old today, and he’s brilliant, naturally. He said Hello in Mandarin this morning when I woke him up. That baby course in Italian clearly is a piece of shit, since it’s teaching Mington to speak Mandarin, but at least he’s learning to be quatralingualistic before he can crawl.”
“Quatralingualistic?”
“She tried, poor thing. Her father—my uncle—abandoned her mother when she was two, and her mom never got over it, which meant the Graminator was basically the closest thing she had to a solid maternal role model. Nicely done with her yesterday, by the way. Tiana showed me the video last night. You’re hot when you’re all bossy and protective. And we could get married. That’d prove to the social workers that we’re good for the baby.”
I switch my attention from the video to her face.
She blinks innocently.
“If I’m not going to be an asshole, you need to not be an asshole.”
“What? I’ve read a ton of romance novels on marriages of convenience, and it’s not a bad idea.”
She’s honestly incapable of being serious for three fucking seconds. And I’m not nearly as annoyed by it as I should be. I stop when I realize I’m subconsciously leaning toward her, nearly smiling. “Do you flirt with everything that moves?”
“Basically. I hit on my friends all the time, but they all have boyfriends or fiancés now, so I have to find another object to practice on. And you, clearly, need to feel like you’re attractive so you can find a higher caliber of crushes.”
She gives me that grin again, shrugging her shoulders in a little oopsie move. “Sorry. I’m done. I swear. I just—you really could do better. Look at you. You deserve to have a woman who’ll worship you the way Derek, Beck, and Jude worship Emily, Luna, and Cam, because I don’t tolerate my friends being in relationships with people who don’t deserve them.”
“Just when I think we’re making progress, you go and say something that makes me want to leave.”
“West.” She loops her arms around my neck, much like she leaped on me for that kiss that I can’t erase off my lips, and she lowers her voice conspiratorially. “Friends watch out for friends. You’d tell me if I was dating someone horrifically wrong for me, wouldn’t you?”
I study her blue eyes, then slowly nod. “Probably owe you that much.”
She quirks another grin, and I realize she has tiny laugh lines at the corners of her eyes.
She really does laugh all the time. Because she’s happy?
Or because she’s faking it?
But her attention drops to my wet T-shirt, and an uncharacteristic seriousness touches her gaze. “You know what occurred to me yesterday, while I was at the emergency room?”
“That money can’t buy your way out of allergies?”
She shakes her head. “You don’t have Carter genes. Maybe Julienne didn’t just draw names out of a hat. Maybe she looked at you, and how you told her off when she had her hissy fit about that wall and the fountain, and she realized she wanted her son to be raised by someone with the cojones to stand up to people. Like The Dame.”
“I didn’t tell her off.”
“But you didn’t tear the wall out either, did you?”
“She couldn’t fire me if she wanted the nursery to get done. No one else would take the job.”
Daisy tips her head back and laughs again, her arms still looped around my neck, and my cock twitches in interest.
Again.
Not. Good.
Let go and get down with your bad self, my nuts chide. You’re a grown-up. She’s a grown-up. Do her and get her out of your system.
I honestly don’t know where I went wrong with my balls.
She looks back at me, still smiling, and swear to fuck, she’s even prettier now than she is when she’s wearing makeup. “Every single person in my family on my mother’s side either does exactly what my grandmother tells them to do, or they do the exact opposite and think they’re sticking it to her by disobeying, but not a single one of them is actually doing what they want to do. They’re all being controlled by her to some degree.”
“And you?”
She traces a finger down my neck. “I walk the line between doing what she wants and pissing her off. But only because I know her secret. She’s actually the last living immortal Highlander, so even if I literally buried her, she’d rise again. Probably stronger this time. With a new shiny sword for—gah. Sorry. Wasn’t supposed to let that part of the