felt compelled to explain, “where they think every adult male is a daddy. Especially since they lost their own father.”
“He’s not lost, he’s dead,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.
The announcement made Shane’s eyes fill with tears and his lower lip quiver. “I miss Daddy.”
Georgia slipped her arm around his shoulders.
Matt’s brows lifted. “You’re a widow?”
She nodded, because her throat had tightened and she wanted to ensure she was in control of her emotions before she spoke. “My husband passed away eleven months ago.” And although she’d accepted that Phillip was gone, she still missed him, and there were times—too many times—when she felt completely overwhelmed by the responsibilities of being a single parent. “That’s one of the reasons I moved in here with my mom.”
“Charlotte’s your mother?”
“You know her?”
“I met her the first time I came to look at the house,” he said. “But I haven’t seen her since I moved in.”
“She’s on her annual trip to Vegas with some friends,” Georgia told him.
“Leaving you on your own with two young boys,” he remarked sympathetically.
“And a baby,” she said, just as a soft coo sounded through the baby monitor she’d clipped on her belt.
“Pippa’s waking up.” Quinn jumped up, his desire to stay with the “daddies” not nearly as strong as his affection for his baby sister.
“Pippa,” Shane echoed.
Matt looked at Georgia, seeking clarification. “You have three kids?”
She nodded. “Four-year-old twins and a four-month-old daughter.”
Well, that explained the shadows under her gorgeous eyes, Matt decided. A pair of active preschoolers and a baby would wear any young mother out—especially one without a husband to help ease the burden. But even exhausted, she was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever met.
She had a heart-shaped face with creamy skin, elegantly shaped lips, a delicate nose dusted with freckles, and the bluest eyes he’d ever seen. He’d caught his first glimpse of her on moving day. She’d been casually dressed in a sleeveless yellow blouse and a pair of faded denim jeans with her honey-blond hair in a ponytail, but even from a distance, he’d felt the tug of attraction.
Standing within two feet of her now, that tug was even stronger—much stronger than any self-preservation instincts that warned him against getting involved with a woman with three children who could take hold of his heart.
“You do have your hands full,” he said.
“Every day is a challenge,” she agreed. And then, to the boys, “Come on—we’ve got to go get your sister.”
“Can we bring Pippa back to see the puppies?” Quinn asked hopefully.
His mother shook her head. “In fact, you’re going to apologize to Mr. Garrett for intruding—”
“Matt,” he interjected, because it was friendlier than “Mister” and less daunting than “Doctor,” and because he definitely wanted to be on a first-name basis with his lovely neighbor. “And it wasn’t at all an intrusion. In fact, it was a pleasure to meet all of you.”
“Does that mean we can come back again?” Quinn asked.
“Anytime,” he said.
“And within two weeks, you’ll be calling someone to put up a fence between our properties,” Georgia warned.
He shook his head. “If I did that, they wouldn’t be able to come over to play in the tree house.”
“Mommy says we can’t go in the tree house,” Quinn admitted. “’Cuz it’s not ours.”
“But a tree house is made for little boys, and since I don’t have a little boy of my own—” Matt ignored the pang of loss and longing in his heart, deliberately keeping his tone light “—it’s going to need someone to visit it every once in a while, so it doesn’t get lonely.”
“We could visit,” Quinn immediately piped up, as Shane nodded his head with enthusiasm and Georgia rolled her eyes.
“That’s a great idea—so long as you check to make sure it’s okay with your mom first,” Matt told them.
“Can we, Mommy?”
“Pleeeease?”
He held his breath, almost as anxious for her response as the twins were. It shouldn’t matter. He didn’t even know this woman—but he knew that he wanted to know her, and he knew that it wouldn’t be a hardship to hang out with her kids, either.
“We’ll talk about it another time,” she said.
Quinn let out an exaggerated sigh. “That’s what she says when she means no.”
“It means ‘we’ll talk about it another time,’” Georgia reiterated firmly.
“I’m hungry,” Shane said again.
She tousled his hair. “Then we should go home to make those pizzas.”
“I’m not hungry,” Quinn said. “I wanna stay here.”
“If you’re not hungry, then Shane will get all the little pizzas.”
Georgia’s casual response earned a scowl from her son.
“And you can help us paint the deck,” Matt told Quinn.
The furrow in his brow deepened. “I guess I could eat some pizza.”
“I’d take the pizza over painting, too,” Luke told him.
“Unfortunately, we weren’t given that choice,” Jack said in a conspiratorial whisper.
“And since you weren’t,” Matt noted, “you can go get the painting supplies.”
Jack headed into the house while Luke picked up the basket full of puppies and moved it under the shade of a nearby tree so the curious canines couldn’t get in the way of their work.
Shane and Quinn stayed by Georgia’s side, but their eyes— filled with an almost desperate yearning—tracked the path of the puppies. And as he looked at the twins’ mother, Matt thought he understood just a little bit of what they were feeling.
In the more than three years that had passed since his divorce, Matt had wondered if he would ever feel anything more than a basic stirring of attraction for another woman. Ten minutes after meeting Georgia Reed, he could answer that question with a definitive yes.
“Thank you,” she said to him now.
“For what?”
