Chapter Fifty
Ashley
I cocked my head with my brows furrowed, convinced I’d heard him wrong.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re not taking my daughter on a date.”
I was so stunned at his declaration, I didn’t even know how to respond. Finally, I let the flash of anger take over, although I was mindful I still had my baby strapped to my front when I harshly, yet softly, replied, “Well, I’m taking my daughter on a date, and you don’t get a say in the matter.”
I turned to head upstairs when a thought occurred to me and I whirled back around.
“How do you even know I’m going on a date?”
“I—I just assumed.”
“So why would you assume I was bringing Millie? Unless you were eavesdropping on my conversation with Jeff in the driveway.”
The bastard didn’t even bother to act contrite.
“If you don’t want your conversation overheard, don’t have it front of cameras, then.”
That pissed me off.
“How about you not be rude and spy on people you have no business spying on?”
He stood up and took a step closer.
“Oh, it’s my business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
He took another step. “You and Millie are one hundred percent my business.”
“What I do in my private life is no longer your concern. You made your decision a long time ago.”
He covered the remaining distance until he was looming over me and Millie.
His scarred skin made him look menacing, but that wasn’t why my heart rate had skyrocketed. It was how close he was to me. I could smell his familiar scent. The same one he’d left on my pillow in November—the pillow I’d hugged for months until my tears washed his scent away.
“It was a bad decision.”
Before I could ask what he meant, he leaned over and captured my lips with his, careful not to crush Millie between us.
Just like his scent, the taste of his mouth was imprinted in my brain, and I whimpered as his soft lips caressed mine.
It took a second for rational thought to catch up and override my physical response to him.
I turned my head, breaking the kiss as I murmured, “I can’t do this…”
I looked down when I told him no, and it dawned on me, so I grabbed his hand.
“Sloane…”
I think he thought I was giving him mixed messages, because he smiled and said, “It’s okay, sweetness. I know I need to prove myself.”
“No. You don’t have your walker.”
He glanced down and chuckled. “I’ll be damned.”
****
Sloane
I’d been so fixated on Ashley not going out with Dr. Connolly that I hadn’t even realized I’d walked over to her, sans walker.
I’d been acutely aware as my lips came crashing down on hers, that the little human we’d created was sandwiched between us.
This was my little family.
I didn’t care that the doctor was probably a better choice for her and Millie. There was no way he could love them more than I did.
Now that I’d realized I’d maneuvered to her without my walker, I felt like Dumbo without his feather.
“Do you think you can get me my walker?”
“Yes, but we need to consider graduating you to a cane or maybe crutches.”
“Okay. Can we look at the choices tonight after dinner?”
She narrowed her eyes at me as she brought the walker to where I stood at the stairs.
“I’m still going to the carnival with Jeff. That hasn’t changed.”
The fuck it hasn’t.
But I didn’t say that.
Instead, I nodded. “Like I said, I know I need to prove myself.”
“It’s not that easy, Sloane. We can’t just pick up where we left off. Too much has happened.”
And I had only myself to blame for that.
She was gracious enough to leave that part unsaid, but it hung in the air.
Millie let out a little cry, then started to wiggle in the sling.
“I need to feed her.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said as I took a step back.
I waited until she was upstairs with the door closed before I sat down on the steps, pulled my phone out of my pocket, and fired off a text to Ryan.
Me: Do you and Grace want to go to the WWP carnival tonight?