He put his arm around Anya’s shoulders. “Promise, you’re going to love it.”
He was right. The amusement park was so much fun, and Katrina couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to one. Maybe when Leo was about seven? That had been a long time ago.
This one had a water park as well, so Grant had stopped at the house on the way so they could all pack up their swimsuits. They rode every ride until Katrina thought she really might throw up. She also distinctly heard her sister laugh uncontrollably on the roller coaster—several times. And then Anya insisted they ride it again.
The water park was fun, too, and on a hot day it was perfect. Grant rented a private cabana at the water park, and while Leo and Anya had run off to the waterslides, the two of them sipped cool drinks. Until Grant grabbed her hand and they took a tube ride down the river.
“I don’t know when I’ve had more fun,” she said as they held hands and coasted along the water. Kids shuffled past, splashing water everywhere. She didn’t care.
“It’s good to have fun. You should have fun every day.”
She didn’t know about that, but she was definitely enjoying this week. And so were the kids.
“Thank you for taking the time to do all these things with us. I know you’re so busy with football.”
He linked his fingers with hers. “Can’t work all the time, Kat. Gotta spend some moments on what’s important, ya know?”
She knew what was important. She had always had her priorities straight. Work and her family. That had always been it.
Right? She’d done it all right, like she was supposed to do.
But maybe a little fun now and then wasn’t a bad thing.
“Hey, you two.” Leo bumped his tube into theirs.
“Hey, yourself. Where’s Anya?” Katrina asked.
Anya brushed her tube alongside Katrina’s. “Right here.”
“How was all the water sliding and such?” Katrina asked.
The kids filled them in on their death-defying waterslide activities. When they were all sufficiently waterlogged and exhausted, they left the park and grabbed pizzas on the way home.
Katrina couldn’t recall pizza ever tasting quite so good before.
“Do you have work scheduled for next week?” Grant asked her as they were all eating.
Katrina shook her head. “Nothing on the horizon for a while.”
“Good.”
She took a long swallow of ice water. “Why?”
“I was thinking. I have a game against Dallas next week, but I have a few days off before practice starts. I was planning to visit my parents’ ranch down in Texas. It’s my dad’s birthday on Monday, so everyone’s going to try and make it in. I thought maybe you and the kids would want to go.”
Leo’s eyes widened. “The Cassidy ranch? Where your dad lives? Can we go, Kat?”
“Never been to a ranch before,” Anya said. “Are there horses?”
“Yeah, there are horses. And some cattle, too.”
“No kidding. We should go, Kat,” Leo said. “I really want to meet Grant’s dad. He’s like a legend in football.”
Katrina really wished he hadn’t asked her in front of the kids. “I’ll … think about it.”
“Think hard about it,” Anya said. “It would be really fun.”
Katrina looked to Grant, who just offered up a hopeful smile.
They finished pizza and everyone gathered downstairs in the media room to watch a movie. After, Katrina wanted to wash off the chlorine from the day, so she went upstairs to take a shower, then put on a pair of shorts and a tank top and sat on the bed to read a book.
But thoughts of Texas kept pulling at her.
The kids wanted to go, but she didn’t think it was only because they’d never been to Texas, or that Leo wanted to meet Grant’s father.
She knew the kids were pushing her at Grant, shoving her toward a relationship with him. Mainly because they liked him. She got that. Logically, she understood their rationale. But she shouldn’t foster it. She couldn’t, because it wasn’t realistic.
They lived in New York, and soon enough it would be time to go back to school. She had her work. Her priority. Grant had his job as well. While right now she and Grant were having fun together, that’s all they had. There was no permanence to this.
Even if he was smart and fun and hot and sexy and she did like spending time with him as much as the kids did. But she was an adult, and she could make the break easier than they’d be able to.
Was she hurting Leo and Anya by allowing this to go on any longer? Wouldn’t it be better to break it off now instead of heading down to Texas to meet his family? That would only prolong the inevitable and make the kids’ heartbreak even more painful.
She knew what she had to do.
The problem was, she didn’t want to do it.
Not right now.
Which was so selfish of her. What was wrong with her, anyway? She always made the right decisions. She’d always sacrificed what she wanted in favor of what was best for the kids.
She heard a knock on the door. It couldn’t be Grant. “Come in.”
It was her sister.
“So I was thinking,” Anya said, slipping into her room and climbing in bed with her. “Wouldn’t it be easier to do some shopping along the way rather than flying all the way home to unpack and repack? There are stores in Texas, you know. And we’ve already done laundry here. We’ve actually bought more clothes when we went shopping the other day. We’d only need to pick up a few things.”