“Awesome,” Cillian decreed and raced in, straight to the kitchen, something that caused a pang around my heart, most likely because I wished just one of my own children had done that.

“Thanks, uh…Miz…” Aisling said, allowing that to hang.

“Miz nothing,” I replied on a smile to her, moving out of the way. “I’m Amelia.”

She looked to her father as he shifted into the house, then nodded to me and followed him.

I closed the door behind them and repeated my invitation. “Help yourself to a cupcake. Or a bag of cookies if you prefer.”

Aisling wandered toward the kitchen.

“Just sayin’,” Mickey started and I looked to him to see he’d put the box on the floor at the lip of the top step to the sunken living room. “My kids aren’t allowed to call adults by their given names.”

“Oh,” I murmured, feeling rattled, thinking I’d put my foot in it.

“Not a big deal,” he said quietly and quickly, then came another of his easy grins. “She wouldn’t have called you Amelia anyway. She woulda probably avoided calling you anything until the go-ahead was given to call you Aunt Amelia, which is how they address their elders that they’re tight with.”

It would seem that Mickey was kind of strict with his kids.

I didn’t know how to take this outside of reminding myself it wasn’t mine to take in any way. So I just nodded.

“And also just sayin’,” he went on, talking lower, “you’ve worked your ass off, that’s plain to see.” He tossed a hand toward the room. “So we’ll unload this and tag it. Not cool for us to dump last minute shit on you.”

It felt good he noticed.

I still didn’t think it was healthy for him to hang around (this being healthy for me), so I assured him, “That’s very nice but I’ll be okay. Your box is small, it won’t take too long.”

He didn’t look assured and he didn’t look this for a while and this was because he did it studying me.

Then he asked, “You doin’ okay?”

I thought that was an odd question so I answered, “Sure.”

He kept studying me as he continued, “You eatin’?”

It was then I realized I hadn’t had anything except licking the spatula of cupcake batter since I had my Cream of Wheat that morning.

“I’m fine, Mickey,” I told him.

He didn’t stop studying me for several moments before he looked to the kitchen, murmuring, “It’ll be good this sale gets done, you can settle in and then relax.”

He was wrong.

I had been relaxing a good long while.

Now I needed to kick my own behind for a variety of reasons.

“Yes, it will,” I fibbed and kept on doing it. “When tomorrow’s done, it’ll all be good.”

“Help with that,” he stated. “Sunday, I’ll get in the food and the booze and you come over. I’ll fire up the grill, cook some brats, some chicken. You kick back with a beer and shoot the shit with me and my kids, get as loose as you want.” He awarded me another grin with dancing blue eyes, something I wanted at the same time I wished fervently he wouldn’t keep giving them to me. “You need me to pour you into my truck to drive you across the street at the end of the night, won’t be any skin off my nose.”