pulled out a blue Dum-Dum. Will released her hand and nudged her. She brought the free hand to her chin and tapped it in Everly’s direction.
“You’re welcome,” Everly said, having known Katie long enough to interpret the sign for thank you. She gave Will another smile. “Drive safe.”
“Thanks.”
He took Katie’s hand and headed out the door, not bothering to speak again to the stranger. He frowned when he saw Katie glance over her shoulder before exiting the room. Had she been looking at the stranger? Why would she do that?
He waited until they got out to the driveway and stopped beside his pickup truck before asking, “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She nodded again.
He battled with himself, unsure how much to press the matter. In the fourteen months since his daughter ended up on his doorstep, he’d become what his dad liked to call “obsessively overprotective” of her.
How was he supposed to be anything but? Katie was so young and sensitive. She didn’t usually respond well to females either, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. Despite over a year of therapy, she had yet to utter a single sound. Her inability to communicate effectively made it a challenge to learn everything she remembered about the first four years of her life. It also made him even more protective of her than he might have been otherwise.
Now it prompted him to ask, “That woman didn’t touch you anywhere…weird, right?”
She tilted her head and gave him a puzzled look.
“Never mind,” he mumbled, digging for his keys and pretending to ignore the heat rushing along the back of his neck.
He absolutely was not explaining that question.
“Alley-oop,” he said.
She lifted her arms so he could grab her and lift her into the backseat of his Dodge Ram. The truck was too tall for her to climb into without assistance yet. She settled into her booster seat and started buckling herself in as he closed her door.
His gaze shifted to the sporty white coupe parked beside him. He imagined it must belong to Everly’s next client since it hadn’t been there when he pulled in. It rather surprised him. Based on how snobbish she seemed, he’d have guessed she drove some kind of luxury sedan. A decal of two ballet slippers with winding ribbons adhered to the back window told him the stranger was probably a dancer.
At least that explained things some, he thought with lingering irritation as he got into his truck. The positioning of Katie he’d seen when he walked into the waiting room must have been ballet-related.
A tap on his shoulder had him glancing at Katie as he secured his seatbelt. She lifted her Dum-Dum in question.
“Oh, no,” he said with a shake of his head. “I think we learned our lesson from the Laffy Taffy incident. My back seat will never be the same.”
Her chin drooped and her lower lip emerged. She looked so damn dejected…and freaking adorable.
His dad also liked to tell Will that he was terrible about setting limits with Katie.
He was right.
“Fine. I’ll make you a deal. You don’t mention I said the ‘h’ word when you see Grandpa and I’ll let you eat the sucker.”
Her expression brightened. She made a fist and held it up. He gave her a backwards fist bump and started the truck.
“Just promise that the sucker will stay in your mouth and not end up anywhere inside the truck. Or your hair,” he thought to add.
He saw her nod as he turned to maneuver the truck into a three-point turn. Soon they were off on their fifteen-minute drive home.
He flipped on the stereo once they exited the gate. The playlist they’d been listening to on the drive to the appointment picked up where it left off. The Void’s single, “Welcome to Wonderland” filled the silence. As much as Will liked the song, he fought a groan. Katie had become a huge fan of The Void and its lead singer, Archer. Now his stereo had been hijacked and he’d heard the song a minimum of seventy-two thousand times.
Still, when he saw Katie bopping around in her seat waving her Dum-Dum like a conductor’s baton, he grinned.
He also knew his truck’s seats were doomed.
Like Everly and her All-Star pitcher husband Cole Parker, Will had chosen to live relatively close to the ballpark to make it an easier commute on practice and game days. His and Katie’s home in Atlanta’s Piedmont Heights was less than thirty minutes from the field depending on the city’s usually heavy traffic.