Chapter Six
Willow woke slowly, surrounded by warmth and softness she hadn’t felt in so long. The mattress beneath her was ridiculously comfortable, the pillow cradling her head instead of fighting with her neck, and the blanket was pulled snugly around her.
She sighed and reached across the bed, only to find her hand meeting cool, empty sheets.
Willow’s eyes snapped open as she shot upright and saw the empty space beside her.
Lily!
Panic hit so fast that every rational thought disappeared. Willow threw the blankets aside and scrambled from the bed, nearly catching her foot on one of the shopping bags she had left on the floor the night before.
“Lily!”
Willow’s gaze flew toward the door, and her stomach dropped when she saw it wide open.
“Oh, shit!”
Willow raced barefoot into the hallway, her pulse pounding as every horrible possibility her mind could create assaulted her at once.
“Lily!”
She made it halfway down the hallway before a smell finally registered in her sleep-fogged mind. Bacon.
Willow rounded the corner into the living room and stopped so abruptly she nearly tripped over her own feet.
Lily was sitting at the kitchen table, perfectly fine.
She was perched on some sort of booster cushion while scribbling furiously in a coloring book with a purple crayon.
Her tablet sat propped beside her, playing one of her cartoons, although Lily seemed far more interested in whatever masterpiece she was creating.
Relief hit Willow so hard that her knees nearly buckled.
Then she looked toward the stove, and suddenly found it difficult to breathe for an entirely different reason.
Jay Bird stood in front of the stove with a spatula in one hand.
He wore black athletic shorts and a gray tank top, and judging by the dampness of his longer, slightly wild dark hair, he had either just finished working out or recently showered.
The tank top did absolutely nothing to disguise the width of his shoulders or the muscles in his arms, and when he reached for something beside the stove, Willow caught herself staring at the way the fabric stretched across his back.
She really shouldn’t have been looking, but apparently three years in hell hadn’t managed to kill that particular part of her brain. It knew when to appreciate something good.
Jay Bird turned, and their eyes met. A slow grin spread across his face.
Heat flooded Willow’s cheeks, and she immediately went to Lily.
“Lily.”
“Momma!” Lily announced happily.
Willow leaned down and kissed the top of her head, breathing in the familiar scent of her shampoo as she wrapped an arm around her.
“You scared Mommy.”
Lily looked completely unconcerned. “Jay pancakes.”
Apparently that explained everything.
She straightened and looked toward Jay Bird. “How did she get out of the room?”
Jay Bird picked up a plate of pancakes and carried it toward the table. “Funny story. I was in here making a protein shake when your little escape artist came strolling down the hallway dragging a shopping bag behind her.”
Willow stared at Lily. “You unlocked the door?”
Lily continued coloring, ignoring Willow.
Willow’s mind raced as panic started to build, because there was no way that Lily could’ve gotten out on her own.
Then it hit her. She remembered waking up sometime during the night, groggy and half-asleep, needing to use the bathroom.
Willow groaned. “I got up to use the bathroom last night. I must not have locked the door again.”
“Mystery solved,” Jay Bird said.
“I’m so sorry.”
Jay Bird stopped moving and gave her a completely deadpan look. “You’re apologizing because your kid walked out of a bedroom in the house where she lives.”
“Well, when you say it like that.”
“How else would I say it?”
Willow lowered her head. “Right.”
Jay Bird retrieved Lily’s sippy cup from the counter and set it beside her before pulling out the chair next to her and sitting.
Willow watched, fascinated, as this enormous Navy SEAL picked up a knife and carefully cut a pancake into toddler-sized pieces.
He even had a tiny plastic fork waiting, and Willow couldn’t help wondering where on earth that had come from.
When he finished, he moved Lily’s coloring book out of the way and replaced it with the plate.
“Eat, peanut.”
Lily immediately abandoned the purple crayon. “Pancake!”
Jay Bird pointed toward the chair across from him. “You too.”
Willow stared at him. “Me?”
“No, Ellie.”
Lily giggled.
Willow looked toward the stuffed elephant sitting on the table.
“Sit. Eat,” Jay Bird said, a faint smile on his lips.
