Harlequin Special Edition July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by RaeAnne Thayne

Author:RaeAnne Thayne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

“If you don’t want to hold Miss Poppy here, Quinn, then I’m taking her to sit on the porch—she loves it when we go outside and rock in the rocking chair, and I’m not passing up the chance to have a minute with my great-grandbaby.”

Quinn held up both hands, palms out in surrender. “Have at it, Pops. I’m liable to break something that small.”

“Coward,” Tanner joked.

“Not denying it,” Quinn answered with a laugh. “But I don’t have to be insta-dad—you do.”

“Yeah, you learn fast when you have to,” Tanner said as they both watched Ben leave the kitchen with the three-month-old.

Tanner and Quinn were sitting at the table having coffee at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday morning. Tanner had shown up just to visit. His fiancée, Addie Markham, was having a spa day, and he had the baby on his own.

“So you’re settling in to being a civilian just like that?” Quinn asked when they were alone.

“Yeah. Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Tanner answered.

“It is,” Quinn confirmed emphatically. “I mean, we knew Micah always had a time limit on his service. He wasn’t going to be a lifer—he was going to stay in as long as it felt right to him, then resign so he could open his brewery. But you, me and Dalton...”

Tanner shrugged. “The road just forked.”

“And you took the other route,” Quinn confirmed for him.

But was it as simple as Tanner made it sound? “Did you take the other route happily?” he inquired then.

“Shocks me, too,” Tanner said, as if he knew what Quinn was thinking. “But, yeah, I took it happily. Willingly. Eagerly. In fact, it was all my idea. Addie is...everything. I wake up every morning and can’t believe my luck. And Poppy is mine—once that sank in, it took the blink of an eye for me to know that there was no way I could pack up and leave her behind for months at a time. No way I could miss even a day with her or being around to raise her, protect her. I just knew that not only was that what I had to do from now on, it was what I wanted to do. So my papers are in, I’m talking to a security company under government contract about a job I can do mainly from here, and what can I say? I’m buying civvies that you can borrow when you come to town—like you did last night.”

“But I just saw you in Camp Lejeune five months ago, after Mac’s death,” Quinn commented, voicing more of his astonishment over the speed with which his brother had made such a huge decision. “Five months ago you were planning to go the distance, just like me, just like Mac.”

“And if you had told me I’d be where I am now, telling you what I’m telling you, I would have said you were losing it,” Tanner said, unflustered by Quinn’s incredulity. Then he laughed and said, “Hell, that would have been the case even one month ago.

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