Page 6 of Unruly

“You hungry? You could eat before you go, Cross.”

“I would, but I have a bunch of stuff to get ready for tomorrow.”

Cece pulled on his pants once more. “To see Ma?”

Cross patted her head, but didn’t answer. “Make a date, Ma, and I’ll come over to help you cook something. Sound good?”

Emma smiled sweetly. “That sounds perfect, my boy.”

Thirty-three, and still his mother’s baby.

Yeah, some things never changed.

“Well, I guess the kittens found their mittens,” Cross said as he tossed the children’s book to the bedside table.

Cece’s brown gaze narrowed, and Cross knew what was coming next. “Kittens no wear mittens, Daddy.”

“No, but—”

“They don’t.”

“No, they don’t.”

“No book,” his daughter said firmly.

And that was the end of that children’s novel. It would never see the light of day in their home again. Any book that his daughter could find fault with, she would. Someday, she was going to make one hell of a literary critic if at three, she already had such vehement opinions on the picture books read to her every night.

The last book this happened to?

The night before, when he read The Man in the Moon.

Cece Catherine Donati was a lot of things. Difficult. Stubborn. Wild. Beautiful. Free-spirited. Fearless. Her mother’s clone. Her father’s soul.

Stupid, however, was not one of those things.

Cross slid out of his daughter’s large canopy pink and white decorated bed. With a golden metal frame that curved high at the head and foot into a crown-like shape, it was fit for his pretty little princess.

“No more kittens and mittens,” Cross promised.

He tucked his girl in under her sheets, and heard his phone buzz from down the hall. Cece’s intense stare kept him from running to grab the call, though.

“Daddy?” she whispered.

Cross bent down to press a kiss to the top of her head. “What, bambina?”

“Misses Ma.”

“Me, too.”

Cece let out a dramatic sigh. With her striped pink and white comforter pulled up to her chin, all he could see was the collar of her purple pajamas sticking out.

“We’ll see her soon,” Cross promised. “That sounds good, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then sleep. Principessas need sleep, Cece. Daddy loves you, my girl.”

“Loves my daddy, Daddy.”