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Only I had no clue what he was doing that for.
“I’ve never even met him. Why are you asking me?” I yelled at him, refusing to let him scare me. I’d done nothing wrong. But he sure had by showing up at my freaking house.
His jaw dropped open. “Obviously you met him once!”
Now it was my turn to squint my eyes at him. “No, I’ve never met him. Giselle told me he’s a total douche and I believe her. Why the heck would I hunt down her baby daddy?”
Nick’s face changed in an instant, and he stepped closer to me. “The baby’s not—”
Oh, for crying out loud, he thought Dani was mine. Now his temper tantrum made sense.
Or did it?
“No, she’s not mine,” I said, cutting him off before he could say anything else that made me want to swat him. “She’s my neighbor, Giselle’s. She’s the one who was staying at my house while I was—at yours.”
“You don’t have any kids?” His voice was steady and low.
I kicked the ball that was right beside my foot that one of my siblings must’ve left out. “Nope, just two sisters and the prize of a brother you met earlier.”
“I see,” he said, running his hand through his thick hair as he lowered his head and walked around in a circle. “All right, how old—”
He started to say when the front door of the house suddenly opened, and Rachel and Beatrice suddenly burst through it. “Evie,” they both screamed in unison, charging toward me.
I opened my arms to them, and they barged right into me. “Hello to you, too,” I said, hugging them both tightly to me. They circled me with their arms so strongly, I nearly fell. “Hey, hey, hey, girls,” I said, touching their hair and kissing their foreheads one at a time. “Everything’s fine,” I said using my best soothing voice.
“No, no, it’s not. Asher went off the rails again. We tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen,” Rae said, finally looking up.
“He really wouldn’t. We all tried,” Bea said, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her sad little face made my heart break.
“You two are not responsible for Asher. He made his own decisions. Thank you for trying to talk him out of acting like an ass, though,” I said, smiling at them, trying to make them feel better.
They looked at each other and then Bea said, “We wanted to call you, but you didn’t answer your phone. Why didn’t you answer? You said to call if we really, really needed you.”
Then my heart broke in half again.
I looked over at Nick and then back to the girls. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear it. I had a party to go to and I didn’t look at it for a long time.”
“I thought you were working?” Bea said, quirking her head to the side, looking so sweet.
“Yeah, I was working. But not twenty-four hours a day. I got invited to a last minute birthday party with someone I worked with, so I went.” I hoped they’d take that horrible explanation and stop asking questions.
“Are you girls hungry? What time does school start?” Nick asked, interrupting our family time—but I was grateful.
The girls peered at Nick, then looked back to me unsurely.
I smiled and said, “That’s Nick. Nick this is Beatrice and Rachel.”
He smiled at them and shook their hands. “Nice to meet you. Your sister has told me everything about you,” he lied so well I nearly believed him.
“Who are you?” Bea asked in a dreamy, yet confused voice.
Nick let out a small laugh and said, “I’m your sister’s boyfriend.”
“Evie doesn’t have a boyfriend,” Rae said bluntly, not one to fall for things. She was the toughest of all my siblings to play a joke on.
“She does, but she didn’t want to tell you guys about me until it was serious,” Nick said, and I swear if the girls weren’t in my way, I’d kick him. The girls didn’t say anything. “I was going to suggest I take you all out for breakfast before school.”
Their grips on me loosened.
