Worth It All (The McKinney Brothers #3) (11 page)

Paige didn’t say no, but there was a question in her eyes. They both knew if he did story time, he’d be there after Casey went to bed. He definitely wanted that. “I can do that. I’ll have to make sure I don’t mess up my nails,” he said, holding up his purple-pink-tipped fingers.

“You won’t,” Casey said. “Just blow on them and I’ll call you in just one minute.”

Paige did the teeth brushing and changing, then Casey called for him. JT came to the open door and took in the bedroom Paige and Casey shared. It was neat, but tiny, and sparse. There was no clutter, no stuff.

He stepped into the small room and lowered himself to the edge of the bed. Casey laid flat on her back, blond wavy wisps spread out over her pillow.

“I have a book.” She held it up, almost taking his eye out with the corner. “Can you read it?”

“Let’s see.
Pony Town.
Yes. I think I can read this.” With one leg stretched out on the bed and his other foot on the floor, he leaned back against the wall by Casey’s head. Paige was just going around to the other side when the phone rang in the kitchen.

“Well, if you can’t, I don’t know what we’ll do. It’s too hard for me.”

It rang again.

“You can go, Mommy. We’ll let him try.”

Paige rose hesitantly. “Okay. I’ll be right back.”

She stepped out and he opened to the first page. Six multicolored ponies stood on a rainbow above half a page of surprisingly small print.

Casey pointed. “You can be this pony and I’ll be that pony.”

“Okay.” He had no idea what that meant, but he started on page one.

Casey rolled to her side and reached for the purple bear he’d won for her at the fair. A bear that looked like he’d been through a wood chipper.

“Whoa, what happened to him?” His right leg was a balled mess of stuffing and Scotch tape.

“Bob lost his leg, but he’s not sad. He’s like us.” She tossed off the covers and stuck her legs up in the air. Definitely didn’t seem tired. She grabbed her left leg behind the knee and pulled it toward her chest. “Look how much I can stretch.”

“You’re very flexible.”

“I know. I wish it was my other leg that didn’t grow,” she said, raising her right leg next to her left and comparing. “Then we could be even more the same.”

Jake felt the sudden punch to his chest. Not “I wish I had two legs,” but she wanted to be more like him.

“I love horses,” she went on as if she hadn’t just grabbed his heart in her little fist and squeezed. “I saw a brown one. Have you ever seen a horse?”

“Yes. I—”

“Have you ridden one?” She flopped her legs down and spent another minute getting herself and her bear situated.

“Yes.” He’d ridden a few times as a kid. “My brother has lots of horses,” he said with a surprising need to impress a five-year-old.

“Real ones?”

“Yes. I’m pretty sure they’re all real.” He laughed, picturing Stephen with toy horses.

“Can I ride them?”

“Um…maybe.”

“Do you promise?”

He considered what promising a maybe meant.

“Do you?” She pressed for an answer.

“I promise I’ll—”

“Thank you! Let’s read something else.”

He was going to promise he’d try, but Casey took the book from his hand and grabbed a thin paperback from the nightstand. “I like this one. See? There’s a fairy and she lives there, but she can’t get out without a rainbow. But there’s not a prince in this book.”

“That’s okay. Fairies are nice.”

“Do you think fairy tales are real?”

He might not know much about kids, but he knew the answer to that one. “Of course.”

Casey sighed dramatically. “Mommy doesn’t.”

Oh. Okay then. Wrong answer.

“She says not everyone gets a prince and we don’t need a prince.”

No prince, huh? He started reading again, and every time he thought she might be getting settled, she’d pop up or turn over or ask a series of magical-fairy-related questions. So much that he figured he was failing at the read-until-she-fell-asleep thing.

“One book,” Paige yelled from the other room. “Don’t let her talk you into more.”

“Almost done,” he called back and winked at Casey. “I think it’s time for you to go to sleep before I get fired.”

“Fired from what?”

Good question. He read the first line of each page until he got to the end, then leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “Sleep tight, sugar plum.”

