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Harri: I’m doing the right thing. Faye took care of the caterer. Briggs has taken my to-do list. Like he hid it and I can’t find it. He swears it’s all done. Apparently, this has been planned for months. He made me pick a date by blindly pointing at the calendar.
Cori: I’m coming over anyway. Amelia is babysitting and I want to help.
Harri: 7pm, The Brew. I love you, Cori.
Cori: Love you too girl.
Dance class let out and I bid a polite goodbye to the other mothers as they told us to have Griffin get better. I internally rolled my eyes. Maybe this would teach me to go for less sexy men.Yeah, right.If it were up to me I would spend the rest of my life worshiping every inch of Griffin Steele. The girls and I grabbed our yogurt to go, starting back to the Jeep. I told Griffin an hour so if he woke up with us not there, his cold wouldn’t matter. The caveman would hunt us down with a bottle of Nyquil in one hand and tissues in the other.
I had just checked buckles on car seats when I heard a throat clear behind me. The hairs on my neck and arms stood at attention. My stomach heaved. Swallowing the bile in my throat, I breathed in slowly, gripping the paper bag of yogurt. My chest closed up, invisible hands tightening around my throat, as I slowly backed toward Richard. I would know that sound anywhere. It was the same fake cough he used when I got too rowdy around his colleagues or said something vulgar in public.
“Are you going to face me?” I shuddered involuntarily and thanked a whole slew of deities that the girls were immersed in some horse conversation. I backed up, shut the door, and turn to face him. “I’m not going to hurt you, Cori. Stop acting like I’m the one who attacked you. I would never lay a hand on you. Haven’t I been punished enough? I lost everything.”
“It was all your choice. You chose to gamble it all and you lost, Richard.” Looking up at him, standing three feet from the man should have been scary.
He brought hell into my life, but Rich had a point, he didn’t attack me, and I wasn’t afraid. “I almost lost too.”
Richard raked his hand through his blond hair, dropping his shoulders. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think it has eaten at me for years? You could have died because of me. My letters to my wife kept coming back, my phone calls were spent on calling a disconnected number. I had to see my daughter through old pictures.” I wanted to feel for him, but that night flashed in my mind. Rich laid out in the bed, a needle hanging from his arm, bags of powder on the dresser. Blood covered me, and my baby, our baby, was sleeping in the next room. I fought so hard to stay awake through it all, to not pass out so if he went for Ax I could fight. I failed and was lucky the guy hadn’t gone after my baby.
“I need to take this yogurt home before it melts. Don’t show up like this again. Contact me through my attorney next time.” I tried to walk away, but his hand caught my wrist.
“Cori, please.” I jerked out of Richard’s grip without looking back and climbed in the Jeep. The yogurt landed next to me and the phone rang.Griffin.I let it go to voicemail and started the Jeep. The girls were still chatting when I pulled out, watching Richard vanish in the mirror as I pulled out on Broadway. My mind went to war, trying to piece together the right thing to do. Rich was Ax’s dad, he had wanted her so bad, promised to take care of her forever while I was pregnant. But promises were meant to be broken, and Richard broke them in spades. The bruises had healed, leaving scars on every fiber of my being.Does he deserve a chance with Ax?I shook my head, pulling into Griffin’s driveway. I could never trust Rich to not relapse, and playing with Axel’s safety was never happening, not again.
EIGHTEEN
Griffin
Ijerked my front door open to come face to face with a very jumpy Cori and two tiny ballerinas. Cori jumped, squealing like a guilty woman before putting a hand on her chest. Her fake smile couldn’t fool me, but I didn’t say anything. When her phone went to voicemail, I knew something was wrong so grabbed shoes, not bothering to change from my flannel pants. Mom yelled at me, swearing Cori would kill me for leaving. It was probably true, but an hour had come and gone. Then she wasn’t answering her phone.
“Sorry, we brought you yogurt.” Cori kissed my scar and pushed past me to go in. I knew something was wrong, but fought my nature to fly off the fucking handle. “Why are you off the couch? Get your butt back into a reclined position.” Cori glared.
“I got worried when you didn’t answer.” I shrugged, closing the door, locking it behind them. Cori told the girls to change and set the bag of yogurts in the freezer. I caught her as she stepped back, my arms circling her waist. “Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
“We can talk later, now go sit. I need you better for Harriet’s wedding in two days. No worming your way out of that one, buddy.” Cori spun in my arms, running her hands up my chest, putting light pressure on my piercings. The woman knew it drove me fucking crazy when she did that.
“You can’t distract me right now, even with sex, so start talking.” I pulled her body flush with mine, making sure she felt exactly what she did to me. Her whiskey eyes dilated and her cheeks flushed. Sick or not, I could take care of business, and if Cori thought she could tease her way out of the conversation she was wrong. Maybe.
“Daddy, we brought you strawberry!” My jaw literally went slack and I tore my eyes from Cori to settle them on the tiny voice calling me Daddy. My arms came away from Cori.Daddy.Celia let me scoop her up in my arms and I had to restrain to keep from crushing her. My princess called me Daddy.
“You did?” Celia bobbed her head. “That sounds like exactly what I need, Princess. Was dance fun?” Axel made her way upstairs, reaching for me to carry her too, and they told me all about the class while I took them out to the patio. I put them at their picnic table, trying to listen to the name of some new ballet move, but all I heard was one word.Daddy.For months, I had craved that word, hearing it was so much sweeter than I ever imagined. It was perfection rolling off my little girl’s sweet lips.
Cori brought the yogurt out, settling next to me and handing it out. “Can I call you Daddy?” Celia licked her orange spoon.
“Yeah, Princess.” I wanted to drop to my knees, to beg her to say the word over and over again. No other word in the world mattered but that one. I felt like shit, missed dance class, and something was wrong with my woman, but my baby girl calling me Daddy washed every bit of it away, sending the rest of the world to the back of my mind. “You can call me Daddy anytime. All the time.”
I ate every bit of the pink yogurt then Cori brought me out some herbal tea. It was like she knew my throat was killing me even if I would never admit it. It was bad enough having to cancel my personal training for the week and all my tattoo appointments for the next few days, but admitting I was in pain would have been too much of an ego blow. Before Cori could sit next to me I settled her in my lap.
“Congrats, Daddy.” Cori winked at me, smiling, and I kissed her temple.
“How did I get so fucking lucky? Sexy woman to take care of me, beautiful little girls running around my house, strawberry yogurt to make me feel better.” I took a long drink of the tea and Cori giggled. “But you aren’t off the hook. I still wanna know what happened between yogurt and here to make you look so scared.”
Cori swallowed hard, sighing. I could read her like a book and I had a feeling her druggie ex-husband was to blame for the reaction I was getting.
“Did he call you?” I dropped my voice to a whisper.
“No, he was outside FroZone. Please don’t get upset. I handled it, it just rattled me.” Upset? Not even close. More like fucking livid and murderous. “I told him to stay away and if he needed to contact me, to call my attorney. Then we left. It wasn’t a scene or anything. Rich begged me to talk to him, let him see Ax, but I left.” I saw red.
“He fucking followed you?” I growled, clenching my teeth.
