the sleeping baby in it.
“Draw, please,” Molly adds, batting her eyelashes at me.
“Now that you’re in my custody, sure. I’ll do it.”
Molly laughs again. “Do it in blue. Please.”
“I will draw a blue giraffe. But would you let me change first?”
She sighs dramatically. “Okay. I’m not allowed to color in my school clothes either.”
I smile broadly at her we’re all in this together comment. “Exactly.”
Derek stares at my work attire. “You don’t need to change. You can draw in that, right?”
I toss him a flirty look, remembering his comments from the other night. This man clearly has a thing for a woman in uniform.
All the more reason to change. Best to avoid temptation.
“Be right back.” I head inside the house and turn the corner to my bedroom. I strip off my uniform and tug on exercise pants, a sports bra, and a tank top.
Then I go to the kitchen, pour a glass of water, and take a deep breath.
I can handle sidewalk chalk–drawing with a hottie pushing a baby and tending to his precocious four-year-old niece. After all, I don’t even want to have kids.
Yet.
Maybe someday. But I definitely don’t have baby fever, so there’s no reason the sight of him with two absolute cuties should make my heart speed up or my skin sizzle.
I return to the front lawn, where the man looks me over again from stem to stern. “Nice yoga pants, but I still miss the uniform.”
Spotting Molly twenty feet away, I whisper, “That’s because you have some sort of uniform fetish.”
He wiggles his eyebrows. “A big one.”
“Why’s that? You want to be cuffed? Told what to do?”
He scoffs and stalks closer, shaking his head. “Not at all, kitten.”
The way he says kitten—so raspy, so commanding—sends a shiver over my flesh. “Not at all?”
“What I want is the complete opposite.”
Holy hell, he can tell me what to do all night long. Tie me up, pin me down, cuff me.
Except I can’t go there. We can’t go there.
Fortunately, Molly skips to her Lou right on over to us, thrusting a bucket of sidewalk chalk at me. “You do a giraffe, and I’ll do a hippo.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
And it sounds like what the doctor ordered to stop the quick spread of a lust relapse.
Molly squats on the stretch of sidewalk in front of my house.
“Giraffe time,” I declare as I bend down to the concrete, working on the shape of the long neck as Molly draws a big bulbous blob for a hippo head. “That’s not too bad.”
She smiles. “I want to be a vet.”
“For safari animals?”
“Yes.”
“That’s awesome,” I say as I outline the tall creature’s face. “So you’d be a big-game vet.”
“Or I’ll be a cowgirl.”
“That could be fun too.” I draw giraffe ears next, as Molly works on the hippo’s belly.
“Or a ballerina, or a rock star.”
“What if you’re all four?” Derek chimes in as he joins us on the sidewalk. In the stroller, the baby’s eyes flutter, and she stretches her little legs and arms, looking too adorable for words.
“Yes! I can be all four.”
“You can be anything you set your mind to,” I add as I finish the giraffe’s tail.
“Whoa!” The praise comes from Derek as he surveys my handiwork. “You sure can draw.”
“Thank you. It’s just something I do for fun.”
“That’s a helluva talent for fun.”
“Uncle Derek, you said a bad word,” Molly calls out.
“Want me to arrest him?” I offer as I stand, dusting one hand against the other.
Derek offers me his wrists, his eyes twinkling. “Yes, please lock me up.”
And I walked right into that one.
Devon’s eyes flicker open, and I brace myself for a scream, but Derek swivels around, scoops her up, and peppers kisses on her cheeks.
And, I’m a ghost pepper. I’m the hottest jalapeño in history. Wait, nope. I’m the surface of Mercury because of the way Devon coos and tugs on his beard.
That’s it. I’m a goner.
“She sure likes you,” I say as casually as I can while he nuzzles the cutie-pie.
“The feeling is quite mutual.”
“How old? Six months?”
“She’s six months and two days,” Molly interjects as she scoots down the sidewalk to work on the hippo’s tail. “Come join me.”
I make my way to Molly. “You do his face,” she tells me.
I swivel around and fill in the hippo’s eyes. “And how old are you?”
“I’m four years, eleven months, and sixteen days.”
“Wow. You sure are a very specific counter.”
Derek bounces Devon on his hip. “Molly also loves to talk. Shh. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Uncle Derek!” Molly chides.
I