Love on the Outskirts of Town by Zoe York

Author:Zoe York [York, Zoe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: www.zoeyork.com
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

He was still grinning, though. They were jerks, but they were his jerks.

Chapter Sixteen

After breakfast, Natasha and Emily got to work.

For Emily, this meant carefully packing which stuffed animals to take over to the apartments while Mommy worked. For Natasha, it meant packing all the garbage bags and household cleaners she could carry at once.

She scrubbed the floors and stripped the walls of remnant wallpaper. Emily helped by spritzing water on the walls. It felt good, like any other Mommy-and-Millie day, until the late afternoon.

Right on schedule, Emily curled up beside her, clutching a teddy bear, a frown pulling her little eyebrows together. “I miss Nollie.”

Of course she did. This was the time they should go and pick her cousins up from school.

“We’re going to go to see her day after tomorrow,” she said reassuringly. She was doing a couple of evening shifts at Bailey’s a week up until Meredith left, to line the coffers a little more and to give the girls extra time together before they lived on opposite sides of the province. “Do you want to call her in a little bit?”

“Mm-hmm. And a cuddle now.”

“Of course.”

They were sitting on a blanket on the floor in the living room, their picnic snack stretched out in front of them. Crackers and cheese and juice boxes.

Emily crawled into Tasha’s lap and closed her eyes.

“You have been such a good help today,” Tasha said as she stroked her daughter’s hair and cheeks. Endlessly soft, effortlessly perfect.

Emily didn’t answer, just snuggled deeper. Because she’d always worked nights, Emily had always slept on her own, but suddenly Tasha felt like she’d missed a chance the night before. “Hey, do you want to have a sleepover in Mommy’s bed tonight?”

Emily laughed. “No.”

Oh, fine then. Tasha grinned. “No?”

“I like my bed.”

“And do you like it here?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Relief swelled in Tasha’s chest. “That’s what I was hoping to hear,” she whispered, too overwhelmed to speak any louder.

“Mommy?”

“Yeah, baby?”

“Do you want a sleepover in my bed?”

She laughed out loud. “No, but thank you.”

That new house joy lasted for three more days. Then she got an email from David.

Since she wanted everything in writing, it said, he was officially asking for a full weekend with Emily over Christmas. She fired back a quick reply—yes, of course he could have time with her. Could they maybe do a single overnight visit before the holidays as a test run?

He took his sweet time replying, but finally said he wasn’t sure his calendar would allow it, but he’d come up for another day trip at the very least.

Sweet mother of mercy.

She exhaled slowly, then picked up her phone.

He answered right away. “I thought you wanted a paper trail of all our communication.”

Sure, she had said that. But then they’d had what she thought was a decently productive conversation where she shared the changes in her life, so… “We can follow up with email summaries of this call,” she said more smoothly than she felt. “But it’s easier to just hash this out over the phone.

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