“Yes, but . . . why?” I pushed.

“Adeline, there’s some things you don’t question about a man.”

“That’s insane.”

I used that word rather than the word “chauvinistic,” the phrase “macho-man lunacy” or the like.

“It isn’t, since getting the answer might piss you off . . .” he took a pause to assess me and finished, “more.”

“It is because you know in explaining it it’ll still just be insane.”

Or chauvinistic, etcetera.

“Why do you put on mascara?” he asked.

“It makes me pretty,” I answered.

“No more pretty than you are without it.”

Well, shit.

“Okay then, I think it makes me prettier,” I retorted.

“You’re wrong.”

“I can’t be wrong about an opinion,” I snapped.

“Exactly. I drive because I’m more comfortable bein’ in control of the car, especially if I got bodies in it I care about, and the two bodies that are gonna be in it, I seriously care about, and it’s my opinion I’m more than likely better at it than you. That might be wrong, but it bein’ wrong would be subjective. So unless you got some serious hang up about ridin’, I drive.”

This was infuriating.

Because how could you argue with that?

Thus, me riding into town shotgun in my own damned car.

And he did drive kind of fast.

But he was a good driver.

Even though it was already busy in town, Tobe scored an awesome parking spot.

He parked, and we got out.

I went to Brooks.

He went to the hatchback to get Brooklyn’s stroller.

As I stood on the sidewalk holding my boy, he shook it out then put his boot to the thing that locked it in place and he did this like he designed the damned contraption.

He then swung Brooks’s diaper bag, which was a big, black leather bag with a gold guitar and Johnny Cash’s name on it that a friend of mine had given me at my baby shower (a kickass bag I obviously adored) into the net at the bottom.

When he got the stroller sorted, I bent to strap Brooklyn in, muttering, “You had a good explanation about the driving thing, except about the fact you’d only ride with someone who has a dick.”

“You been chewin’ on that since the acres?” he asked.

I finished with Brooklyn and straightened, shooting a glare at him even before I saw he appeared amused, stating, “Yes.”

“Addie, men have a protective instinct with shit like that.”

He did not just say that.

Though, he did.

Because he did, I slammed my hands on my hips. “And women don’t have protective instincts?”

“No thought, just answer. Danger happens, you got two choices. Get your boy, your phone and find a place to hide and call for help or grab a gun and go out and eradicate it?” he tested me.

“I don’t have a gun.”

“Then find a weapon,” he amended.

I understood his point.

Still . . .

“I would hope you also wouldn’t go out with a gun to eradicate it,” I remarked.

“What I’d do is get a phone, you, Brooks and make sure you’re safe, tell you to call emergency then get my gun and stand watch so I’d be in the zone to neutralize it if it got close to you while we wait for emergency.”

This was a good answer.

“You have guns?” I asked.

“Two rifles,” he answered. “Inherited. I don’t use them because I don’t hunt like Gramps and Dad did. But they’re worth money and sentimental, and I like hitting the target range.”

I might like hitting the target range with him.

That was, until Brooks got older, and if Toby and I were together, as in living together, those guns would have to be out of the house.

“This doesn’t explain why you only feel comfortable with a man driving,” I noted.

“There’s active protection and passive protection and both of them are good but only one of them I want behind the wheel of a car.”

“You know what bugs me the most?” I asked.

His lips hitched. “That I make sense?”

“That and that you know what bugs me the most.”

He moved around the stroller, bent to brush his lips against mine and pulled away to say, “Grab your cards and let’s drop ’em at Macy’s so we can hit he square.”

“Whatever,” I muttered.

But I did what he said, having let that go not because he made good points (that were still macho-man lunacy), but because this meant something to him and it didn’t mean a whole lot to me, thus I saw no reason to push it from a discussion to an argument.

After I slammed the door Toby beeped the locks on my car.

Yeah.

Whatever.

We hoofed it to Macy’s, and the minute we went inside, even though she had a lot of customers, when she spied us she called, “Oh good! More cards. I’m sold out!”

She was?

“Really?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she answered.

She took the cards I handed her that I’d been able to make because Toby was over at my house every night, and when I told him I filled my gas tank selling cards, he took over feeding, and if it was bath night, bathing Brooklyn, so I had a little me time to make some.

“I think I’m going to up the price by a buck,” she declared. “They’re selling like crazy. The way they’re going, I’m not sure anyone would blink at an extra buck.”

“Well, that’s cool,” I muttered.

“Hey, Toby,” she said after she sifted through the designs.

“Yo, Macy,” Toby responded.

“Hey, little man,” she said to Brooklyn.

“Bah, lee, go, sissis, Mama, Dodo,” Brooklyn replied, spilling all our family secrets.

“Is that right?” Macy asked, not speaking Brooklyn.

“Doo,” Brooklyn answered.

Macy shot him a smile and looked at me. “You know, someone asked if the artist who did these did packs of notecards. I said I’d ask. If you threw some sets together, I could put them out. See how they did.”

“I’ll get on that next week,” I told her.

“Wonderful. You going to the Fair?” she asked.

I nodded.

She looked from Toby to me, Toby to me again, and finally Toby with his hands on the handle of Brooklyn’s stroller to Brooks to me.

Then she smiled big.

“Cool. Have fun,” she bid.

“Thanks, Macy. Hope you have a busy day.”

“Me too. Usually the Christmas Fair gets me through to March. I have high hopes,” she replied, lifting up a hand in a “fingers crossed” gesture.

I gave her a smile, Tobe threw his arm around my shoulders, I slid mine around his waist, and with him having one hand and me having one on the stroller, we headed out.

It was a tight squeeze through the door, but we managed it.

“It’s pretty sweet your cards sold out,” Toby noted as we headed down the sidewalk toward the square.

“Yeah, whatever,” I muttered, trying not to think about that and instead thinking that I hoped that vendor that had the chocolate, cashew, caramel clusters that Deanna told me about was there again this year, because the way she described those, I was gonna treat myself for the first time in months.