Read Online Sleeping ’til Sunrise by Mary Calmes - Free Book Online Page B

promise to go back to sleep,” I cautioned him, “because you especially can’t get run down.”
    “Then you’ll have to make sure I want to go back to bed.”
    “Oh, I can make sure of that,” I said, bending quickly and putting him over my shoulder.
    “No, wait, the sunrise!” he protested. “We have to say thank you.”
    I turned to look at the sky changing from dark-washed pink to bright blue. “Thank you for another day,” I murmured, smiling even as I rubbed the ass of the man not squirming in my hold. I turned him so he could see too.
    “Thank you for the day,” he sighed.
    “Okay, good, now back to bed.”
    “You can put me down,” he said, laughing.
    “I could,” I agreed as I did the caveman thing and carried him back down the hall toward the bedroom.
    “Though this is kind of hot.”
    I was laughing, too, when I threw him down on the bed and climbed in with him.
     
     
    I THOUGHT it was going to be a quiet, slow Sunday, and as I sat with Roark and Ivy, Dwyer and Takeo, and Hutch and Mike on the back patio of my house, having an amazing meal everyone had pitched in to prepare, I was surprised when the doorbell rang.
    “I’ll get it,” Mike volunteered, darting back into the house.
    “Can I have a mimosa too?” Ivy asked Takeo.
    “Do not ask me, ask your father. I have been drinking since I was ten. I doubt I would be the best person to put the query to.”
    “Yeah, no,” Dwyer said kindly, taking hold of Takeo’s hand.
    “No,” I answered her.
    “Crap.”
    “So who had money on when Coz’s sister and Chris whatshisname, the hardware store guy, would hook up?”
    “Hook up?” Roark groaned. “Really, Hutch? In front of Ivy?”
    “He always has a potty mouth,” she told him, leaning over and patting his arm as she’d intermittently done since the two of us got to my place a few hours ago.
    I had left Roark in my kitchen, then gone next door and collected Ivy from Hutch and Mike’s place. When we got back, I walked her into the kitchen and told her that Roark and I were going to be seeing a lot of each other, and therefore she, too, would be around him all the time.
    Instantly her eyes filled with tears, and Roark had been fast to take her hands and comfort her.
    “Oh honey, I promise I’m not trying to take your daddy away from—”
    “What?” she asked, before dissolving into laughter for only a moment before the hiccups began. “Ohmygod, no, not even. Pretty please take him.”
    “What?” I was indignant.
    That was it. She doubled over laughing and hiccupping at the same time, tears running down her little pixie face.
    “Explain yourself, young lady.”
    “Hold your breath,” Roark directed.
    The conflicting orders only made her laugh harder.
    Once she finally had herself under control, she explained it was about time that I started dating, and she was tickled pink that it was Roark I’d chosen.
    “Tickled pink?” I asked, squinting at her.
    “Mrs. Evanston says that a lady’s language should always be proper.”
    “Don’t talk to that old bat, she’s insane,” Hutch said as he walked right into my house without knocking, with a tray full of fruit.
    “Lazlo thinks she’s nice, and so do I,” Ivy defended her.
    Hutch rolled his eyes. “She’s a menace.”
    “Why are you in here?” I inquired, irritable. I was trying to have a private moment and he—followed by Mike—was there. “I am talking to my family, you ass.”
    “We are your family,” he insisted, gesturing at Ivy. “Who do you think takes care of that little girl?”
    “I’m not little,” she replied emphatically, just as there was a knock on my screen door.
    Takeo and Dwyer were there, and while I was happy to see them, I was surprised.
    “Your daughter invited me to make breakfast with her,” Takeo informed me before he bowed.
    I bowed back, and Dwyer tossed me a roll of homemade challah bread.
    “Who made this?”
    He tipped his head at