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Fear of losing her will always be in the back of my mind, but instead of it having the power to avoid the connection, it motivates me to make each and every day count. I know the pain complacency can bring, and I won’t ever make that mistake again.
“Thank you for keeping an eye on my girls while I was gone,” I tell the man.
Ali wiggles to be set down, but I need just another minute with her against me. I’m nowhere near ready to be free of her warmth.
I set her on the counter, but stay plastered between her spread legs.
“Any time, man. Is there coffee?”
Since I’ve deposited Ali on the counter with the coffee pot, I have to pick her up and move her to another area of the kitchen to give Landon access.
Ali’s cheeks are flaming red with embarrassment, but even though she probably wants to crawl into a hole for once again getting caught in such a compromising position, she doesn’t try to pull away from me. The woman is a quick learner.
Landon is a good man because he catches the couple of hints I give him to get lost and he doesn’t stick around much longer after sipping on a cup of coffee and staring at us with a tiny grin on his face.
Knowing I can’t do the things I want to her in the kitchen, I end up carrying her back to the bedroom, kissing her lips and touching every inch of her I can reach before settling her on the bed with my body covering hers.
I could spend the day tucked away with this woman, but my daughter has other plans, cooing and playing in her crib loud enough to pull us from the room into hers.
Aria reaches for me from her crib. I’ve spent the majority of the last month working on myself and building a relationship with my daughter, the two things I needed most before opening my heart up to someone else.
“Dada!” she squeals, arms up as she bounces from foot to foot in her crib.
“I think it’s about time to lower the bed,” Ali says from the doorway. “One day, we’re going to come in here and find that she’s climbed out of the thing.”
Aria freezes in my arms, angling her little head to try and see around my shoulder, so I turn in the direction of the door.
“Momma!”
My heart smiles as my little girl wiggles, trying to get out of my arms to go to Ali.
Ali looks to me to gauge my reaction, probably thinking that being told about what Aria said will cause a different reaction than actually hearing it for the first time.
“That’s right, baby girl,” I tell Aria as I walk closer to Ali. “That’s Momma.”
I thought she’d cried out all of her tears in the kitchen, but I was wrong.
Much like I did, Aria presses her sweet little palm to Ali’s face as I hand her over.
“Momma needs sweet kisses,” I tell my little girl who obliges immediately, pressing her lips to Ali’s cheek.
I pull them both into my arms, Ali smiling up at me, and Aria wiggling from the restriction.
Love you, I mouth to Ali, smiling like a fool with the luck of winning the lottery when she mouths it back.
“Why don’t we get some lunch and then we can play?” Ali asks Aria.
My little girl scrunches her little brow as if thinking that she has it backward.
I stick right with them on the journey to the kitchen, knowing I’d be lost without them.
Chapter 39
Alyssa
“How did it go?” I ask Misty once she walks back into the daycare.
She shakes her head. “The woman was awful.”
“I could hear her yelling all the way in here. That’s why I closed the door. Why was she so upset?”
“She was mad that we wouldn’t keep her kids during the party. I tried to explain that the daycare was restricted to only Cerberus kids.”
“Exactly,” I say, picking up a few toys and putting them back where they belong.
Misty looks over at Aria to make sure she’s still napping before speaking again. “She had the nerve to tell me that if I wasn’t so hell-bent on cockblocking her, that she was planning to have one of those Cerberus kids.”
“As in—”
“Getting pregnant by one of the guys,” Misty says with a shudder.
“I don’t think any of them are stupid enough to—”
“Stick it in crazy?” Misty scoffs. “Have you met Aro, Ugly, and Spade?”
I laugh, and Misty does, too. “They’re a little wild.”
She nods in agreement. “I tried to explain that even if the daycare was open, this was a family event, not a drop your responsibilities off and hunt for your next child support case. She wasn’t very happy about me telling her that.”
“I can imagine.”
“I was frustrated. She didn’t like that we had restrictions, even after I told her the daycare was only open while prep for the party was being done. I honestly thought that explaining all kids were to be picked up by dark would help, but she argued anyway.”
