All the drama with that dickhead outside and she was cracking jokes.

Fuck.

Fuck.

Toby again couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Maybe we should go upstairs and talk, baby girl,” the black lady said softly.

“About what?” Addie asked. “About how Johnny’s changed more of Brooklyn’s diapers after knowing him for a week than his father has after knowing him seven months?”

Yeah.

That was Johnny.

And it just sunk in that her kid was called Brooklyn.

Kickass name.

“Doll, how about you let Johnny and Charlie look after Brooks and we girls get a bottle of wine and—?” Eliza tried.

“I saw you two,” Addie said, her voice hoarse, and Toby, already alert to everything about her, went more so. “In the stable. I saw Johnny doing you against the wall.”

Well, shit.

That he did not have to hear.

“Oh Lord,” the black woman mumbled.

“Shit,” Charlie muttered.

“Hell,” Toby murmured.

“He never gave me that, what you two had in that moment,” Addie told the woman who had to be her sister, they looked so much alike. “I could have walked right up to you and neither of you would have seen me. I didn’t exist, nothing existed. Nothing but him for you and you for him. He never gave me that, Iz. How did I never see that?”

That made Toby look to his brother.

With relief.

Shandra had torn him apart.

Apparently, town talk was right, and this Eliza had put him back together.

His brother had that. And Tobe was glad he did.

And he was glad even thinking he wanted the same.

His eyes moved back to Addie as Eliza whispered, “Addie, sweetie.”

“He gave me this.” She cuddled Brooks closer. “That’s all he ever gave me. But he gave it to me getting himself an orgasm and honest to God, that was all he was thinking about.”

“Addie, please, baby, let’s go upstairs,” her sister coaxed.

Addie reared her head like a stubborn mare, and it was inappropriate as hell in that moment, but that didn’t change the fact that move was hot, before she snapped, “No. This is a party. We’re having a party.”

She forged past her sister, Johnny, straight to the door where Toby was standing.

Yeah.

Totally gorgeous.

But holding that baby and doing everything in her power not to fly apart . . .

The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“Out of the way, Talon,” she ordered.

“Name’s Toby,” he replied gently, but he didn’t move.

Her head jerked back, and her tortured blue eyes caught his.

Christ, yeah.

Spectacular.

“You’re his brother, aren’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah, darlin’,” he replied.

“Of course. You’re perfect, so of course. You’re probably taken too, aren’t you?”

If he was taken, which he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be in about half an hour.

Fortunately, he wasn’t.

“I—” he started to tell her that.

“Not for me,” she cut him off. “Man like you. Man like Johnny. Man like Charlie. Not for me.”

Right.

She’d been holding it together.

But he sensed she was about to fall apart.

“Honey,” Toby whispered. “How ’bout we get you—?”

She tossed her hair and looked over her shoulder at her sister. “I did it, Iz. I did it. What I swore to myself I’d never do. Not the same, but a version. I found Dad. I found a man who was good for nothin’ except to break my heart.”

And that was when her face melted, and she started to go down.

“Tobe,” Johnny growled, on the move.

But Toby was all over it.

He caught her in his arms and sank down to the floor with her. Addie’s ass hit his inner thigh with Toby’s leg at a bad angle and that didn’t feel too hot.

He winced, but ignored it, putting his arms around her and tucking her and her kid close to his chest.

She shoved her face in his neck and started sobbing.

All he could think was she felt good, especially her hair against his skin, so fucking soft.

Also, she smelled great.

Her baby started fretting.

Right.

Time to get her to a safe place.

Toby lifted his gaze to her sister. “Where you want her, babe?”

“My bedroom,” she whispered. “Upstairs. I’ll show you the way.”

Toby nodded, got his feet under him and with great care lifted Addie and her baby cradled safe in his arms, walking behind the sister as she hurried into a hall.

He walked them up the stairs as Addie cried in his neck.

And he walked her down the hall into a bedroom where he placed her in the bed while she kept crying in his neck.

Eliza moved in the minute she was in bed, so Toby took a step back.

Another step.

Then he stopped and watched.

Eliza soothed Addie, and with the two sisters’ heads so close, Toby thought another man might not be able to tell their hair apart.

But he could.

Already.

Because Jesus Christ, fuck . . . shit . . .

He’d fallen in love.

Fallen in love with a spitfire with a baby and a cheat of an asshole husband she was trying to make her ex . . .

A spitfire who just happened to be the sister of his brother’s new woman.

Something Toby could not fuck with.

Johnny, who had retreated from life when the love of his had torn his heart from his chest, was back. Healed. Moving on with a pretty woman with a cute-as-fuck house who obviously loved her sister, and who his brother connected with so much, someone had seen him fucking his girl and he hadn’t even noticed.

So yeah.

Toby could not fuck with this.

And again yeah.

To put it simply . . .

Fuck.

On that thought, reluctantly, Toby walked out.

Snow in The Moonlight

Addie

Seven Months Later . . .

BROOKLYN AND ME rolled up to the house in the dark.

But even in the dark, I could see someone had showed after the light fall of snow we’d had that afternoon in order to brush it off the steps.

It wasn’t even half an inch.

But while I was working at the store and Brooks was in daycare, either Johnny, Dave or Toby had come to make sure I could get from the car to the door without incident, even if, through a quarter inch of light, fluffy snow, there would be no incident.

I shook my head, putting my little yellow Ford Focus in park, switching it off and saying to my thirteen-month-old, “Looks like we don’t have to brave a dusting of fluff, baby boy. So much for our evening’s adventure.”

“Mama, Dada, Dodo, baba,” Brooks replied, banging his chubby hands and legs against his car seat.

This was his favorite time of the day, coming home to Dapper Dan, the floppy-eared ridgeback mix Toby had rescued and given us a few months ago.

I was a woman who put a lot into the back of my mind to sort out later. This happened because this was me, and it happened more now because I was the single mother of a thirteen-month-old precious baby boy and I had a lot of other stuff to think about.

Though I was a woman who took it out and sorted it later.