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Chapter Six
“You get your choice,” Brant told her when they entered their cozy accommodations later that evening. “Where would you like to sleep? The couch pulls out into a bed, and there’s a private bedroom in the back if you’d like to have your own room. What do you think?”
She plucked Ralph from the sofa and whispered something in the stuffed bear’s ear. Then she held her head close to Ralph’s torn mouth. “Ralph wants to know where you’ll sleep.”
Brant’s nose twitched and he shrugged out of his coat. “Depends on you, kid. Where do you plan on laying your head down tonight?”
She whispered something else to the stuffed toy and then said, “I’ll take the couch. That’s what polite company should do.”
“Whatever you want,” Colt said, “it’s entirely up to you…and Ralph.”
She giggled, consulted the stuffed animal one final time and announced, “We think it’s warmer in here.”
Brant left the room and returned a few seconds later with a couple of blankets and a pillow. While he made up the bed, Colt took the plate of roasted marshmallows to the kitchenette and prepared the s’mores.
He set a place setting for four, feeling like he should probably include Ralph so Princess would have an excuse to eat a second s’more. “When you get done over there, bring Ralph to the table. He may want a bedtime snack.”
She danced across the room and tossed Ralph into the chair beside her. “You’re so funny, Colt. Ralph isn’t real enough to eat.”
“But he’s real enough to give you advice,” Brant pointed out.
“Oh yes, I have to talk everything over with Ralph. That’s what families do.”
“How does that work if he’s not human?”
“I tell him what to say,” she admitted, breaking her graham cracker in half and studying the chocolate layers around the white melted filling.
Colt and Brant took a hearty bite of their s’mores and she followed suit. “Mmm…this is the best treat in the world. How’d you make it?”
“It’s easy,” Colt explained, wishing he’d let her make her own. “You take two graham crackers, place a chocolate bar on one side, and the marshmallows on the other. Put the two sides together and you have a s’more.”
“I think I’ll like this forever,” she said gleefully.
She ate half her bedtime snack and helped Ralph with his before returning to finish hers off. When she was done, she started to clear the table, but Colt stopped her. “Brant ran a bubble bath fo
r you when he was gathering up blankets. How does that sound?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “A real bubble bath with big bubbles?”
“Yep,” Brant confirmed. “I don’t know how big the bubbles are, but I happened to find a huge bottle of them under the sink. You can pour as much as you like in that tub.”
“And I get to take a long bath like a princess takes?”
“I guess so,” Brant said, unable to conceal that wider grin.
The kid was definitely worming her way into his heart.
Still, Brant looked as clueless as he probably felt. As Princess darted off to the bathroom, Colt cleaned up the mess he’d made. A few minutes later, he walked over to the sofa and tucked the bear under the blanket, making sure Princess would find Ralph just as she might have left him if she’d spent the night in her dilapidated box.
Fluffing the pillows, he felt quite foolish when Brant strolled in and caught him. “You’re spoiling her,” Colt pointed out.
“Maybe,” Brant said. “I believe she needs a little pampering. Don’t you?”
Colt nodded. After a brief silence, he asked, “Think we have enough blankets? I don’t want her to get cold in here tonight.”
“There’s something we need to talk about,” Brant said, stepping around him.
Colt read his expression before he said anything and saw how apprehensive he was. He understood perfectly. They were two single men without a woman in their lives. At twenty-two, what did they have to offer a child in the event they couldn’t find a family who wanted to adopt a nine-year-old girl?
