Page 66 of Daddy’s Hunted Bride

“Sure thing. Come on, Poppy, let’s go get some snacks.”

Eyes narrowing slightly, Poppy stabs a finger in the sheriff’s direction. “Be nice.”

The sheriff only stares back, one dark brow slowly raising to her hairline. “I’m always nice.”

Poppy snorts and rolls her eyes. “And pigs fly.”

“Persephone…”

“All right, all right, I’m going.”

Daddy climbs off the bed, giving me one last lingering kiss to my temple. “I love you, little fox,” he whispers in my ear. “Whatever happens, I will never stop loving you.”

With that cryptic message, he turns to leave, with Poppy trailing behind, peppering him with questions. Once they’re out of eyesight, I look up at the sheriff.

“What do you need to know?”

Dane

Fucking Sheriff Donnelly. She’s been a thorn in our side from the day we all settled in Forbidden Pines. For the most part, we’re all able to ignore her, though for some reason she gets under Gray’s skin more than the rest of us.

“Some reason” being the fact that Gray is wildly, madly, hopelessly in love with Reese Donnelly, though if any of us said that to her face she’d send us to the ER herself.

Doesn’t make it any less true.

Right now, though, I find myself sympathizing more with my sister than I have in the past. She’s always been hypervigilant when it comes to us being found out, especially by the tenacious sheriff, and with every step away from the makeshift room my babygirl has been set up in, that same worry grows heavier and heavier in my own stomach.

Alongside that worry is the fear that I’ll never see my babygirl again. I don’t care about going to prison, but I do care about losing my little fox. Never hearing her laugh or watching the way her chin jerks up when she’s settling in to be stubborn about something. The thought of living the rest of my life without her feels like all the oxygen has been sucked right out of the room.

“Uh, Dane?”

Jerking slightly, I look down at Poppy, who’s staring up at me with a mixture of concern and amusement on her freckled face. “What?”

My tone is sharper than I intend for it to be, and Poppy’s eyes widen in response, making me feel a bit like I’ve kicked a puppy. But she doesn’t cry or even pout, she simply raises a hand and points at something behind me. “We found the vending machines.”

Twisting around, I bark out a laugh at the sight of the three machines behind us. “So we did. All right, what do you think we should get?”

An almost maniacal glimmer lights Poppy’s eyes, leaving with the suspicious feeling that I’ve just let a Little girl loose in a candy store.

A suspicion that proves to be right. Poppy insists on getting every single type of chocolate available “so Vanessa can have choices”, along with multiple bags of chips and a bottle of soda for each of us.

Laden with our selections, we make our way back to Nessie’s “room”. The sound of laughter greets us before we even pull the curtain back. And when we do pull the curtain aside, I can only stare at the scene that greets me.

Sheriff Donnelly is seated in a chair she has procured from somewhere, her feet up on Nessie’s bed. Both of them are grinning widely, and when Nessie turns to look at me, there’s a hint of mischief in her gaze that has my blood pressure rising.

From her seat in her chair, Reese raises both brows. “Did you buy the entire vending machine?”

“All three of them,” I confirm, dumping our booty onto the bed.

“Chocolate!” Nessie squeals, diving forward into the junk food pile.

“You can pick one candy for right now, little girl.”

“Aw, man.” Pouting prettily, she flutters her eyelashes at me. “But I almost died! You can’t deny a girl chocolate when she’s just escaped the clutches of Death herself!”

“She’s got a point, Dane,” Reese says with a smugness that has me turning to glare at her. “Let the baby have some chocolate.”

“I never said she couldn’t—oh, for fuck’s sake. Fine. Three pieces of candy and then that’s it until we get home, Vanessa Dawn.”