“Daddy!” shouted one of them, small enough that his voice echoed off the glass walls.
Lucas groaned. “Twins,” he muttered, exasperated but fond. “Theo and Rory, say hi to Mr. Reddington.”
Two pairs of enormous brown eyes stared up at me—then at Clayton.
“Hi,” Clayton said softly, crouching automatically, his voice warm. “Is that a velociraptor?”
They were, in fact, wearing matching dinosaur t-shirts, one green, one blue. The boys grinned.
“I’m Theo!” said the blue one.
“I’m not Theo!” said the green one.
Clayton laughed—the kind of laugh I’d barely heard from him yet, the kind that started deep and surprised him on the way out. “I’ll try to remember that.”
Lucas mouthed a silent thank-you to me as I ducked into my office to review a few contracts. I expected chaos to follow—paper balls, arguments, tiny feet thundering down the hall.
But instead, I heard it: laughter. Soft, steady, full.
When I glanced out through the glass wall, Clayton was sitting cross-legged on the carpet between the twins, copy paper on the floor between them, the other wielding a paperclip chain like a sword.
“What’s your name?” Theo asked, brandishing the sword.
“Clayton.”
“That’s not a superhero name,” Rory said solemnly.
Clayton tilted his head, pretending to think. “What about Captain Candy Cane?”
That got giggles. “That’s silly!”
“Of course it is,” he said with mock seriousness. “Every good hero is a little silly. How else can you make people smile?”
He was glowing—truly glowing—and I felt it like sunlight in the middle of a gray day. The same man who couldn’t bring himself to pick up a crayon this morning was now crafting paper crowns out of sticky notes and calling it royal paperwork.
Lucas leaned against my doorframe, smiling faintly. “He’s good with them,” he whispered. “You should see them around anyone else. They never sit still.”
I watched him for a long moment. “Yeah,” I murmured. “He’s good with a lot of things.”
Clayton caught me looking once. His cheeks flushed pink, but he didn’t stop. He just smiled, small and sweet, before turning back to the twins, who were now demanding he tell them a Christmas story.
So he did—something about a runaway elf and a reindeer who couldn’t fly straight. His voice was animated, soft but confident, drawing the boys in completely.
I don’t think he even realized how easily he did it—how natural it was, how much light he carried without even trying.
By the time I’d signed the last document and sorted out the contract that had forced Lucas to come in on a Saturday in the first place, both twins were asleep on the floor beside him, using his coat as a blanket.
He looked up at me as I approached, his fingers carding gently through one boy’s hair. “I think I made them crash,” he whispered.
“You made them happy,” I said quietly. “That’s harder.”
He smiled at that—the shy kind that reached his eyes.
And right there, in the middle of a sterile office full of glass and deadlines, I realized something that scared me more than any contract ever could:
I was falling for him. Not the polished submissive version I’d been drawn to, but the messy, tender, careful heart of him—the man who could make children laugh, who could make even me believe in something gentle again.
The twins were still asleep when Lucas gathered them up, whispering thank-yous and apologies as he slipped out the door. Clayton stood awkwardly, smoothing his shirt like he wasn’t sure what to do with his hands. There was a smudge of marker on his cheek and a sticky-note crown still tangled in his curls.
