I looked down. “I just need to know if he’s worth it.”
Lee placed his hand on my shoulder. “Carson is more than worth it. If I were a little, I would have tried locking him down when I first met him. You could do so much worse.”
“I already have,” I said wearily.
“You won’t regret it, Mills. Even if it doesn’t work out between the two of you, you’d know what a real Daddy is like and what you deserve.”
I tried smiling, but my trembling lips made it come out crooked. “Thank you, Leland.”
“You’re welcome, Miller. So, how can I help?” he asked with a bright smile.
I looked at him like a deer caught in the headlights. “What? No. Excuse me?”
Chapter Twelve
Carson
They were up to something. Correction, Lee was up to something, and he was dragging my boy along for the ride.
I had no idea if they were attempting to be subtle, but they were failing spectacularly. Lee was making strange faces toward Miller who was somehow able to translate them into something meaningful and was trying to make faces back. While keeping an eye on them, I decided Lee and I would most definitely be having a talk at some point about leading my boy into mischief.
The game was just wrapping up for the night, and I pretended to ignore the two of them as Lee pulled Miller closer for a private conversation while the rest of the table packed it up. Not that it was very private. The two of them wouldn’t have known the definition of whisper if it had slapped them in the face.
“Are you going to do it?” Lee whispered to Miller.
“I don’t know,” Miller whispered back. “I don’t think this is a very good idea. Why can’t I just ask—”
“It’s a great idea,” Lee interrupted. “Because it’s mine, and it’s foolproof.”
“So is asking.”
Lee rolled his eyes and pulled back. “Just follow my lead.”
“But Lee—”
“Oh! Would you look at that!” Lee made a big show of holding out his phone as he stood up from the table.
Red skidded to a halt on his way out the door, smelling drama. “What? What is it?”
Chelsey and Niles paused as they gathered their things to stare at Lee as well.
“Law’s downstairs and says he has something to tell me in person. It must be very, very important.”
Miller groaned at Lee’s terrible acting and placed his head down on the table in secondhand embarrassment.
“Oh,” Red replied, obviously disappointed it wasn’t something juicier. “Okay. Bye, everybody. See y’all next week.”
Chelsey and Niles said their goodbyes as well and followed Red out the door while still eyeing Lee in confusion.
“Miller, Carson, you guys don’t mind, do you?” he asked, already backing away toward the door.
Miller didn’t even look up as he waved a hand in Lee’s general direction.
“Great!” He didn’t give me a chance to answer as he bolted for the exit. “I’ll be back in a—”
And then we were alone.
“Would you care to explain what that was all about?”
Miller whined at my question and rocked his head against the table. “No.”
“But you’re going to anyway, aren’t you, little darling.”
He took a second and then nodded.
“Well,” I asked after giving him a minute to begin.
With a huff, Miller sat up. “I just needed a little reassurance about you from someone that wasn’t you, so I asked Lee about… you. He started getting excited and I couldn’t stop him and then he came up with this whole plan to get us alone so we could—” He stopped, dropping his head back onto the table as his cheeks turned a vibrant shade of pink.
“A plan so we could what?”
His voice was tiny as he whispered, “Play.”
I leaned back into my chair and studied him. I was all for it, but I was only half of the equation. Miller had to want it too. I wouldn’t play with him just because Lee had pushed him into it. “Do you want to play?”
He thought about it and then nodded.
Quickly rearranging my plans for the night, I said goodbye to the drink I’d planned at the club. It was already seven, but I calculated we could squeeze in dinner and a movie before bedtime.
Unexpectedly, I began to feel nervous. I’d been doing this for so long that the idea was a little farfetched, but there I was—nervous. I would be meeting Miller as a little for the first time. I’d seen tiny glimpses of his little self the more time we’d