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“Required,” I fired back.
I swiped through to another pic, taken a minute before or after the first, and wondered who in the bar had taken them, but then the caption made me forget all about that.
“Girls!” it read. “Prep your ovaries, don your prettiest panties, and get yourself to The Salty Stop pronto! Valentine Bay’s sexiest bartender is now the hottest single daddy on the coast, and we are not okay. Look at this man! And he’s even better in the flesh. (Trust us. ;) Pub address and opening hours listed below. First come, first served (if you get what we mean, and we know you do.) You’re welcome. #whowillrailyou #daddywill”
A strangled sort of noise sounded in Abbie’s throat, and I quickly shut off the screen. She was pissed.Iwas pissed. We didn’t need this shit right now. Abbie, least of all.
“I’m going to find out who did this and tell them to delete the pictures,” I promised, starting towards the door through to The Stop.
Abbie stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Don’t bother. They’ll be long gone by now, and what are you going to say, anyway? That you’renotsingle, and they might as well be wearing granny undies for all the use their crotchless knickers are going to do?”
I paused and gave her an appraising smirk. I shouldn’t have taken pleasure in her snark, but I was happy to be a dick this once because Abbie acting all territorial over me felt fucking fantastic.
“You jealous, Ellison?”
She snorted quietly. “No. I’mtired, Kidd. And I’m taking Seb upstairs, okay?”
“Okay.” I flashed her the dimple, partnering it with a smug grin that made her eyes roll and her lips twitch. “I won’t be far behind you.”
The booth of women drinking cocktails was empty when I returned to the bar, which confirmed my suspicions that they were to blame for the little boost to my follower count. As I arranged for Steph to stay a few more hours and asked Noa to send up an early dinner for me and Abbie an hour before I wasdue back behind the bar, I hoped the social media storm would die down quickly. After all, it was little more than a single pic of me holding a baby, and what was so interesting about that? There was no way people were that interested in me, and it’d all blow over by the morning.
36
Abbie
I pressed my earto Seb’s closed bedroom door, and when his little mewling noises finally stopped, I tiptoed away like there was dynamite under the floorboards.
Please, please, let him sleep longer than twenty minutes.
Seb had been up every hour during the night, and we’d taken turns trying to settle him, but Will was shattered when his alarm went off at six a.m. He’d been anxious to drive the ninety minutes each way to Sydney and leave Seb and me to fend for ourselves for an entire day, but I insisted he go. It was too good an opportunity for him to skip out on, and it wasn’t too much hassle for me to reschedule the two classes I was supposed to run that morning.
Now, it was past midday, and I hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. My stomach rumbled, the kitchen was a mess, and there were toys all over the floor. Added to that, in the laundry room sat at least four loads of clothes and towels that needed to be washed, and I pretended not to notice any ofit. Instead, I beelined for the stairs and the unmade bed calling me at the top. When I reached it, I crashed face down onto the crumpled sheets and closed my eyes. Twenty minutes. That’s all I needed. Twenty silent minutes.
I’d almost dozed off when I remembered I’d left the baby monitor on its charging dock downstairs.
Fuck my life.
I dragged myself into an upright position and rubbed my eyes, then picked up my phone from the bedside table. It was lit up with notifications, but nothing from Will, which was the first thing I looked for. That was fine. I wanted him to concentrate on what might turn out to be the biggest moment of his career, and it was a boost to my confidence, knowing that he trusted me to hold down the fort while he was gone.
However, the incessantping ping pingwas more sinister than that. I’d set up alerts for Will’s socials to keep track of how out of hand this whole #daddywill thing was going to get.
Extremely.That’show out of hand.
I wasn’t familiar with jealousy, and I didn’t particularly like how it felt, but reasonable thought was beyond me right now. Like, what was everyone smoking to make them this feral over one little picture of a man holding a baby?Myman. As far as all these hopeless, horny women knew, Will Kidd was single, and if he’d been sexy before—the blue-collar playboy with a dimple to die for and a reputation that had women lining up outside his bedroom door—now he had a baby, and he was fucking irresistible.
Single was his brand. Single sold tickets. Single was what kept his business afloat, and single was what half of the tourists this week expected to find when they got to The Salty Stop in Valentine Bay this weekend.
But he wasn’t single. He was mine. And I couldn’t say a damn word about it.
I swiped to open the latest post and was practically choking at the caption when the screen flashed with an incoming call from Emily. She’d been trying to reach me all morning, but I’d been too busy with a screaming baby to answer the phone. I probably should have let this one go to voicemail, too, because I was holding onto my sanity by a thread, and Emily didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of my rage.
Still, I hit the green button. “They’ve hired a fucking bus, Jones.”
“Which bus are you talking about?
“There’s more than one?”
“Sort of. Yeah. There’s a bus bringing a bunch of people who used to live locally and now reside out of the area. They’re using the tournament as an excuse for a reunion. You might even know some of them. It’s kind of sweet. A real feel-good story.”
