to do that, knowing him. I needed to tell him not to do that either.
Figuring that could wait a few minutes, I sighed in my chair and set Mo to sit on my thigh. I smiled at her. She grinned at me right back, sitting there calmly and happily, bringing this sense of peace—even though I shouldn’t feel peaceful at all with her dad somewhere around not telling me why he was here—that nothing and no one else was capable of doing for me. “Ma! Ma, ma, ma!”
She’d started calling me that a couple weeks ago, and it hadn’t gotten old, and I hoped it never would. Ma. Me! I leaned forward and touched the tip of my nose to hers.
And Mo… Mo decided it was the right time to headbutt the fuck out of my face, but I reared out of the way at the last second.
I laughed. “Jesus Christ, short stuff, you trying to break my nose?”
She did a little squeal that I had a feeling meant maybe. She was mine after all. What else did I expect?
I laughed again. “Oh my God, I need to eat your face. Let me get a little bite,” I whispered as she babbled back.
Brushing my fingers lightly into her side just enough to make her squeal again, I dipped my face close, blowing a bubble into her tiny almost nonexistent neck, getting a slightly louder squeal out of her. Her whole body shook with delight and something so pure, it was fucking priceless. It was something to think that I had made this. That she was mine and I was hers, and that there wasn’t a single thing I wouldn’t do for her.
“Ma!”
I lifted her chubby arms over her head and said, “Weighing in at eighteen pounds, the reigning champion of the baby weight division, Mo DeMaioooo!”
She shrieked in excitement like she always did and, oh my God, I loved it.
I clapped her fists together. “Yay!”
“Hi, Lenny,” came the soft voice out of nowhere, making my head jerk up to find the figure standing just inside the office. “Oh. Who’s this?”
But it wasn’t just anybody. And I wasn’t going to wonder right then how the fuck he’d gotten into the building again. Not when I was suddenly holding my damn breath.
I lowered Mo’s arms and had to talk myself out of pulling her in even closer to my body as I watched Jonah take another step. And then one more. His eyes—Mo’s eyes—bounced between the baby who had her back to him and… me.
Resentment, I knew it was resentment, made my stomach sour all of a sudden. Just about every ounce of joy I’d felt over Mo’s presence disappeared in that instant as the big man kept coming into my office, one slow step after another after another. His feet didn’t make a sound on the stained concrete, and I wasn’t sure why I noticed that, but I did. Across from us, that tanned face was curious… but not at all guilty looking or nervous or any of the other shit that I might have expected him to experience as he approached his daughter for the first time ever.
What the hell was this fucker up to?
The question stayed in my head when he asked again, “Is she a friend?”
I loved this kid. I loved Mo so much there weren’t words for how much. Which was funny considering how terrified and nervous I’d been before having her. I had worried my ass off that we wouldn’t bond or that I would resent her for kicking my life off track… and, fortunately, all it had taken was hearing her fucking cry, feeling and seeing her in my arms, to make me instantly fall in love. Just seeing her wrinkled pink face had confirmed there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the helpless little body that had lived inside of me for nine months.
So I didn’t want to say her name. Because this fuckface didn’t know it in the first place. Because he was an asshole who was looking like he hadn’t missed his daughter’s birth and the first eight months of her life and felt no shame over it.
But I said it anyway, because this wasn’t about me. This was about her, and the fact that this shithead was here regardless of whether I wanted him to be or not. Because he was her father and there was no changing that.
“Mo.”
His eyes went back to the small back facing him, and I watched