lights except for the one at the foot of the stairs. I don’t want my first utility bill to send me in to a swoon.”

“Okay.” He stood, pulling me with him, some of the misery in his face slipping away. “I get the left side of the bed.”

“I know.” I nudged him toward the front door. “Go on, now. And don’t forget about the locks.”

I watched him leave, wondering if I could remember to do the same thing with my heart.