Page 44 of Jay Bird

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.