Worth It All (The McKinney Brothers #3) by Claudia Connor

“It’s comfortable and it’s cool.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Okay. Maybe she had spent more time picking out her clothes, maybe a little extra care with her makeup, but…“It’s not a big deal.”
    “You’ve looked out the window more times than Casey, and that’s saying something.”
    Paige ignored Jenny’s observation but felt a stir in her belly. Nervous and excited and unsure.
    “You want him,” Jenny sang softly.
    “Stop it. I don’t want him.”
Lie.
“I like him.” True, but there was the memory of his hard body plastered against hers, big hands framing her face, fingers sliding into her hair. If she’d thought it’d been hard to breathe around him before the kiss, that was nothing compared to after. She was surprised she hadn’t passed out yesterday at Evolution. And she had an entire day ahead of her.
    “I told him I didn’t date, anyway.”
    “What? Why on earth would you tell him that?”
    “Because I don’t.” She’d barely given it a thought since she’d gotten pregnant. Until now.
    “You haven’t. Not the same thing as don’t. And, you kissed him,” Jenny said, grinning.
    “I regret telling you that.”
    “I’m sure you do, but I saw your eyes when you told me. You can’t hide.” Jenny scooted past her out of the bathroom.
    She’d known telling Jenny about that kiss was going to bite her in the ass. And with her emotions running rampant every time she thought of Jake, she could only imagine what her cousin had seen.
    She joined Casey at the scarred table where she sat, circling numbers and placing animal stickers in a dime-store workbook. She liked to do what she called “her work.” That made her attitude toward going to kindergarten even more baffling, but they’d already discussed it several times. Casey could give no reasons she didn’t want to go other than she just didn’t want to. Not incredibly helpful. Hoping to sneak in a few minutes of her own studying, she opened her course book on the Roman Empire.
    “Mommy, did you ever know a prince?”
    Paige smiled at Casey’s out-of-the-blue question. “Nope.”
    “Does everyone get a prince?”
    “No, baby. No one gets a prince. Unless you live in a country that still has kings and queens, and then I guess it’s possible.”
    Casey’s obsession with royalty just proved that kids came with their own likes and dislikes. She’d never bought Casey Disney stuff, didn’t buy her the movies or sing the songs; she’d never been into it herself. But a commercial here, a walk through Walmart there, and by the time Case was three she was all about the fairy-tale princess.
    And the prince.
    Her own mom had desperately wanted Prince Charming and Paige had watched her go through more than her share of frogs. My prince is coming, she’d tell Paige with tears in her voice. He never came.
    “There’s always a prince,” Casey went on, drawing rows of tall, pointy rectangles sticking into blue clouds. “We don’t have one.”
    “We don’t need a prince, baby.”
    Was it a mother’s job to quell the disillusionment of glitter and fairy dust, or her duty to foster a belief in beautiful possibilities? Of course she wanted the dream of a happily ever after for Casey, but what could she say when she didn’t believe in it herself?
    “But what if you’re a princess? Then can you get a prince? What about turning a frog into a prince? I could do that. I need to draw a frog. When is Jake coming?”
    “I don’t know.” And she didn’t miss her daughter’s thought flow from prince to Jake.
    “I want to wait outside. I need to feed Leon.”
    “Great idea.” All too happy for a change of subject, Paige closed her book and stood. “Grab your leg.”
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Casey, you’ll need it. I can’t carry you all day.”
    “Jake can carry me.”
    And he probably would too. Paige had a sudden, vivid image of that, her small daughter in his big arms. She ignored the little hiccup in her heart. “Casey, why don’t