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two
Balancingbetween duty and lust could be why Misty never took Ice seriously. Then again, when he met her, she wasn’t exactly the type of woman you claim and lock down with. She’d been strong-willed, wild, and up for a good time with little more than a text that saidhey. If she’d never gotten pregnant, he’d probably only look back on the woman with fondness of a good time. Instead, he was strapped to her beyond the eighteen years of raising the kids.
It’d been at least a year since they fucked. John caught on quick when it came to proximity issues when around Misty. He didn’t go places with the idea of fucking her. Who goes to a custody trial, spews hatred and rage about how bad of a father he was, only to pull him into a family bathroom built with the extra room for the double stroller and fuck the shit out of him? Misty, that’s who, and once John caught on, they stopped. He had to settle for receiving heated looks from her that scorched his body as she stood by the window, giving him a wave as he loaded up the truck and took off.
Ms. Stanton, that’s what Mrs. Parker had called the woman standing in the corner, as if a woman like her could ever be a wallflower. Skin, smooth as satin in a deep rich brown, with lashes he’d thought were fake from the length, only to recognize the woman hadn’t so much as run balm across her full lips, let alone made up her face, telling him the vision in front of him was real. Working at the strip club, he’d learned the shape-shifting powers of a good contour routine.
He’d meant what he said about curves. The woman was covering herself with an oversized hoodie, probably from a boyfriend he wanted to be an ex, but the skintight yoga pants told the tale of a woman with more than a handful’s worth of breasts to match the type of thighs meant to be gripped. Even with her fingers fidgeting with the cuffs of her sleeves, he became transfixed on her bare toes, polished with an emerald green. He watched as she slid one foot behind the other, locking it behind her ankle and slowly raising and lowering it along the curve of her calf.
The bright color told him she wasn’t wound as tight as the picture-perfect home would make one think, which meant he had a chance. Shaking his head, he tried to get back on track. He was here to get his kids, not fuck Misty’s neighbor. And yet his palm warmed and fingers curled a bit as he thought of gripping her thighs.
“Mr. Winter,” the social worker barked, and he came out of the trance to see Ms. Stanton’s brows were knit in confusion from his mental stripping of her.
“Ice—shit, or Max. If you call me Mr. Winter, I’ll think of my granddad, and no one wants that.”
“I’ll go for Max,” Mrs. Parker said. “Now we need to set up temporary custody for the twins.”
“Why?” he bit.
“So they have a place to stay.” The older woman gave him a questioning look.
“Why temporary? I’m their father, their mother is—”
“Sleeping.” Ms. Stanton held her hand up, eyes cutting to where the kids were watching a cartoon on the couch. “Sleeping really hard.”
“They don’t know?” he questioned.
“I explained it to them,” Mrs. Parker said.
“Well they didn’t understand because Jane made that picture to give to her mom so she’d smile.” The woman pointed toward a strange drawing that might be of a house or car or cow, he couldn’t tell. “They don’t understand the worddead.”
“That is an issue,” the social worker said with a sigh. “I’ll go over that again with them, but back to your question. You have joint custody, not even fifty-fifty. It wouldn’t be prudent to give the kids to you.”
“As opposed to what? Foster care? Sleeping in strange houses and giving me visitation a handful of days a month?”
“Mr.—Max, you act as if I didn’t see your behavior when we went to your place of business.”
“I’m a manager at a strip club, so what? I know plenty of people that work in clubs and have their kids. It’s two different worlds. Just ask Mystique.”
“I’m assuming she’s one of your employees.”
“Yes, and a damn good mother in addition to being able to do this thing with ping-pong balls where she—”
“I’ve been in Vegas long enough to know what happens with ping-pong balls in strip clubs, thank you,” Mrs. Parker said with her eyes closed tight and hand in the air. “And while I know many fine parents who work in less than favorable professions, you are not one of them.”
“How?” he questioned, his mind running through all the things that might be on the record concerning his custody trials and coming up with nothing because Misty wasn’t dumb enough to out the club’s real business.
The older woman pursed her lips, her focus shifting between the neighbor and him. “They have a stepfather, and honestly, until Detective Nunez tells me you’re not a suspect, I have to assume you are.”
“Did you not see the receipt for the burrito?” he snapped.
“That’s not enough.”
“Look, lady, you don’t want to put the kids in your van, I’ll toss them on my bike and get them home.”
“The hell you will,” the woman standing at the edge of the room said, stepping forward and into his orbit. “No chance.”
“Who the fuck are you again?”
