Ripped - Cassia Leo Page 0,16

she shakes her head and turns away from me, hiding her face in the pillow.

“Wake up, sleepyhead. Today’s your sister’s birthday. You have to take a shower and get dolled up. Remember I told you there would be a special surprise today? Don’t you want to know what the surprise is?”

She mashes her face into the pillow as she shakes her head. I reach over and tickle her side to get her to turn over. She giggles as she squirms away, crawling toward Lindsay’s side of the bed. My reflexes kick in when I see her head rocketing toward the corner of the bedside table. Grabbing a fistful of the back of her pajama shirt, I stop her from the head-on collision as I sit up quickly and pull her into my lap. She’s still laughing and trying to scramble away from me, completely oblivious to the fact that she almost cracked her head open. I swear this kid is going to give me a brain aneurysm by the time I’m forty.

I manage to wrangle Mila in and she happily helps me wake up Kaia so they can both take a shower. Lindsay helps them get dressed while I shower, then I head out the door to pick up Jason and his bodyguard at their hotel in Wrightsville Beach.

“Where are you going?” Lindsay asks when she sees me grabbing my car key out of the shallow bowl on the table in the foyer.

She’s wearing a simple pair of skinny jeans with a fitted yellow tank top she bought in Oahu last year, which shows off the smooth tanned skin on her arms. She hasn’t put any makeup on yet, and her hair is still a little damp from the shower, but she looks absolutely stunning.

“We don’t have any disposable cups for the party,” I reply, my gaze naturally falling to her breasts, then her small baby bump. “I’m going to the store. You need anything?”

“Can you take Mila? Kaia and I will get ready faster if she’s with you.”

I think about how Kaia will feel knowing that Mila got to meet Jason Greene before she did. Her ten-year-old mind might not appreciate that. But Lindsay has a point. I don’t want to come back in an hour or so and find that Kaia isn’t ready for her big surprise. She’ll be very upset if she doesn’t have a chance to meet him when she’s looking her best.

I take Mila off her hands and she smiles when Mila immediately lays her head on my shoulder. “We’ll take our time so you ladies can put on your faces.”

“Day aweddy have faces, Daddy,” Mila replies.

“I know, baby, but they’re hideous. They have to put on their pretty faces today.”

Lindsay narrows her eyes at me. “Don’t teach her that.”

“She doesn’t know what hideous means,” I reply, leaning over to lay a kiss on Lindsay’s cheek. “I’ll be back in an hour or so with some cups and a little something else. Love you, baby.”

“Bring some more chips. I don’t think I got enough.”

I nod as I head out the front door. Once Mila is strapped into her car seat in Lindsay’s Mercedes SUV, I pull out of the driveway and head to the store. Mila and I take our time in the grocery store on my way to Jason’s hotel room around ten a.m. After an uneventful trip to the market, where I may have allowed Mila to get a bag of M&Ms, we arrive at the Homewood Suites in Wilmington.

“Daddy, this is not home. I don’t wanna go here. I wanna go to the party,” Mila says as I carry her into the hotel lobby.

She looks at me with her eyebrows raised, as if she’s questioning my sanity for forgetting where we live.

“Mila, this is where we live now. It’s just you and me on the lam.”

“No!” she shouts. “I wanna go home!”

I glance at the woman behind the front desk and she returns my awkward smile. “It’s getting harder and harder to kidnap kids these days,” I say with a shrug.

“Daddy, I wanna go home. This is not my home!” Mila whines.

“Sweetheart, I was only kidding. You know what a joke is. Don’t you remember? I told you how to tell a joke.”

“No jokes, Daddy.”

I shake my head as I hit the call button for the elevator and the doors open right away. “Okay, how about just one? How do you make an egg roll?” I say as I press the button