Page 188 of The Best Shot

Grant exhaled. “You’re a difficult man to make rich.”

“I’m an easy man to make rich. I’m a difficult man to make bored.”

Ava took the magazine off him. “That should’ve been the pull quote.”

A little after two, the screen door creaked and CeeCee came in with a diaper bag over one shoulder and Theo on the other. I was across the room before it shut.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said, already reaching.

She narrowed her eyes. “You are not greeting me. You are greeting my child.”

“That is unfair and accurate.”

She handed him over anyway, because she is a generous woman and because I had already made grabby hands like a fool.

He was heavier than last time. Rounder in the cheeks. His fist opened against my collarbone and closed on nothing with great determination.

“Hello, perfect man,” I whispered.

“Token hello,” CeeCee said. “Noted.”

She looked good.

Tired, because babies are tiny dictators with no respect for a circadian rhythm, but good. Her hair was pulled back, her face bare, her mouth softer than it had been the night she showed up at my apartment with a packed bag and one hand on her stomach.

She had settled into herself.

We ended up in the hallway, away from the noise.

“How is he?” I asked, touching Theo’s socked foot.

“Perfect when he wants to be. Expensive always.”

“Shaun?”

Her smile changed shape. Smaller. More complicated.

“He’s good with him.”

I lifted a brow.

“He really is,” she said. “Shows up. Knows his schedule. Knows which cry is which. Brings diapers without being asked. Still gets on my last nerve, though.”

“Obviously.”

“And suddenly added persistence to his personality traits.”

I snorted.

Theo startled, and I bounced him.

“I tell him the truth. I’m proud of the father he’s becoming.” She shrugged one shoulder. “That doesn’t mean I forgot the man he was to me.”

“That’s good.”

“Your mama came by yesterday.”