I knew this because she’d worn them every day since the day her daddy and I gave them to her.

Marcus came into the room, took his daughter in the curve of his arm, and kissed the top of her head.

Having done that, he looked to me.

“Are you cooking or am I?” he asked.

Had he lost his mind?

What kind of question was that?

“Whose house is this?” I asked back.

“Ours,” he answered.

Okay, he was right about that.

“Whose kitchen is it?” I went on.

He grinned and pulled his baby girl closer. “Yours.”

“Then who’s cooking?”

“Darling, get on with it. Your family’s hungry.”

“I’m givin’ Southern woman lessons to my daughter, comprende?”

“She gives them to me, like, every day,” Annamae whispered to her daddy.

“I don’t want you to forget,” I shot at her.

“Momma, if a boy doesn’t open my door for me, Daddy’ll break his legs and Stretch’ll shoot him. You got nothing to worry about.” Her grin got cheeky as she concluded, “Comprende?”

I comprende’d because that was probably the sorry truth.

My son needed to stop hanging with the Hot Bunch and their crazy posse. He was better at target practice than Vance, something Vance shared with me proudly.

Something that gave me heart palpitations.

I didn’t even think of what Stella told me that Mace told her that he’d taught him to do, and Mace didn’t even live in Denver anymore. He’d taught him over Skype, of all things.

And I’d had to have a facial and call my masseuse when Stretch came back after spending an afternoon with Tex.

To communicate my feelings on the matter, I huffed.

“You gonna help your momma cook?” I asked my girl.

“Yep.”

“Then get your behind in the kitchen, sugar.”

She grinned at me again, looked up at her daddy, and grinned at him and got a kiss on the nose for her troubles.

I felt that in my belly.

And right in the heart.

Annamae took off from the room, my husband watched her, and when she disappeared, his eyes came to me.

“You do know our daughter has a huge ole crush on Callum Nightingale,” I shared.

His face turned thunderous.

Uh-oh.

Right, time to fix that.

Easy.

“Love you,” I whispered.

The thunder went out of his face.

“Love you too,” Marcus whispered back.

“Walk me to the kitchen, sugar?”

He lifted his arm to me.

I rounded my grand dining table set with the finest china, crystal, and silver that I could find.

I took my husband’s arm.

And he escorted me to the kitchen.

We barely crossed over the threshold when Stretch shouted from somewhere not close, not far, “I want Las Delicias!”

My boy, shouting in the house and dissin’ his momma’s cooking.

I glared murder at Marcus.

My husband just burst out laughing.