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He lifted his hand in a wave. “Good luck. She reports to a hard-ass.”

“I don’t think he’s so bad,” I said with a smile and walked out of the hotel floating on cloud nine.

I grabbed Levi from baseball practice, then picked up the younger two kids from my parents’ house to go tour a rental home I hoped would be perfect for us. My stomach was still in knots from all that Gage had said earlier, and for the life of me, I couldn’t get his blue eyes and his words out of my mind.

Maybe he was just being nice, but it meant a lot to have a man like him say such complimentary words about me. He was good-looking, tall, fit, financially set, and clearly kind enough to lift up a plus-size mom of three.

Add the twisty feeling in my stomach to the tingle of nerves about this rental, and I could barely keep down my lunch.

“Mom,” Cora said from the back seat, “is this house close to a park?”

“There’s a park just a couple blocks away. We could walk there, or you could ride your scooter!”

Andrew said, “Could I walk backward?”

In the front seat, Levi scoffed. “If you wanted to walk backward into the road, I guess.”

I reached over and gave Levi a gentle pinch on the arm. The boys were always getting on each other’s case.

Levi brushed my hand away. “I’m fine as long as I get the big room.”

“It has four bedrooms,” I said. I thought a three bedroom would be okay, but I loved the idea of each of my kids getting their own space in our new home. Especially since I had the means to make it happen.

This house was close to my parents’ home, in one of the cheaper suburbs of Dallas, and even though it would be a longer commute for me, it was well within my budget.

“How far is it from school?” Andrew asked.

“Fifteen minutes,” I replied. “But there’s a bus stop on the corner, so you can ride the bus.”

In the rearview mirror, I saw him bring his arm to his side and say, “Yes!”

For whatever reason, he thought buses were the coolest thing—probably because he’d never ridden one before. The kids had gone to a private school back in Austin, meaning I was the one dropping them off and picking them up. And Mom and Dad’s house was close enough to their new school for me to bring them myself.

The map on my dash had me turn off the highway, and as we got closer to the neighborhood, I scanned all the houses, the streets. The homes here looked older than in my parents’ neighborhood, more spaced out. And even though there weren’t sidewalks, the streets were wide and not very busy at all.

A hopeful feeling bloomed in my chest. I could see this neighborhood feeling like home. And it would be a home I’d created, just me and my kids.

From the back seat, Andrew read off the directions, “One minute left!”

Cora bounced her legs against her car seat. “One minute!”

“Yippee,” Levi muttered.

My heart sank, and I knew I had to do something to set the tone before this whole tour went off the rails. I stopped the car alongside the road, even though we weren’t there yet, and reached for his hand. Levi was a big kid, getting his dad’s height, and his hands were bigger than mine already, even though he was still fourteen.

By some miracle, he looked back at me instead of pulling away.

“Levi, I know this is hard, moving here without your dad. It’s hard for me too.” I searched his blue eyes, hoping he’d understand. “Can you please keep an open mind?”

“Yeah,” Andrew piped up from the back seat. “Give it a chance.”

I gave Drew a warning glance over my shoulder before looking back to Levi.

He tilted his gaze down and nodded slightly.

“Thank you,” I said, squeezing his hand and then letting go.

We drove the rest of the way to the house with a for-rent sign out front, and my jaw dropped. The front stood out with light brick and a bright yellow front door that made the whole house look like it was smiling at us. There was some landscaping to care for up front, but nothing that we couldn’t manage on our own.