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My sister did a fair amount of texting with her new boyfriend, but I resisted mentioning that.

“We’ve only been able to manage a once a week date. We meet in Redmond, have dinner, then go to a hotel for a few hours. It’s...incredible, but it’s also starting to feel like we’re just each other’s booty call.”

“Well, big brother, I think it’s time for you to step it up.”

“Step it up?”

“Meet each other’s friends, introduce each other to the kids, that kind of thing.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, I know, we should have a dinner party.”

“A dinner party?”

“Yeah, we can sucker mom and dad into taking the kids overnight, then you can invite Lillian and I can invite John. We’ll each invite a couple of our friends, then I’ll go home with John, and Lillian can sleep over here with you.”

John was the new boyfriend. They seemed pretty happy together so far. I liked him way better than that guy Scott she’d been with at the New Year’s Eve party.

“I don’t know if Lillian’s going to be up for a sleepover,” I said. “She’s been pretty adamant about not leaving her kids home alone.”

“I thought they were older than our boys. Didn’t you say they were teenagers?”

Maria considered the kids just as much hers as mine and given that she’d been like a mother to them, I didn’t disagree.

“They are. The oldest is eighteen, but Lillian doesn’t think it sets a good example for them if she’s off having sex all night while they’re home alone. Plus, I think we all remember what it’s like to be an unsupervised teenager. There’s a high probability of trouble, even if they’re good kids.”

“Well, if y’all stay together, sooner or later you’re going to have to start sleeping over and figuring out how to incorporate the kids into your relationship,” Maria said. “You can’t keep everything separate forever. Even little Charlie has noticed that you have a regular playdate every week.”

“Playdate?” I laughed.

“Last week Mark asked me if you had a girlfriend,” she told me.

Mark was my twelve-year-old.

“I can’t believe he didn’t ask me.”

“Well, all three of them were very curious about why you’ve been out late so I told them that you had a new best friend and you were going on playdates.”

I burst out laughing. “That’s one way to describe it.”

“Well, Mark is still curious, but it cut off the questions. For now. But at some point, you need to have a talk with them.”

Lillian

Martin had a meeting with the bigwigs at Thomas Industries today. He’d purposely scheduled it later in the day so we could get together for a little while afterwards. He wanted to meet me outside the factory, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with a lot of nosy questions from my friends and coworkers, so I suggested we meet at LJ’s instead. When I got there Martin had already ordered me a beer and a basket of fries. He was a good man.

“Hey,” I said, leaning down to give him a quick peck on the cheek.

He slid out of the booth, wrapping me into his arms for a proper kiss before releasing me. When he tried to slide into the booth next to me I shooed him over to the other side.

“I can’t talk to you if I have to turn my head all the damn time,” I grumbled, even though I loved the way he wanted to be close to me. “Sit across from me like a regular person.”

We’d been seeing each other for almost six weeks now and while it was great, something was missing. I guess I never knew how difficult it would be to date someone who lived in another town and had a schedule as crazy as mine was.

Becky kept insisting that we were keeping each other at a distance on purpose to avoid the inevitable complications of bringing our families into the mix. Maybe she was right. I hadn’t dated anyone seriously since my divorce. I had no idea how to be in love and still focus on my kids.

And I was in love too. Whole-heartedly, head over heels, madly in love. Not that I’d told anyone, including Martin. It seemed ridiculous to be this smitten at my age, but as my mother used to tell me, you feel how you feel, and there’s no accounting for feelings.

“I think it’s time we take the next step.”

I looked up in surprise at his words.