say that. You’re going to hurt her feelings.”
Willow propped her shoulder up on the doorjamb. “Oh, I already gathered that she thought it was gross when she hid it under the couch.”
She had done that, but if it had hurt Willow’s feelings, she hadn’t let on at all. Sans the phone call from the police, she hadn’t actually stopped smiling all day.
True to my word, I’d taken her on the date of her dreams—back to my place. We played hide-and-seek in the backyard, and I’m not too proud to admit that this included me sitting on the front steps of the house and drinking a beer while they searched the backyard for over twenty minutes. However, I am proud enough to brag that, once they did find me, I was still able to beat both of them back to base before they tagged me.
Willow claimed I cheated.
Rosalee told her I always cheated.
And while they were fuming and pissed off, I grinned like I was the luckiest man on the planet.
After that, Willow cooked an incredible “family friendly” dinner of white bean quesadillas with spinach and sun-dried tomato orzo. Clearly, she had not eaten a lot of meals with Rosalee though. The moment she said “beans and spinach,” she lost her. This led to Rosalee shoving a quesadilla into the pocket of her shorts, asking to be excused, and then hiding it under the couch. Two hours later, while I was on my hands and knees, cleaning up Willow’s water that had been spilled, I found the hidden meal.
Why was Willow’s water spilled all over the floor?
Well, because Rosalee had asked why the baby zebra came out of the mommy’s butt instead of the tummy while it was giving birth on the Animal Channel and then quickly followed that jarring question by asking if she had come out of Hadley’s butt when she was born. That was followed by me accidentally-on-purpose knocking the water over to escape that discussion.
After the quesadilla was found, I declared that it was time to call it a night.
And that had absolutely nothing to do with the way Willow had been looking at me all night.
Or the way my hands itched to touch her.
Or that, after our day of confessions, for the first time in my entire goddamn life, I didn’t feel like I was being suffocated by gravity.
Or the fact that she’d told me she wanted to end her date in my bed with me whispering her name.
Nope. Those were all just purely coincidental—ish.
“It’s okay, Rosie,” Willow said. “I didn’t like spinach when I was a kid, either. Tomorrow, I’ll make you some avocado toast for breakfast. It was my favorite.”
It was a damn good thing Willow drew a good unicorn butt because, for the look on my daughter’s face at the idea of eating avocado anything, she was about to be asked to leave.
“Daddy, no,” she whispered.
I shot her a wink and mouthed, “I’ll make pancakes,” before kissing her on the forehead. “Goodnight, baby.”
“Night, Daddy. Night, Willow.”
Willow’s eyes lit. “I love you, Rosie girl.”
She spoke through a yawn as she replied, “Love you too.”
“Hey, what about me?” I teased.
Rosalee giggled. “Love you too, Daddy.”
I grazed my fingertips across Willow’s stomach as we walked out of Rosalee’s room, leaving the door slightly ajar.
She started toward the guestroom, but I caught her arm and pulled her into my chest.
“Where are you going?”
Her cheeks pinked as she pointedly flicked her gaze to Rosalee’s door. “She’s not asleep yet. I figured I could read or something for a few minutes until she is.”
I slid my hands down to her ass. She was wearing my favorite little shorts and a tank top, but she’d ruined it with a bra. “She’s not going to be asleep for like half an hour. You lucked out last night because she fell asleep while you were reading. That right there was just step one in the bedtime parade. We have time to kill and you aren’t going to do it sitting in the guestroom, reading.”
As if on cue, Rosalee yelled out, “Daddy! Can I have some water?”
I winked at Willow and replied, “Left a bottle on your dresser, sweetheart.”
Willow and I listened, nose to nose, sharing the same oxygen as Rosalee padded across the floor, fumbled with the bottle before putting it back on her dresser, and padded back. The creak of her bed announced her return.
Less than a second later, she asked, “Can I have a snack?”
“Sorry, Charlie. You should have eaten