Chapter 21
1158 Words
CHAPTER 21
“You’re the hero of the day.”
Lucas plastered a polite smile on his face as he gently shrugged off the manicured hand on his arm. “Trust me, I had plenty of help.”
He looked at the woman who was pressing just a little too close to him. What was her name again? No clue. But he knew she was responsible for the wild twin girls who had just taken turns mashing a cupcake into the concrete floor. Even without her overwhelming perfume, he wouldn’t have given her a second glance.
There was only one woman in the room who could make his heart leap just by looking at him. And she was still doing her best to avoid him.
It wasn’t too hard to do at the moment. Ten kids hadn’t seemed like such a crazy number when they were talking about the event. But in reality? He could have sworn there were a hundred kids here.
It was chaos. There were balloons everywhere, kids were shrieking and running around the room, and the floor was a disaster. At least two kids had cried in the last five minutes—over what, he wasn’t exactly sure.
Fortunately, Sara’s grin was a mile wide through all of it, and the hug she’d given him a few minutes ago was worth every minute of the cleanup they were going to do after.
Shannon’s idea to use the unfinished space in The Landing as the place to hold the party had been a stroke of genius. Bare walls, concrete floor and nothing to wreck, and they could let the kids run wild without worrying about destroying anything. Jenna felt so bad about the burst pipe that she probably would have agreed to anything.
Lucas watched Shannon talking to one of the moms across the room. She’d really saved his ass today. He’d known she was good with kids, but seeing her in action was amazing. As soon as he could get her alone, he planned to tell her that. He’d make her understand that he was no liar.
He started towards Shannon, but something going on by the food table captured his attention. He recognized Sara’s best friend Max, who hung out at the lodge on a regular basis, and it looked like he was outnumbered.
“What’s going on, guys?” The two larger boys jumped a little. He searched his brain for names. “Landon, Dylan, why don’t you go join the group? It’s almost present-opening time.” He didn’t miss the smirk on Dylan’s face or the keep-your-mouth-shut look Landon shot at Max before they walked away.
Damn. He’d been on the receiving end of that look enough to know what it meant. The finger-shaped hole in Max’s cupcake and the smear of icing on his red face gave him a pretty good idea, too.
“You okay, Max?”
The boy looked at the floor, showing Lucas a mop of red hair that needed cutting. Lucas grabbed a napkin from the food table and knelt down in front of the boy. “Let me give you a hand with that. I think Sara’s going to open her presents, and you don’t want to miss that.” He gently wiped the icing off Max’s face, pausing when Max flinched.
Lucas muttered a curse under his breath when he realized that only some of the colour was from the blue cupcake icing. Under that, Max still had a hint of a bruise on his cheek.
“Did those two hit you?”
“No.”
That was all. Just one word. The pleading look in Max’s eyes, and the way his whole body tensed up when Lucas swore, told him there was more going on here than just bullying.
“I’m fine. They can’t hurt me. Not really.” Max looked over at the other kids, his face lighting up when he saw Sara beckoning him over. “Can I go give Sara her present now?”
“Sure, buddy.” He’d have to talk to Shannon about Max after the party. Maybe she’d know what to do. No kid should have that look of fear in his eyes. He’d have to talk to Isaac as well, and make sure that if something was going on at home Sara wasn’t over there unsupervised.
He felt a surge of love and pride when Sara gave Max the spot of honour beside her at the table and reached for the poorly wrapped gift he handed her with a megawatt smile.
When he looked up to see Shannon giving him that same smile, his heart melted.
Shannon stopped listening to Layla’s mom when she launched into chatter about some reality TV show Shannon had never seen. Instead, her thoughts were running over the conversation she’d had with Oona when she’d picked up the cupcakes for the party.
When she’d seen Oona through the window, she hesitated. But cupcakes had been promised, and Jenna was dealing with contractors. No way was Shannon giving up her favourite auntie status just because the super-hot cupcake maker had gone out with Lucas.
It had been awkward at first. But Oona had passed Shannon a truffle and told her a funny story about how Lucas’s friends had tried to set them up when he thought he was getting a guys’ night out. “No spark, of course, but I hope you realize how lucky you are. Lucas thinks you hung the moon.”
Shannon had walked out of Indulgence in a daze, feeling like a prize i***t for the way she’d treated Lucas this past week. He hadn’t lied about his night out with the guys, but she had definitely lied to her friends and family about what was going on between her and Lucas. Crap. He wasn’t the problem. She was.
Her attention snapped back to the conversation when Layla’s mom laughed. “I can’t blame you for getting lost in the view. He really is gorgeous, isn’t he?”
She stopped breathing when she caught Lucas’s eye. He was heading her way. Her heart pounded in her chest and her throat went dry.
She let out the breath she was holding when he stopped to talk to the boys in the corner. His gentleness with Max made her heart hurt. There was a little boy who needed people in his corner. She was glad Sara had befriended him. From what she’d seen at school, he could use a few more good people in his life. Especially someone as feisty as Sara. She was loyal to her friends, fearless, and she would look out for him.
Shannon was loyal to her friends too. Like she taught the kids at school, when you made a mistake, it was important to admit it. To apologize. Her next words to Lucas needed to be I’m sorry, but a room full of sugar-fuelled demons in child form was not the right place, and now was not the right time.
All afternoon she’d been watching the single moms in the crowd drool over Lucas, now that Isaac was off the market. The green-eyed monster rearing its ugly head told Shannon what she wanted. And it wasn’t to watch him happy with someone else.
- Writer