JT made his way down the narrow hallway past the bathroom and almost tripped over himself at the view in front of him. Paige’s back was to him, her pajama-covered bottom pushed toward him as she leaned her elbows against the counter in front of her. Damn. He needed to leave without touching Paige because every time he did, they both ignited.

He hung back a step, giving her a second to finish her call, and took in the room. Nothing about the trailer was new, but it was clean and comfortable. Beige carpet with similar colored walls and couch. More of Casey’s drawings stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet.

Paige said goodbye and he stepped forward as she laid the black cordless phone in the charging cradle. “Hey.”

Paige spun to face him. “Hey.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah. My mom. I haven’t talked to her in a while.” A decidedly guilty expression crossed her face, which surprised him, given the little he knew, but it passed just as quickly. “Did she talk you into reading more than one?”

“Guilty.”

Paige smiled. “You don’t have to do everything she asks, you know.”

“Yeah. I kinda do.” Or he wanted to.

Her pretty smile grew wider before she ducked her gaze to pick at a small dot of green face mask on her shirt. The silence usually filled by Casey grew and so did the awareness that they were very much alone.

“That was a good idea,” she said, gesturing to one of his prosthetic catalogs she’d stacked on the counter. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And your shark observation went over well,” she said, smiling up at him.

He smiled back, enormously happy that he’d made her happy. More seconds passed.

“Sit,” she blurted, and gave him a light push on his chest toward the couch.

He stepped around the low wooden table and sank into the worn cushions.

“I’m going to do you a favor.”

Curious, he watched her reach into a cabinet. A favor? She stretched higher and her shirt rode up, revealing two inches of bare skin, right above her pajama bottoms. He swallowed hard when she turned and walked toward him.

“I thought I’d take this off first.”

“Uh…” He knew his eyes were too wide, and he was fighting hard to keep his mouth closed, but the memory of her nipples teasing against the thin cotton when he’d arrived made his mouth dry.

“Jake?”

Shit. He locked eyes with hers. Where had he been looking just now? Probably not at her face. “What?”

Looking amused, she held up a pack of cotton balls and a bottle of fingernail polish remover. “It’s a hot color, but the boys might make fun of you.”

Oh. Right. His nails. And he was imagining Paige peeling off her top, offering herself to him like a damn dessert. Good Lord. She had no idea what she did to him without even trying.

She knelt on the other side of the coffee table and wet a cotton ball. Her hair fell loosely around her face. “Give me your hands.” He held one out and she took it between her own. “You have nice hands,” she said without looking up.

So did she, but all he could think of was showing her what he could do with his, where he wanted to touch her and how.

She rubbed the cotton over his thumbnail. “How was
Pony Town
?”

“Great. My new favorite book.”

She rewarded him with a soft smile that matched the gentle glow around her from the single lamp. “She’s a bit obsessed with horses right now.”

“I noticed that.” He watched her gently wipe each of his nails with the cold, damp cotton, loving the feel of her soft hands, imagining them other places and…He needed to think about something else. “My sister-in-law, one of them, has a place for kids where she does hippotherapy. It’s called Freedom Farm.”

Paige stopped and rocked back on her heels, her mouth open. “You’re
kidding.
That’s one of the best horseback riding therapy places in the country. She does camps and has cabins. If I could ever send Casey somewhere like that, it would be at the very top of my list. Wow. Small world.” She shook her head slowly and wet another cotton ball.

“Maybe I could get her in. I designed some of the equipment she needed, pulleys and lifts,” he said, feeling an unusual sense of pride.

“That’s sweet, but I have no idea when I could go, much less afford it. Maybe when Casey’s older.”

“I think it’d be good now,” he said, staring at the top of her head.

“Yeah,” she sighed. “She’d love it now, but—”

“I bet you could find a few days. Just let me look into it.”

“Okay.”

The smile she gave him said thanks for the thought. Nothing about it said she thought it would actually work out. That only made him more determined.

He’d take care of the money, though he doubted Hannah would let him pay. He’d buy them the plane tickets, send them out there for a mini vacation. Getting Paige to accept it, to take off work, would be the hard part.

He readjusted his leg and bumped the table, knocking askew a stack of papers and notecards. When he straightened them, he revealed a textbook beneath. “
Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,”
he said, raising a brow. “Heavy reading.”

