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“Fine,” I said. “We’ll let her stay tonight, but just remember whose idea this was.”
Chapter Eleven
LIAM
Mira sat on the couch and stared up at me with those big eyes.
“You listening?” I asked her.
She nodded. “I listening.”
“All right.” I set my hands on my hips. “Here’s the deal. You don’t get to choose sleepovers all the time, yeah? You still need to stay with Zoe, because she’s better at this shit than I am.”
Mira blinked. “I stay here.”
“Tonight, yeah. Tomorrow, you go back to Zoe’s.”
“I stay here,” she said again. “Zoe stay here too.”
The reaction in my gut was immediate and visceral.
Absolutely fucking not,I thought. I would rather have strung myself up by my toes than have shared a house with a woman who had no idea she was stuck under my skin like a fucking tick.
But a sexy tick.
With big eyes and wild hair and a perfect smile.
“No. Zoe has her own house. And that’s where you’re gonna be sleeping tomorrow night.”
Then, as I’d swear it in a court of law, that little girl made a decision in her devious little brain that I’d rue the day I ever crossed her about this.
When her eyes sharpened and her jaw notched up, it almost fucking took my breath away how much she looked like her dad at that moment.
“Duck,” I said in a warning tone, “we’re not arguing about this right now. We’re having a good night, aren’t we? You ate an entire fucking meal, and that’s a first. Let’s not muck it up with a temper tantrum when you’re already getting your way. If we have problems tonight, she’ll probably never let you stay here again, and I’m kinda getting used to your afternoon visits. We won’t tell her that, because I’ve got a reputation to uphold, but I think I’d be bored out of my mind if you stopped coming over. I don’t mind watching you when I know she’s right next door. Don’t tell her that either, because she’d gloat forever. So if you argue with me now, we risk all that. Okay?”
I’d never been around a ton of kids, so I had no real points of comparison, but I didn’t know how Mira could speak so well and seemingly understand so much at her age. Maybe she was a fucking prodigy or something. But bloody hell, I’d swear on a stack of Bibles that my logic made sense to her.
She’d been good all evening. Almosttoogood.
No fussing or throwing fits about anything. She ate nearly her entire dinner—it helped that I’d started buying all the shit I knew she’d eat, just to keep it in the house. Like chicken nuggets in the shapes of fucking dinosaurs and letters. If I thought too hard about how they got chicken into those shapes, I’d probably never let her eat them.
“I’ll even turn on that movieagain, as long as we get through this night in peace so that Valentine doesn’t think I’m completely mucking this up, okay?”
Mira eyed the TV screen, then me again, clearly considering her options.
“We watchMoanaagain?” she verified.
I sighed. “Yeah, but I’ll probably regret it, because yesterday at the field, I almost sang ‘You’re Welcome’ to someone who said thank you, and it made me want to take a drill to my temple.”
Mira dragged her stuffed duck from the couch cushion to her lap, where she wrapped her arms around it and buried her face into the faded yellow, fuzzy covering.
“Zoe bought you that duck,” I told her as I took my seat on the couch and cued up the movie.
Mira nodded, rubbing her nose against the duck’s bill. It was a little matted and clearly well loved after being lugged everywhere. “My birthday present,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed, “your first birthday present. I remember her bringing it to the hospital.”
The duck had seemed so big at the time, dwarfing the impossibly tiny bundle in that white blanket with the blue-and-pink stripes.
