Free The Bachelor’s Christmas Bride by Victoria Pade Page B

agreed. “Tia’s things are in Chase and Hadley’s room with mine so you and Cody can have the nursery to yourselves, and we’ll meet back here for cake when we’re finished.”
    â€œDeal,” Dag decreed, setting the plates full of cake on the island counter and taking Cody from Shannon’s arms. “Come on, little man, you don’t look like you’re gonna last too much longer.”
    In the end, Cody didn’t stay awake long enough for the cake—when Dag joined Shannon and the pajama-clad Tia in the kitchen portion of the loft again, he announced that Cody had fallen asleep on the changing table. “So I just put him in his crib.”
    â€œTha’s cuz Cody’s a big baby—he can’t stay awake and he gots to sleep in a crib, and he calls his moose oose, ” Tia said as if she were far above that.
    â€œYou call your gorilla grilla . And before you know it, Cody will be keeping up with you just fine, Miss Tia. He’s no better or worse than you, and you’re no better or worse than he is,” Dag said as Shannon poured the little girl a glass of milk.
    Shannon studied the frown that went with the gentle reprimand from Dag as she returned to the island counter where Tia was sitting with her cake in front of her.
    â€œA lecture on equality?” Shannon said quietly to him.
    â€œSore point with me.”
    Shannon didn’t push it with Tia there and Tia didn’tseem to notice anything because she was more interested in why Shannon and Dag had opted to have their cake later.
    When Tia was finished with her piece—and indulged by her uncle with a few bites of Cody’s piece—Shannon washed Tia’s face, helped Tia brush her teeth and together she and Dag read the bedtime story Tia required before she slipped off to sleep in Chase and Hadley’s big bed.
    But when Shannon and Dag returned to the island counter to stand on opposite sides of it and eat their cake, Shannon said, “Tia’s pseudo-sibling-rivalry with Cody bothers you?”
    â€œIt isn’t that. It’s that hint of superiority that came with it tonight. After years of my mother thinking she was better than everybody and putting on airs, it sort of pushes my buttons when anyone does it.”
    â€œThe putting-on-airs thing—you really didn’t like that about her….”
    â€œI really didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my mother, she was a decent enough mom…well, not to Logan and Hadley, she resented having stepkids and let them know it—”
    â€œChase told me a little about that—Hadley found comfort in food and ended up being very overweight until she got away from your mother, is the way I understood it.”
    â€œThat’s true—poor Hadley took the brunt of my mother’s mean streak.”
    â€œBut to you, Tucker, Issa, Zeli and Tessa—”
    â€œShe was okay. She kind of left us alone while she put all her energy into trying to dress fancier than everyone else, trying to talk more formally, trying to make sure our house, our car, everything about us put other peopleto shame. Not that any of it made her happy, because it didn’t—”
    â€œIt seems like it would have made her isolated.”
    â€œExactly! She alienated everyone with her I’m-better-than-you-are attitude. She wouldn’t lower herself to the level of the peons —as she said—but that meant she didn’t have any friends, any outlets, she never enjoyed anything because it didn’t meet her high standards. It made her difficult to like and there was no living with it without being affected by it.”
    â€œDid she just not want to be in Northbridge?”
    â€œShe said that it was too dull and ordinary for her. But there wasn’t anywhere else she wanted to be, either—my father killed himself trying to find any way to please her and there were half a dozen times when he