“Well, a person can only take so much pony land before their mind begins to turn to mush. It’s for the class I’m taking. It’s a condensed summer course, not much credit, but I wanted to get started.”

“Get started on your life?” His gaze met hers, remembering what she’d said to him the first night he’d kissed her. He figured he remembered every word she’d ever spoken to him.

“Right,” she said, rubbing at his purple-pink cuticles. “It’s one of my core classes. I’m still waiting to hear if I got in for the fall term. If I do, I’ll take two classes, maybe three if I can handle it.”

He shook his head at the amount she’d piled on and the fact she still reached for more. He’d seen the fatigue in her eyes and it worried him. He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone who worked as hard as Paige and he bit back what he wanted to say about her overdoing it. “Do you know what you’ll major in? What you want to do?”

“No.” She went back to the task of his nails. “I used to think business, maybe finance.”

“Ride the train?”

She flashed him a quick, appreciative smile he could get addicted to. “Yeah. I’m not sure now. An associate’s degree maybe? Something that would get me a steady, salaried job while Casey’s still young. That’s my plan.”

“But what do you
want
to do?”

“I want to be a good mom,” she answered without pause. “I want to make Casey happy.”

Not exactly what he’d meant, but he knew that was her honest answer. “When do you study?”

“At night, after Casey goes to bed.”

“So, I’m cutting into your study time.”

Her lips curved the slightest bit, but she kept her eyes on his nails. “I don’t mind,” she said softly. “You’re helping Casey. You’re helping me too,” she added and glanced up. “I’m realizing except for Jenny and Casey, I mostly only talk to strangers. I haven’t been here long, so I don’t really have any other friends yet.”

“Did you have a lot of friends you left back in Texas?”

She laughed softly. “No, not really. I worked, I came home.”

“Same. I work out, I have Simon to grab a beer with, watch a game, but it’s mostly work.”

She smiled and his heart thudded hard against his chest. “Maybe you could grab a beer with me sometime.”

“Mmm…Maybe. I have Casey—”

“Or a Coke.” Because he’d like to just talk to her, and to Casey. He’d like to know more about where and what she came from and where she wanted to go. Her dreams, Casey’s dreams, and maybe how he could help them get there. “I noticed Bob is looking like he’s had a rough time,” he said after another minute.

Paige grimaced. “Yeah. She took some scissors to him when I wasn’t looking.”

He thought she was going to say something else, make a joke, but she stilled and she stared at his hand several seconds before speaking. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“What?”

When her eyes met his, he was shocked to see the beginnings of tears there.

“I just…I don’t know what I’m doing,” she repeated. “I don’t know anyone with kids and even if I meet the other moms at school, they won’t have the questions I have about Casey and her leg. You know more what to say to her than I do.”

“Paige. Hey. Come here.”

She blinked back her tears and started on his next finger. “I’m not done.”

“I don’t care. Come here.” He squeezed her hand and when she stood, guided her around the table to sit close against him. “You are without a doubt an incredible mother.” She started to shake her head and he couldn’t believe she’d doubt herself. “Who else would let a five-year-old lather their face up in green goo?”

“You let her paint your nails.”

“True.” And he’d have to think about what that meant later, but…“You will meet moms at school, but really, aren’t all kids different? My mom could tell you some stories. My sister still complains about my brother Andrew pulling the heads off her Barbies.”

That got him a smile.

“That’s not the weird part,” he went on. “He slept with them under his pillow. I’m not kidding,” he said to her shocked face. “They all did stuff like that.”

She angled her head back to meet his eyes. “And what about you?”

“Me? Never. I was the angel they’d been praying for.”

She bumped him with her shoulder. “Thanks. I think kindergarten has me as rattled as Casey. She’s always been so self-assured, almost to the point of bold. I know I worry too much, but I feel like I’m throwing her to the wolves.”

JT laughed softly. “I’m pretty sure the wolves will be too overwhelmed by her charm to bite. She’s smart, she’s sweet, she’s funny.”

Paige smiled. “I think so.”