She did, mostly because she was still trying to process what she was witnessing.
A plate was already waiting for her, piled with pancakes, bacon, and strawberries, with even a cup of coffee set beside it.
Willow picked up her fork. This couldn’t possibly be her life. Just yesterday morning she had been in a hospital, and only three weeks before that she had been running all over the world.
Now she was sitting in a sunlit kitchen while a giant, brooding Navy SEAL cut pancakes into bite-sized pieces for her daughter.
And somehow the strangest part was how natural Jay Bird looked doing it.
Willow glanced at him again, immediately regretting it because the tank top situation was even worse from this angle.
She dropped her gaze to her pancakes. Stop it, she told herself. She shouldn’t be thinking about him like that.
Except attraction wasn’t the part making him dangerous to her peace of mind.
It was Lily and the sippy cup he had remembered to fill, the toddler fork he had somehow located, the way he automatically wiped syrup from her fingers before she could smear it across the table, and the way her daughter looked at him without even a trace of fear.
That was what Willow couldn’t stop noticing.
“Did you sleep okay?” Jay Bird asked.
She looked up. “I did. Your bed is amazing.”
His eyebrows lifted. “My bed?”
“Oh, God.” She immediately shook her head. “Not your bed. Obviously I don’t know anything about your bed. I meant the bed I slept in, which is technically your bed because you own the house.”
His mouth twitched.
Willow wanted the floor to swallow her. “I’m going to stop talking now.”
“Jay funny,” Lily squealed as she shoved a piece of pancake into her mouth.
“Don’t encourage him,” Willow muttered.
Jay Bird looked extremely pleased with himself.
A moment later, he nodded toward Lily. “By the way, she came prepared when she escaped this morning.”
“What does that mean?”
“The bag she dragged out had pull-ups and clothes in it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. So we handled business. Changed her pull-up, brushed her teeth, and tried to do something with her hair.”
Willow’s eyes went to Lily. Now that she wasn’t panicking, Willow finally took a closer look at her daughter and noticed her hair had been gathered into a slightly crooked ponytail that leaned noticeably to the left.
Willow pressed her lips together. “You did her hair?”
Jay Bird looked mildly offended. “I attempted her hair. There’s a difference.”
She laughed.
He gestured toward Lily’s clothes. “She picked the outfit.”
It was a really cute outfit. Dark green shorts decorated with tiny pink elephants and a white shirt trimmed in matching green with a larger pink elephant across the front. Lily looked ready for a very fashionable safari.
Willow smiled and pointed at Lily’s shirt. “Look at you.”
Lily immediately beamed. “Ell-fant!”
“I see that.”
“Pink!”
“Very pink.”
“She was committed to that one,” Jay Bird said.
Willow looked across the table at him. Then felt the familiar words leave her mouth before she could stop them.
“Thank you.”
Jay Bird immediately leaned back in his chair.
Willow groaned. “I know. I know. I’m sorry. I can’t help it.”
He laughed. “No apologizing for thanking me. That defeats the whole purpose.”
“Then stop counting.”
“I can’t. We’re too far in.”
Willow shook her head. “You’re ridiculous.”
Across from them, Lily raised her little fork. “Jay!”
“See?” Jay Bird nodded toward her. “She likes me.”
“She’s two. She also likes eating Goldfish crackers she finds under furniture.”
“Still counts,” he smirked.
Willow laughed and took another bite of pancake. Damn, they were actually good. She had expected a man who owned one end table to be incapable of anything beyond cereal, yet apparently Jay Bird had hidden talents.
She remembered what he had told her last night. “Derek and his friend are coming today, right?”
Jay Bird nodded. “Yep. They’ll be here in about an hour.”
Willow’s stomach tightened slightly.
“Remember, they’re not here to interrogate you,” he said. “Tink found some information. They’ll explain it, you decide what you’re comfortable doing with it, and we go from there.”
Willow nodded. “Okay.”
She took another bite and glanced across the table.
Jay Bird was helping Lily spear a strawberry with her little plastic fork, patiently guiding her hand while Lily giggled at their combined effort.
She quickly returned her attention to her plate. In an hour, she would find out what remained of the life she had lost three years ago.