I didn’t feel I was at a place with Ash where I could do this. We’d had together time and we’d done some bonding making dinner weeks before, but we weren’t close and in all the time I’d spent with Mickey’s family since we officially got together, we didn’t get any closer. This was mostly because whenever I was over, she had dinner with us but then would disappear in her room and I’d only get a, “Later, Amy!” shouted back when Mickey shouted that I was leaving.

This in itself was alarming. She hadn’t shared with me in any open way or even in girl code that she liked me with her father. But still, in the beginning, even if she didn’t make it plain, she’d communicated that to me.

Also in the beginning, even before Mickey and I got together officially, Aisling seemed to settle in to the shifting Donovan family unit, a unit that included me. We’d been connecting, gradually, but that had been the path we were on.

Now there was nothing.

But I didn’t care. If the father-daughter talk didn’t go well, I was going in.

Thus I’d replied, “Whatever you need.”

Mickey didn’t hide his relief, which told me precisely how concerned he was about the situation.

However, that conversation happened last night.

Right then, I had other things on my mind.

Things that included the fact that I’d just gotten my kids back and now I was introducing Mickey into the mix.

The way the current mix was didn’t seem volatile and after the last few years, my mother’s antennae to something like that was tuned to extremes.

But outside of Conrad showing and being a jerk, the kids had decided their own custody schedule, and since our hostile conversation, Conrad hadn’t said a thing. They’d even both brought clothes to keep at my place because they were at Cliff Blue as often as they were with Conrad and Martine.

I liked floating on those calm seas. I didn’t want to rock that boat.

I kept telling myself that Mickey was a good guy and there was nothing even in my wildest conjuring he was likely to do to make my kids not accept him.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t worried.

I fought down the urge to phone Mickey, call dinner off and reschedule in six months as I finished pulling the chicken, mixed it with the barbeque sauce and put it into the oven to keep warm.

I turned to take in my house and heard soft music playing. It wasn’t my choice of dinner music, it was rock ‘n’ roll, but the John Mellencamp type of rock ‘n’ roll that wouldn’t put you to sleep and sounded good turned down (though, that didn’t mean it didn’t sound better turned up).