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“What are you doing with that?” he rasped, wide-eyed like he’d seen a ghost.
“It’s where I hide my treasures and my candy.”
Landon stared at the box. “It is?”
“You’d know if you ever came in here,” Aria replied. “Uncle Landy doesn’t like the garage. He must have come in for you, Harper.”
“Is that so?” she asked, sneaking a look at her husband.
Aria nodded and zeroed in on the bonbons. She opened the Scrabble box and dumped the chocolates in with the tiles. “I’m gonna go see Lolo and Lala.”
“I’m not sure if they’re back yet,” Landon answered, looking like he’d been through the wringer, and OMG, was this what it was like raising a kid? She felt like she’d lived a hundred lives over the last twenty minutes.
“They’re back,” Aria answered smoothly as she placed the piano eraser on the tip of her slim pinky finger. “They peeked in while we were playing the piano, and you were playing your old guitar,” she added, grabbing the loot-filled Scrabble box.
Why hadn’t they come into the garage?
“I’ll get my bag and meet you at the poop-colored car,” the child called as she skipped away.
And then it was the two of them.
She crossed, then uncrossed her arms, fidgeting like she’d just downed a triple espresso. “Aria’s a hurricane packed into the body of a little girl, isn’t she?” she offered, unsure of what to say.
Landon didn’t answer. He stared at the crates where the Scrabble box had rested. “Why are you doing this, Harper? Why did you invite us to live at your place?”
Great question.
She formulated a few answers.
He was doing her a favor by agreeing to participate in the reality bake show. Or she could tell him she wanted to help Aria get used to her new life, but that wasn’t the complete truth.
She pegged him with her gaze. “Do you want the long answer or the short answer?”
“Short.”
She shrugged. “I’m not really sure.”
“Then what’s the long answer?”
She smiled up at him. “I don’t have a long answer. Nobody ever asks for the long answer.”
He chuckled and stared into her eyes as if he were searching for answers.
“But I do know one thing,” she added, her voice a scrape of a sound.
“And what’s that, bonbon?”
“We got double-dog dared again. And we don’t back down from those.”
He took a step toward her. The fear in his eyes disappeared, and he drank her in just as he had seconds after he’d caught the bouquet. “No, we don’t.”
She released a shaky breath.
Baxter Park better brace itself. The nanny-aunt, the heartthrob, and a whole lot of pint-sized trouble were headed its way.
