Halftime Husband -Erin McCarthy Page 0,37

but I don’t have a heart of stone either. This is cute, damn it, and I’m doing it.”

“Sure,” he said, sounding like he had a thousand things he wanted to say and was choking on all of them.

“You’re a dream crusher, not a dream catcher,” I told him.

He shrugged.

I hung the dream catcher in front of the window that I’d had covered up for three years. Despite it being noon in August, there was no sunlight penetrating the glass. I had no intention of telling Elijah what I had written. I’d put my initials and the date too.

And something else that now as I ran my finger over the note and watched it spiral, I prayed was true.

I’ll be back.

It sounded a little stalkerish now that I saw it but I meant that I would have my own apartment again someday. That I would find a way to get back to a place in my life that was comfortable. Where I knew what direction I was going in. Where I wasn’t the only one out of my whole friend group who was floundering.

I took the champagne bottle to my mouth and took a long swallow. Then I left it on the window ledge under the dream catcher.

“Let’s go.”

My feelings about Dakota moving in were mixed. I was stupid excited, like a kid at Christmas. I was also just about one hundred percent certain this was stupid as fuck.

Poppy was nearly bouncing off the ceiling. I had never seen her this interested in a new nanny before. Willow was trying to hang back and look cool but I suspected she was fantasizing that Dakota could teach her to dance and raise her social status.

The doorbell rang and I went to answer it. The doorman had already told me the movers had arrived. Dakota was standing there with her friend Elijah, and behind them the movers already had a couple of boxes in their arms.

“Hey,” I said, pulling the door open.

The skinny movers employee, who looked like he couldn’t lift a shoebox, let alone the box in his arms, gave a whistle as he followed them inside my apartment. “Moving on up, huh?” he asked Dakota with a grin.

“I’m the nanny,” Dakota said.

Her voice sounded a little strained, but I was distracted by Poppy attaching herself to my leg.

“Um, Father?” she asked, wrapping her arms around my waist. She looked up at me with puppy eyes.

“Yes?” Whenever she called me Father, I was about to get asked something outrageous.

“Can I change rooms? I’ll take Mary’s old room and Dakota can have mine. Please? Pretty please?”

That was an unexpected request, but I suspected why. “Because it’s bigger?”

She nodded and gave me a charming smile.

“I don’t think that’s fair to Dakota.”

“I don’t care,” Dakota said. “I’m used to a small bedroom.”

She was. I’d seen her old bedroom. I had given her multiple orgasms in that old bedroom, which was just four walls and a bed.

The room in question was probably bigger than Dakota’s old apartment bedroom, but still, it felt insulting to her. “I don’t know.” I ran my hand over Poppy’s hair. She needed to brush it. My fingers got snarled in tangles. I looked over at Dakota. “It’s meant to be a nursery. It’s attached to my room and shares the bathroom.”

The enormity of what I was saying occurred to me as the words came out of my mouth. Adjoining rooms. That each locked. We would have complete access to each other without the girls ever questioning it. Hell, it was Poppy’s idea.

What could possibly be better than that?

Dakota clearly caught the significance too because her eyes widened and she dug her teeth into her bottom lip. “Oh, I see. I don’t know…”

Poppy abandoned me and went to Dakota. “Please? I’ll help you unpack. Dad’s bathroom is better than the hallway one, anyway. It has a big tub.”

I pictured Dakota naked in a tub full of bubbles. I was instantly turned on.

Dakota accepted Poppy’s bribe hug. She hugged her back. “It’s that important to you?”

“It’s so important,” Poppy said, her tone imploring. “It’s life.”

“Well, in that case, I suppose I don’t care if it’s okay with your dad.”

Okay? It was life, to steal Poppy’s melodramatic terminology.

Elijah’s expression was comical but I didn’t think either of my daughters was looking at him.

I had to finish out this little act. “I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s appropriate. You usually only share a bathroom with someone if they’re family or you’re dating.”

Poppy burst out