Entangled (The Accidental Billionaires #2) - J. S. Scott Page 0,26

the little one if she needs anything.”

I realized that Aiden must have texted his estate manager to hang out at the house to babysit.

“Thank you,” I said sincerely as I took my hand back.

I wasn’t worried. I knew Aiden wouldn’t leave Maya’s well-being to anybody he didn’t completely trust.

I was so used to my neighbor dropping over to watch out for Maya while I closed the café that I hadn’t even thought about the fact that if Aiden was going along, I’d need someone to be at the house with my daughter.

Plus, I was pretty certain that his kiss had temporarily scrambled my brain.

“Happy to help,” Hastings answered with a warm smile that put me even more at ease.

We were out of the house in moments, but I didn’t want to admit that it felt nice to have somebody come with me so that closing the café wasn’t quite so lonely.

CHAPTER 9

AIDEN

I was a truck kind of guy. Always had been. When you grow up fishing, it helps to haul equipment with a truck.

As we drove toward downtown, I had to wonder, now that I was a family man, if my big-ass truck was really the best vehicle for a guy with a kid.

Sure, I’d bought a nice, shiny, brand-new truck with a king cab when I’d come into a lot of money, but I wasn’t at all sure about the safety statistics on carrying an eight-year-old in it.

But I knew I was going to look it up when I got back home from taking Skye to close up the café.

Jesus! How in the hell had Skye ever gotten through those first eight years? I’d been a father for all of one day, and I was a wreck about what was and wasn’t safe for Maya.

“Who’s named as her father on her birth certificate?” I asked as I got on the freeway.

“You are,” she said into the darkness of the truck’s interior. “If anything ever happened to me, I wanted to make sure that she’d go to you. I guess, even back then, I knew you’d take care of her if she had no other family.”

I balked a little—or maybe a lot—at the thought of anything happening to Skye.

Nothing will ever happen to her or Maya. I’m here to make sure it doesn’t.

I was having a harder and harder time being pissed off at her. After having spent some time with my daughter, I knew that Skye was a fantastic mother. She’d brought Maya up right, and the love she had for our daughter was right there for anybody to see.

Yeah, I fucking wished she’d come back or called, after leaving that letter, and made damn sure that I knew I had a child. But she’d been little more than a kid. Barely eighteen. And considering her background and lack of help, she must have been terrified to find herself pregnant with no real way to provide for either herself or our baby.

She could have hit me up for child support the moment she found out I’d inherited a massive fortune.

She’d known I was rich, but had never asked for a damn thing.

And God knew she could have used some help after she’d gotten back to Citrus Beach. She’d taken care of Maya the only way she knew how . . . by working herself half to death.

“Why didn’t you ever hit me up for child support?”

Her soft sigh drifted through the cab of the truck. “Why would I ask you to support Maya when I thought you didn’t give a damn whether she existed or not?”

“Most women would,” I pointed out.

“I’m not most women. Maya and I have survived alone since she was born. We managed.”

“I know it was all a misunderstanding,” I said. “But I feel guilty as shit because I wasn’t there.”

“Don’t,” she said immediately. “I didn’t know I was marrying into an infamous crime family back when I wanted you to come for me. But looking back, it probably wouldn’t have been safe for you if you had come. Marco was ruthless about getting what he wanted. And he wanted me.”

I wanted to tell her that I wouldn’t have given a shit who I had to face down to get to her and our child, but I let the comment slide. “Did he treat you good? You said he ignored Maya, but what about you?”

“He wasn’t a nice man,” she said carefully. “He was having some kind of midlife crisis, I think. He thought a trophy