“Maybe you could come to my house and I could cook for you,” he offered, shoving his hands in his pockets. “It’s the least I could do.”
Jade smiled and hated how her heart did a little flop at his offer. She couldn’t let her heart start getting involved here—as if she needed to remind herself of that for at least the twentieth time. Emotional involvement combined with sex wouldn’t be good in the long run.
“I’ll text you a list of my favorite foods,” she told him, unable to resist temptation or listen to the sage advice she’d just given herself.
Cash let out a bark of laughter and nodded. “I’ll be waiting.”
He turned and headed out of the waiting area, leaving Jade to stare after him. She needed to wipe this silly grin off her face before she went back. There was no way to know what Livie had overheard, and if she saw Jade acting like a giddy schoolgirl, there would be no lying her way out of this one.
* * *
Exhaustion consumed her, but Jade had never been so happy. Melanie and baby Knox were happy and healthy. Even though he’d come into the world early, Knox had checked all the boxes of a full-term baby. There had been some chatter about having the due date wrong, but Jade had been too busy doting over him and stealing precious kisses on his soft little cheeks to listen.
And proud papa Tanner, well, he was adorable. Jade was positive his feet wouldn’t touch the ground for some time.
Jade and Livie had decided to let the new littl
e family have some privacy. Melanie had wanted her husband and best friends there for the birth. Jade had never seen anything like it, and part of her wondered if she’d ever have her own family, her own husband who looked at her the way Tanner looked at Melanie. There was something magical about being in a room when new life came into the world. There was a sense of hope and innocence, like everything would be just fine.
Jade climbed the old brick steps to her back porch and was thankful that Melanie finally had found her happy ever after. The marriage she’d been in before had been more like a controlling prison than holy matrimony.
Maybe that was why Jade hadn’t found anyone to have in her life permanently. Growing up, she’d been in a prison of her own. If she found a man and considered marriage, she couldn’t lose her freedom or herself.
She let herself in the back door and let out a yawn. Jade had lost so much sleep in the past week, between Cash and now Knox, but both were worth it. Thankfully, she didn’t have a class to teach until this afternoon. Hopefully, she could catch a few hours’ sleep so she didn’t fall over while teaching hot yoga.
Jade let her purse drop to the kitchen island as she made her way toward the front of the house and the stairs. She had just enough energy to crawl up the steps and strip off her clothes before falling into bed.
Once she woke, she’d text Cash. She’d already given him the list of her favorite foods and honestly couldn’t wait to see what he came up with for dinner.
At first she’d just been joking, but then she’d actually decided to see what he’d do with another nugget of her personal information.
Minor as it was, Jade couldn’t help but wonder what was happening between them each time they exchanged pieces of themselves. The invisible string holding them together kept getting shorter and shorter, pulling them ever closer.
The knock on the front door startled her. Perhaps Cash couldn’t wait for her to text and decided to come to her instead. Pretty brazen, considering it was broad daylight.
Thinking Cash may be on the other side of her door, Jade found she wasn’t so tired after all. She crossed the living room and flicked the dead bolt, throwing the door wide with an exaggerated flourish to make him laugh. Only Cash wasn’t her morning visitor.
“Brad,” she gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“I want to talk.”
Stunned by his rude, unannounced visit, Jade gripped the doorknob. She shifted her body to cover the gap between the door and the frame and didn’t offer to let him come inside.
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she told him.
“I just want five minutes.”
At one time she’d been attracted to Brad, but standing here now, she wondered what she ever saw in him. He was tall and lanky, his hair too fixed with a perfect part, his clothes too pressed and polished. Good grief, he looked like someone her mother would’ve chosen—which she realized was another black mark against him.
“No.” Jade started to close the door. “Goodbye, Brad.”
He put his foot in the door, and it was all she could do to stop herself from slamming it anyway, his polished shoe be damned.
“I made a mistake,” he stated, his voice bordering on a whine. “Can I just come in for a few minutes?”
“She asked you to leave.”
Jade glanced over Brad’s shoulder to Livie, who stood directly behind him. Brad glanced back and forth between them but didn’t budge.