running out soon after, and I dropped to my haunches to give her a proper hug. She launched herself into my arms, holding me tight while she practically screamed into my ear. “That was so much fun! I’m going to try out for every play. I made a new friend too. She wants to have a sleepover at her house on Friday night. Please can I go? Please?”
She managed to say it all without taking a single breath, but I suddenly didn’t seem to be able to fill my lungs at all. “You want to go to a sleepover?”
“Yes.” There was so much hope in her eyes that I had no idea how to say no. Seven seemed a bit young for a sleepover, but it wasn’t like she’d never slept over before. She had sleepovers with my parents all the time, but they were her grandparents. That was different. Right?
My mind spun while I tried to figure it out, and Ruth’s words from the other night echoed in my brain. Just when you think you have one phase figured out, they enter the next one.
God, those words were turning out to be prophetic.
Katie was still looking at me with those blue eyes so sparkly and happy. I didn’t know what to do, but I remembered my mother’s response every time we’d asked her, so I went with that.
“I’m going to need to meet your friend’s parents first,” I said.
She bounced on her feet before running over to a dark-haired little girl with her back to us who was standing with a whole group of people. Katie whispered in her ear, and I saw the girl nod before darting into the huddle formed by all the parents she was standing with.
Katie waited for her friend, who emerged holding the hand of none other than Jacob fucking Parker. Spite filled me as he walked over, all confident and suave, with a smile on his face like he owned the whole darn world.
He threw his head back when he recognized me, laughing as if I’d just told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Poser.
“You’re Katie’s mother?” he asked when he’d finally gotten over how completely hilarious he seemed to find this situation.
I didn’t correct him about being Katie’s aunt. It was none of his business what my biological relationship to her was, and I was her mom now. “You know what? This was a mistake.”
I wanted to blow him off so badly, but as I turned to tell Katie she couldn’t have a sleepover with her friend, I saw her clutching Allie’s hand. Both girls looked so hopeful and so sweet and innocent in this mess that I couldn’t be the wicked witch who dashed their hopes.
“You’re okay with this?” I asked him. “Having the girls sleep over at your place on Saturday?”
“Yeah. Sure.” He shrugged, still smiling and looking at me in that way of his. His expression changed as he studied mine, though. It became more serious, and even some of the smooth assholiness he exuded disappeared. “Katie will be safe with us. I promise. I’ll give you my number, the landline number, and the numbers for the front desk and building manager.”
“Please?” the girls asked in unison from my side. They dragged the word out, and I caved.
If Jacob was okay with a sleepover, I was too. “Fine, but I’ll be waiting on all those numbers.”
He nodded. “Of course. I’m Jacob by the way.”
“Laurie.” I pinned him with a glare, taking a step forward so I would be able to speak to him without the girls hearing. “If that little girl comes home with so much as a scratch, I don’t care how much of a big-shot lawyer you are. I will destroy you.”
He smirked, cocking a brow at me again. “And how would you do that?”
I gave him the cruelest smile I could muster. “I’ll tell every man, woman, and other person in this city that you have the tiniest cock I’ve ever seen, but that you can’t even get it up. I’ll write a book series all about you and it won’t be flattering. Then I’ll publish it in the woman’s fiction category on every website out there and dedicate every book to you. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking a modern-day retelling of the little engine that couldn’t might work.”
His smirk had started slipping when I’d said the word “cock” and he was stone-faced by the time I was done. I could see