Hustle Him (Bank Shot Romance #2)(51)
Author: Jennifer Foor

“Yes, he is. Is it okay?”

She nodded and smiled. “Yes. I like it when you’re happy.”

“Oh, baby, I like being happy too. I’m so glad you’re okay with him being around. I didn’t want you hating me. I know you love your daddy. Ramsey would never try to take that from you. He just wants to be with us.”

“Aunt Sue said that he used to be sad all the time too.”

I wiped her face with a paper towel. “He was. One day he will tell you all about it. It’s his story to tell though, okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

When we went out to join the boys they were playing with onion rings. “Look Mom, we have new glasses,” Ramsey said as they both had onion rings around their eyes.

“Do you know how greasy your faces are going to be?”

They laughed and started eating their onion spectacles. “Everything okay?” Ramsey asked.

I grabbed his knee under the table. “I think it’s going to be.”

He leaned over and kissed the side of my head in front of the kids. Logan started laughing and Asha’s eyes got huge. Logan tossed an onion ring at him. “You just kissed my mom.”

Ramsey tossed it back. “You’re right, buddy I did. You want to know why I did it?”

My stomach knotted up. This was not a calm confession.

“Why?”

He leaned in and looked at both of the kids, with onion rings around his eyes, of course. “Because I love her.”

Logan covered his mouth with his hands and his little eyes doubled in size. Even Asha was smiling.

When I looked over at Ramsey, he winked at me. “Guess we don’t need to finish that game.”

I popped a fry in my mouth. “Oh, we’re going to finish it, the stakes will just have to be raised.”

“Woman, I will play you any day.”

The kids giggled more as they finished their food. Ramsey got a kick of out of being around Logan and acting silly, so of course, Logan thought he was the coolest thing ever. I thought Asha was going to be a problem. If her father wouldn’t have dug his own hole, she probably would have been upset about me being another man.

Gavin had caused me so many problems. I still found it hard to believe that everything was going to work out perfectly, only because it never had for me before. I just wanted to be able to breathe. With the traumatic events of earlier in the day, I knew that telling the kids about my aunt was going to be devastating. The problem was that it couldn’t wait. She was running out of time.

I felt like my life was spinning out of control and at some point it was going to crash. Ramsey seemed sure of his intentions to be with me, but if he lost his job, I wasn’t sure how much of the blame would be on my shoulders.

Instead of telling the kids that Aunt Sue was running out of time, I just told them that she’d gotten sick and we needed to visit her. I didn’t think about how scary it would be for them when they went into the room and saw her hooked up to so many machines. I could tell she was happy to see them, but it was sad to see her struggling. Plus, her one side was still sagging and Logan was scared to get close to her.

She seemed happy and the nurse told us that she wasn’t in any pain. Ramsey sat in the chair with Logan. They found something on the television that had them both occupied. Asha stood next to my aunt and held her hand. They’d really gotten close since we moved in. She was like a grandmother to them.

When the visiting hours were over, I knew I had to get the kids home. They had school in the morning and needed baths and a good night’s sleep. I also had to call their teachers and let them know what they’d been through. I had a feeling that it was going to cause problems for them. Children were resilient, but this was a little more than us rolling around in the backyard and the police showing up.

We all kissed my aunt and headed back to her house. Ramsey wanted me to just get clothes and come to his house, but the kids needed some kind of stability after going through so much in one day. I just didn’t see it going over well.

Ramsey dropped us off at home and left to go get clothes. In the meantime, I made sure the kids had their baths and a snack. By the time he returned, they were both ready for bed. He came in when I was tucking in Logan. “Everybody alright in here?”

“Mommy, can Ramsey sleep in my room?”

I laughed, but Ramsey walked over and plopped down on his twin size bed. “It’s all good. I think some buddy time is a great idea.”

Immediately, they started talking about something that was clearly a topic they had discussed before about some super hero. I stood in the hallway, listening to them getting to know each other. As much as I loved the idea of them bonding, I had this feeling in the pit of stomach that something terrible was going to happen. What if the kids actually fell in love with Ramsey and he realized that he couldn’t be in a family environment.

It could happen.

They would be heartbroken.

So would I.

Suddenly, even with everything else on my plate, my optimism went out the door. I didn’t know what to do. My children were always going to be my first priority. Since we’d moved here, Ramsey had slowly come into the picture. It wasn’t like he just showed up one day and we were together. The kids knew we were friends. They were the ones to tell their father about us. That was months ago and Ramsey was a different person.

Maybe that was what had me worried.

Clearly, he’d made progress with being able to live again. I was so proud of him, even aside from me being his so called reason for change. Still, that was going to wear off. I wasn’t always going to be the only woman that he noticed. I may have been the first one to push him to live again, but I was certain that I wasn’t going to be the only woman to come onto him.

He wasn’t even thirty and was already the sheriff of a small town. He was beyond good looking and his newfound sense of humor was more than sexy. Every woman would want him and for the first time in his adult life, he could be bachelor.

I’d lived in a marriage with broken promises. I wasn’t naïve. I knew that it was easy to tell someone one thing and want another. How was I supposed to be sure that I was making the right decision? This man had been a challenge and ended up stealing my heart. He’d taken my worries away from my failed marriage and occupied my curiosity enough to move on. I owed him just as much as he owed me.

Losing him wouldn’t just crush me. It would crush my kids and they were already losing everything they ever loved. Was I really going to be selfish and put my needs in front of them?