Tapping her on the nose and chuckling at the glare she gave me, I picked up the rest of the bags and walked up the path to her house.
High pitched giggling and an “Ah, hell,” greeted me as I entered and made my way through the living room to drop them off.
Alex was in the middle of the room, staring down at Shanti, who was wrapped around his leg. The only difference between when she’d done it to me and now was the cuff attaching her leg to his ankle.
“You have the right to an attorney, and if you can’t afford one, I’ll get you one who smells and toots a lot,” she told him, smiling when he glared at her.
“That’s not fair, Shanti. I’ve got the right to have one who smells nice and doesn’t toot.”
“Nuh-uh. Everybody toots, you can’t be pejadus ‘bout it.”
A four-year-old talking about prejudice…this kid was too much.
“I’m not being prejudiced,” he argued. “I’ve got a sensitive sense of smell, you know. I live with Cody, and that kid stinks.”
“Oh shoot,” Naomi whispered. “He’s done it now.”
“You take it back,” she yelled, putting her hands on her hips but keeping her legs wrapped around his. “Cody doesn’t smell bad. He smells pretty.”
“He toots all the time. I can’t even walk into his room because it’s like hitting a wall of gas.”
Snickering, I left them to argue it out and took the bags through to the kitchen, blinking when I saw how many were already in there. Had she bought out the whole store?
“Putting this all away is gonna suck,” Nome muttered, brushing past me, and looking in the first bag she got to. “Why did I say I’d do this?”
Carefully putting the shit in my hands down, I frowned at how frustrated she sounded. “What exactly did you say you’d do? Feed the free world?”
Shooting me a grin over her shoulder, she went back to unpacking a bag. “Not quite, but not far off it, either. Shanti has a ballet recital in two days, and I said I’d make the cookies and cakes for the party after it. I’ve also been signed up to make gingerbread unicorns and brownies for a class party the day after it at the school.”
Picking up a bag and taking it to the table, I began pulling things out of it and stacking them on the counter. I knew where a lot of it went, given how much time I spent here, so once it was all unpacked, I started putting things away.
“How are you going to do all of that, look after Shanti, work, and then get sleep?”
“Hell, if I know. I’ve got pretty little pink candy melts and bags coming to put the stuff for the recital in, and then I’ve ordered fall-themed ones, and festive colored candy melts for the class stuff. I was going to make brownie pops instead of normal brownies and just dip them in the pink candy melt and then put them in a bag. It makes it look like I took a million times longer than I did. If I do something similar for the other party, I might just pull it off.”
Putting cans of tomatoes in the cupboard, I ran through my schedule for the next week. “I’ve got the next four days off, so I can help. If you just tell me what you need doing, I’ll do my best to make it look like it’s done properly.”
When she didn’t answer, I stopped what I was doing and looked over my shoulder at her. “You good?”
“No,” she rasped, shaking her head slowly. When I opened my mouth to ask her what was going on, she held her hand up. “I’m better than good. Whenever you help us, Carter, I notice it, and it hits me right here.” She thumped her chest. “But sometimes it truly takes my breath away, and I realize how important and how big of a difference you make to my life. Even when I’m on my own, I know I’m not alone because of you.”
Her words had the power to take my breath away, and that’s what it felt like had just happened. Walking slowly over to her, I cupped Naomi’s face in my palms, tipping her head back so that I had her gray eyes on me.
“I’ll always be here helping out, Nome. You and Shanti are everything to me, and when someone comes across people as special as that, they don’t walk away from them. They hold them close, so they never lose them because a connection like that is rare and so freaking hard to find.”
Naomi’s chin trembled, and I groaned when I saw the tears swimming in her eyes. “We won’t walk away from you, either.”
Hoping I wasn’t going to end up kicking my own ass for fucking shit up, I dropped my mouth down on top of hers and kissed her like I’d wanted to do for the last two and a half years.