Page 20 of Before and After

“No.”

“Hot dogs?”

“No.” Those were my go-to meals, but I figured we both needed more greens. “A chicken stir fry.”

He was quiet for a beat. “Okay.”

I watched him head to the toy basket, my heart squeezing. God, I loved him. I wanted him to be happy.

I knew we would be. Eventually.

But I knew life could knock you in the teeth when you least expected it. It wasn’t always smooth sailing and roses.

Hell, it was rarely that. It was divorces, disappointments, and losing the ones who meant the most to you.

I pulled up the recipe on my phone and got chopping. I was good at chopping, thankfully. I felt a permanent groove forming between my brows as I started putting everything together. I turned on the stove. Soon I had things boiling and sizzling. As I stood by the frypan, my brain turned to Caden.

It was way too easy to picture him pulling himself up through the ceiling in the elevator. A little shudder ran through me. He’d gotten me out.

He’d gone above and beyond to get me out so I could get to Ollie on time.

And he’d captured Tessa’s stalker/abductor/would-be killer. Just as he’d promised.

Caden Castro might be a rare unicorn. A man who kept his promises. A man you could depend on.

A man who wasn’t close to his family since he’d left the military. I was itching to know what the story was there.

“Allie?”

I looked over at Ollie who was sitting on the rug. “Yeah, buddy?”

“What’s that burning smell?”

Oh, shit.I kept the cursing mental, something I’d had to learn when Ollie and I moved in together. I quickly pulled thesmoking frypan off the stove. Everything inside it was burned to a crisp.

“Damn. It said medium heat for five minutes. That wasn’t even three.”

Ollie wandered over and glanced at the recipe. “Did you stir it?”

Right. Instead of stirring, I’d been daydreaming about a man I wasn’t even sure liked me.

Sighing, I scraped the ruins of dinner into the trash, then set the frypan in the sink. “Looks like we’re having pizza, Ol-ster.”

He smiled. “Yeah.”

Yeah, my little man loved pizza. “We’re getting a supreme.” At least it had some vegetables on there. That counted, right?

Rubbing a hand over my face, I fought back the tiredness and the pinch of failure. I couldn’t even manage to cook a healthy meal.

I couldn’t afford any self-pity. I had to feed my kid.

Chapter 6

Caden

Isat in the dark.

My suite at the Windward was nice. A generous size, and done in classy creams and browns, with touches of wood and stone. It suited the mountain location. The best thing was the view out the windows. The mountain was breathtaking, and I’d watched the green leaves give way to the vibrant fall colors.