knees were practically at his chin, and as if the position wasn’t awkward enough, he worried his adult male ass was too much for the Lilliputian seating. At any moment, he expected to end up sprawled on the floor either because his weight broke the chair or he toppled over.
“Uncle Arnie?”
A joyful tap dance broke out in the area around his heart. He felt a little foolish for falling so hard and fast for a kid, but such was his current reality.
“What’s on your mind, Nic?”
With the seriousness of a five-star restaurant’s waitstaff, she used a plastic fork to pick up a triangle wedge of strawberry shortcake and placed it on the tiny plate in front of him.
“Will you talk to King about letting us get a baby?”
If the shortcake he was pretending to eat had been real, he was dead fucking sure her direct question might have caused him to choke to death.
Bursting with grown-up eloquence, he mumbled, “Uh,” and marveled at how neatly the preschool kid cornered him.
“Jack is being a, a, boy,” she griped. “He says we’re not allowed to ask for a baby, but I think he’s just dumb. Boys don’t get it.”
Feeling like a boy who doesn’t get it, he set his fork down and daintily dabbed at his mouth with a frilly pink napkin.
“Well, honey, I think most boys are pretty dumb about babies.”
Nic snarled. “You’re not dumb, are you, Uncle Arnie? You want tons of babies.” She nodded with childlike intensity while throwing down this challenge.
More stunning eloquence from him. “Uh.”
It didn’t matter. Princess Nicole was on a roll.
“Me and Jackie get a new daddy. King said so. First, Mommy is a bride, and then we move into a big house and start our family. That means a baby, right?”
“Uh.”
Nic tipped the teapot again for another pour, and this time, she spooned half a dozen pretend mounds of sugar into the teacup. She stirred and then blew on it before smiling and urging him with a gesture to drink up.
Nicole Foster was going to leave a trail of admirers and broken hearts. Don’t ask him how he knew; he just did.
“I’ve never had a daddy,” she informed him without any malice in her voice.
Arnie contemplated killing the worthless piece of shit that biologically participated in the child’s existence. It infuriated him that the beautiful, engaging child was so blasé about a man who didn’t care enough to even call himself her father.
If he were lucky enough to have a child, he’d be damn sure to make his kid a priority.
Whoa. Slow down, slugger.
What the hell with these freaky thoughts about fatherhood? They were in his head a lot.
A woman’s voice, soft and low, whispered in his mind. “Arnie, you must find Summer.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Yeah, you’re damn straight he had to find Summer, but with all the wedding plans and NIGHTWIND’s current slate of assignments, he was stymied for now.
But he’d been formulating a plan. As soon as Kinglsey Maddison married Dawn Foster and things settled down, he was going to make a move. He still didn’t know exactly what this move would look like, but he planned to be ready when he saw an opening.
Since he couldn’t find current information on Summer, and poking around in her brother’s DoD records would trigger the feds, he switched to checking out the only other person in her life he knew by name. Sergeant Major Cyrus Westmoreland. The guy didn’t have a social media footprint, but Arnie still managed to find out plenty.
A highly decorated vet, Westmoreland moved through the managing ranks of a veteran’s organization and landed in his current position of managing director at the Santa Barbara location two years ago.
The way the old soldier and Summer interacted suggested they were more than casual acquaintances. His knowing glare when he looked at Arnie had been uncomfortable as hell. And when he thought about it, he had a Dottie, so it seemed reasonable for Summer to have a Cyrus.
“Lorelai thinks I’m going to be a dancer when I grow up. She knows dance stuff. Do boys like to dance? I bet you dance, don’t you, Uncle Arnie? And King too. He dances. I saw him one night. He was singing about Billie Jean and making Mommy laugh.”
Arnie blinked, did a double take on the little girl’s face, and smiled. What did she just say? King was dancing to Billie Jean? Oh, man. He’d pay good money to watch the tattooed badass channeling some