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“Sure, you just snuck up on me,” I admitted. It made me wonder how such a large person could move so stealthily. The fact that I enjoyed the way his warmth seeped through my shirt and made me feel comforted, was something I tried to put out of my mind. Wasn’t he just walking away with two women at once? I should be disgusted, but I wasn’t.
“Why don’t you just let Nova stick around with Knox? She can do her schoolwork, take care of the kid, and wait for Ash to get back.”
Kip turned pleading eyes toward me after hearing his friend’s solution. “Would you mind? You’re already here, and I can make sure no one disturbs you.” He turned his attention back to Breakneck. “I have a pack-n-play in my room here. Could you go grab it while I get Nova situated?”
“Sure man,” Breakneck agreed quickly as he removed his hand from my body and turned to go retrieve the baby’s playpen. He stopped suddenly and looked at Kip with a question in his eyes. “What the fuck is a pack-n-play?”
I giggled and turned to grin at the clueless man whose eyes met mine with a curious stare. “What?” He asked. “I don’t have any rug rats.”
“It’s a portable playpen,” I explained at the same time Kip answered.
“Man, it looks like those boxed up tents you see at the store. Long, blue nylon case with a handle and the picture of a baby in a playpen on the side. You can’t miss it.”
“Right. Be back in a minute.”
Kip got me settled in the far-left corner of the room where there was a couch with a coffee table and a little end table between it and the wall. The bar was on the wall to my right with the entry door somewhere in the middle. The pool tables were across the room from where I sat, but there was a set of stairs that blocked most of my view.
I realized it also blocked the view of the hallway where Breakneck and the two women had disappeared moments ago. Part of me wondered if he would forget to bring the playpen back, since he had his women to worry about.
“Do you have homework or something to do?” Kip asked as I continued to glance around and take in the clubhouse.
“I have a paper to work on, but it isn’t due for a few weeks. Knoxville and I will be just fine here.”
“Okay, can I get you something to eat or drink? We have a prospect here who cooks like a fucking chef.”
I grinned at him. “There’s no need to go to any trouble.”
Kip shook his head and grinned back at me. “Girl, you’re doing me a favor by coming here and staying to keep an eye on my son while I get shit done. It’s no damn trouble to feed you while you’re here.”
“Okay then,” I started to ask what they had to eat, but he ran off to go tell the prospect to get cooking. I guessed it would be a surprise.
“No clue how to set this damn thing up,” Breakneck called out to me as he approached.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “If you could just hold Knoxville for a minute, I can do it.”
The giant man glance warily at the baby, as if he was a bomb about to go off. “Not sure I want to hold the little shit factory after what he did to my truck.”
I laughed off his comment as a joke, and tucked Knoxville into the cradle of his arm before he could protest and run off. I took a moment to appreciate the view as he held that baby and stared down at him in equal parts fear and awe. The fantasy of seeing a man holding a baby we’d made together, while looking at him like that, sent me into a stupor for a moment before I managed to shake off the thought. That wasn’t a picture that was in the cards for me.
There was no way I’d bring a child into the world knowing that family could just walk away from them at a moment’s notice and not look back. It wouldn’t be fair. Not that I would ever be the one to do it, but what if my child’s father did? What if he behaved the way Jeremy, his family, or even Clark and my own mother had? They all left me high and dry because of mistakes they’d made and dragged me into.
Nope. I was never going to have children.
“You gonna stare all day or put that damn thing together?” Breakneck asked with a hint of impatience in his tone.
“Sorry,” I muttered and turned to put the portable playpen together, so that I had a place to put Knoxville when he went down for his nap. Two more men burst through the front door in a flurry of boisterous laughter and loud voices. I didn’t miss the way Breakneck side-eyed them, as if in fear that their noise might disturb the baby in his arms. Knoxville wasn’t sleeping yet, so the burly man had nothing to worry about. He was simply taking everything in. The boy was filled with quiet curiosity until he had a dirty diaper or became hungry.
“Breakneck,” a whiny female voice called out from near where the steps cut off the view of the hallway he had gone down earlier. It was one of the women he’d had tucked up under his arm when I’d first entered the clubhouse. She was wearing even less than she had been before.
“What the hell do you want, Liz?”
“You were supposed to come right back. Dee and I have been waiting for you.”
“If you can’t keep each other occupied until I get back, then maybe you aren’t the pair I need tonight,” he insisted. It was cringy to think about how disposable the women in his life were. Not to mention the fact that he seemed to need two women at once, and from the way he’d spoken, it was a normal occurrence.
“Fine!” She huffed and turned to stomp out of sight once more. “Don’t know why Kip can’t deal with his own kid.”
“That shit ain’t your concern!” Kip yelled at her as he brought a steaming plate with a burger, fries, and what looked like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on a plate. “I’ll grab you a drink as soon as I set this down. You want Coke or…”
