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Releasing a breath, he met Claire’s disconcertingly gentle gaze again and switched the subject. “You got brothers and sisters?”
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head before plopping cross-legged on the floor to rub Barney’s belly. “There were a few distant cousins, but I rarely saw them.” She grinned when the dog licked her hand. “I like people. It’s living with them I have issues with. I have a cat, though. Does that count?”
“I’m gonna have to say no to that,” Ethan said, and Claire snorted another little laugh as the dog crawled into her lap.
“What is he?”
“A schnoodle.” Claire’s eyes lifted to his. “Schnauzer/poodle. We got him…” He cleared his throat. “Three years ago.”
Still petting the dog, Claire quietly said, “Juliette really keeps trying to fix you up?”
“Yeah,” he breathed out.
“I assume you’ve asked her to back off?”
“Repeatedly. Only to get this look like I’m speaking Klingon—”
“Breakfast’s ready!” Jules called, and Claire shoved to her feet again.
“I could talk to her, if you want—”
“I can handle my own daughter, thanks,” Ethan snapped, only to realize how dumb that sounded, considering what he’d said not two seconds before. A realization Claire obviously picked up on, judging from the damn twinkle in her eyes.
“Yeah, well, as someone who used to be a teenage girl I can tell you they’re very good at ignoring what they don’t want to hear. Especially from their fathers. And since this doesn’t only concern you, I do reserve the right to set things straight from my end.”
Jeez, the woman was worse than his daughter. But Ethan also guessed she had Juliette’s ear, which apparently he didn’t. At least not about this.
“Fine. Do whatever you think is best. But for now…let’s just get this breakfast over with, okay?”
“Sure thing,” Claire said with a quick smile before following him to the kitchen, and Ethan pushed out another sigh that, God willing, in a half hour this—she—would be nothing more than a tiny blip on the old radar screen.
Because it’d taken the entire three years since Merri’s death to fine-tune the playbook that held his family, his life, together…and damned if he was gonna let some curly-headed cutie distract him from it now.
Claire ducked into the main floor half bath as the landline rang: Jules had already picked up by the time Ethan reached the kitchen, deftly cradling it between her jaw and her shoulder as she served up omelets and fried potatoes, looking so much like her mother Ethan’s heart knocked.
“Hey, Baba—” The spatula hovering over the skillet, she went stock-still. “Oh, no…that sucks! Ick….Yeah, I’ll tell him….No, we’ll work it out,” she said as Ethan motioned for her to give him the phone. But she only brandished the spatula, shaking her head. “Of course I’m sure. You need us for anything?…Okay, then….We’ll talk later.” She redocked the phone, glancing at Ethan as she finished dishing up breakfast. “Baba’s got a tummy bug, she can’t take Bella to dance class.”
He silently swore. Right or wrong, he depended on Merri’s parents to sometimes fill the gap, a role they both seemed to relish. And it’d been Carmela’s idea to put the little jumping bean in ballet class to burn off at least some of her boundless energy. Kid could run ten circles around her brothers. Speaking of whom… “The boys have their game at ten, I can’t do both.”
“Another argument for letting me get my license sooner rather than later—”
“Forget it. Maybe I could get Pop to take her—”
“PopPop in a room full of baby ballerinas. Yeah, I can totally see that. Hey—maybe Miss Jacobs could do it?”
“Maybe Miss Jacobs could do what?” Claire said as she returned, scrubbing her obviously still-damp hands across her butt.
Ethan looked away. “And I’m sure she has better things to do with her morning.”
“And you always say, Dad, it never hurts to ask. Right? Anyway, sit, both of you, everything’s ready. So Bella has ballet this morning,” she went on as Claire sat, “and my grandmother usually takes her, ’cause the boys have football or soccer or whatever—it’s always something. Only she’s sick and can’t do it. So I said maybe you could. It’s not far, right over on Main—”
