Forty-One
Linc
Luther was sitting at the table, drinking from his cup of coffee, while holding Maui. My gaze swung from him to Jayda, who looked surprised to see me. She must not have gotten the memo that I was back.
“Good morning,” she said. “Wasn’t expecting you. I’ll get your breakfast going. Let me finish these up real quick before Stevie comes down.”
“Oh yeah, Linc is back,” Luther drawled over his cup.
She rolled her eyes and continued what she had been doing.
“What are you making for Stevie?” I asked.
“Chocolate chip waffles.”
“I’ll just have those too,” I told her.
She paused and looked at me as if I had grown two heads. “You will?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Sounds good.”
I went over to make my coffee and could feel her eyes following me. So I was going to eat something different for breakfast. What was the big deal?
“He cracked the bones in the ex-fiancé’s arm last night and broke his nose. Then left him in a puddle of his own blood, knocked out cold on his bed,” Luther told her. Sounded like he had talked to Hale.
“Ohhh,” Jayda replied, as if that made sense.
“Whose got blood on theyuh bed?”
I turned around at the sound of Stevie’s voice to see her standing in her favorite Bluey pajamas and slippers. Her blonde curls wild from the bed and a wide-eyed look on her face. When she saw me, she beamed and came running. I set my cup down before she wrapped her arms around my legs.
“You came back!”
“Of course I came back. This is where you are, isn’t it?” I ruffled her hair.
She tilted her head back to stare up at me. “We had a scaywee thing happen.” Her expression turned serious.
Maui had been set free from Luther’s arms and came straight to Stevie, wagging his entire backside.
She glanced down at him. “Wait a minute, Maui. I have to tell my dad something.” Then, she turned back to me. “Hudson came to the pawak, and he yelled at Mommy. I cwied. And Locke made him leave Mommy alone. I told Locke to tell you I wanted you to come home. I was scaywud. Did he tell you?”
I should have killed the dentist. She’d been scared and wanted me. I hadn’t been here. Damn, the lump in my throat felt as if it might choke me.
“He did. And I will make sure Hudson never gets near you or your mommy again. I promise.”
She sighed loudly and smiled.
Maui was still demanding her attention, and she bent down to play with him.
“I made chocolate chip waffles,” Jayda said in a singsong voice.
“You did?!” Stevie asked, then squealed. “I love chocolate for bweakfast.”
I watched her as she and Maui tumbled around on the floor. This house had never been so lively. She made the dark shit go away.
“You two are a bad influence,” I heard Branwen groan.
My gaze shot up to see her standing in the doorway, looking fucking perfect. Her hair appeared as if she’d only run her fingers through it. The baggy pink-and-white striped pajama pants she wore hung on her hips, and her white tank top didn’t meet her belly button, leaving her flat, tanned stomach bare.
Her eyes met mine, and they widened. “Oh,” she said. “I, uh, I didn’t know you were back.”
“For the record, I’m not the bad influence. Luther is,” Jayda piped up, taking a waffle and putting it onto a plate.
Branwen blinked, as if she had been slightly dazed and was coming out of it. I continued to watch her, wondering how I thought I could live under this roof with her for a year and not be affected by her. I couldn’t trust her, but it wasn’t like I was going to propose. There were other options.
“Just to get it out there and over with,” Luther drawled. “The three of us shared three or so bottles of wine last night.”
“Six, Luther. We went through six bottles,” Jayda corrected him.
He shrugged. “Whatever. We drank, ate some cheesecake and cookies, threw darts.” He pointed at Branwen. “She’s good. If you ever play her, do not place any bets. I owe her a hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred, Luther. I was there. You kept going double or nothing,” Jayda said.
He rolled his eyes.
Branwen looked so nervous that she was slightly pale. I studied her. She shifted her eyes to me, her throat bobbed as she swallowed, and then the tip of her pink tongue darted out and licked her lips.
“I-I…uh…” She smiled, but it was a nervous one. “I don’t want your money.”
“You are taking his money,” Jayda said.
“No. Really. It was fun.” She reached up and touched her forehead. “ Was being the operative word. My head isn’t feeling great this morning.”
Jayda chuckled. “I’ll fix that. Sit down and let me give you my hangover cure.”
Stevie stood up from tussling with Maui. “Mommy! My dad came home.”
Branwen nodded. “I see.” She went to sit down at the bar, still looking uneasy.
“She could also sing every word of every Fleetwood Mac song I could think of,” Luther said.
Her eyes darted to me, as if she feared my reaction to that. I’d made her wary of me. My plan to use her for sex and otherwise treat her as unimportant had created this. It wasn’t what was best for Stevie. Branwen had done something that I couldn’t forgive her for, but I could move past it. Friends with benefits would be a better fit than whatever I’d worked up in my head. That plan had too many flaws. The worst one was that hurting Branwen would hurt Stevie. That hadn’t occurred to me when I set out to get my revenge. But the more I was with them, the more I realized that being in my daughter’s life meant being in her mother’s life.
“I can take the credit for that,” I told him, walking over to pull out the stool beside her and sit down.
Jayda placed a glass of water with some powder she’d mixed in it and two pills in front of Branwen.
“Really?” Jayda asked, sounding surprised.
I nodded. “Yep. I was a big Fleetwood Mac fan in the ’90s, and since Branwen worshipped me, she liked whatever I liked. Except beer. She tried mine once and spit it all over me.”
Branwen’s gaze snapped up to me. “I did not worship you, and you should have never let me taste that beer. I was ten years old.”
“Yeah, you did,” Luther chimed in, and I smirked.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Stay out of this. I don’t even remember you. You couldn’t have been around much.”
I threw my head back and laughed.
“And I thought we were friends,” he said.
She shrugged, and her eyes seemed to sparkle with the morning sunshine filtering in through the windows as she looked at me.
Yeah, we could do this. Be friends. I could let it go. Learn to move on from it. I had Stevie now. I wouldn’t miss any more of her life.
“I let you taste the beer because you were very hard to tell no.”
“I was ten.”
“You were adorable, all puppy-dog-eyed and begging for one taste. I figured you’d either like it and become a teenage alcoholic, or hate it and you wouldn’t touch it again. I was so damn relieved when it spewed out of your mouth.”
I watched her face soften, and a smile spread across it as the tension faded. It was that easy with her. If only I had this gift with all females.
Jayda was silently watching us when I reached to pick up my cup. She smirked at me, getting the wrong idea.
“Waffles are ready, Stevie,” Jayda called out while looking at me.
Stevie left Maui behind and jumped up onto the stool to my left. “You know what we did?” she asked me.
“What?”
“We went to the museum, and the zoo, and the othah museum with the scuba divahs.” She listed them off as she held up a finger for each one.
“Sounds like you were busy.”
She nodded her head at me, then reached for her fork and stabbed a piece of waffle with it. “We was vewy busy,” she agreed, then shoved the waffle into her mouth. Her cheeks looked like a chipmunk as she caught me watching her and grinned at me.
Breakfast had never been something I looked forward to or thought much about. Rarely did Luther and I eat at the same time. But with these two here, the kitchen was an entirely different experience. The room even seemed brighter. Laughter, puppy growls, dimpled smiles, and ringlets had managed to turn it into one of my favorite parts of the day.