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“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked quietly, not even sure she should’ve said anything.
Corey let go of the counter and turned her way. His eyes narrowed.
She flinched, looked at Amelie, making sure she was holding her correctly in her arms, then back at him. Was he remembering what Mr. Bederman said and now wanted to take his anger out on her? Because the fire in his eyes said he wanted to do some damage.
“I got there ten minutes late picking her up. It was a helluva day at the bar. I called ahead and told them.” He shook his head. “They couldn’t find her.”
She frowned. “What do you mean they couldn’t find her?”
“I mean, when I got there, they couldn’t find her. Then after coming back from searching, they told me someone else had picked her up. That’s why they couldn’t find her.”
The way his eyes narrowed even further felt like he was secretly blaming her. Like she’d do something psycho like that again. The first time had been an anomaly. A huge mistake. A moment of insanity that she would never do again. That wasn’t who she was. Not to mention, he had never told her the daycare he was using and she respected that. She had no clue where it was.
“I told them I was calling the police because they released my daughter to someone else. How do you screw something like that up? They started scrambling around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off. Out of nowhere, this other woman is walking out of a room down the hallway with her. They got confused about what child I was talking about. Like, seriously? Give me a break.” He blew out a deep breath, cursing viciously about how moronic they were.
“That’s terrible. I wouldn’t bring her back there either.”
“I don’t care what Ricky says. Or Tamara, the bitc—” He stopped himself before the full word came out, glancing at Amelie. “I’m not bringing her back there.”
“I wouldn’t either. Do you think they’d make you?”
“No, but I can’t keep bringing her to the bar. I know I can’t, but it took me a week to find that place and I hated dropping her off. Now I’m going to hate it even more when I find a new place. I won’t trust them. This is my daughter and I can’t leave her in the hands of strangers.”
He looked away as if he wanted to say more, but forced himself to stop. “I’m sorry if you were waiting long.”
“I had just gotten here. I was late myself.”
Silence filled the space for a beat.
“She needs to be fed,” he finally said.
“I got it.”
He didn’t reach for Amelie as she walked past him into the kitchen to prepare a bottle and she didn’t offer to hand her off. She’d take as much time as she could with Amelie. This was such a rarity for her.
“Are you always so friendly with everyone?”
The stream of water coming from the faucet didn’t drown out the irritation in his tone.
She slowly turned toward him, knowing he was finally going to have his say about Mr. Bederman. He got to vent about one thing, now it was time to tick the other one off the list.
* * *
“What?”
The confused look on her face and the timid way she said it told Corey he needed to cool it with his tone. It wasn’t her fault about what happened at the daycare this evening. Unfortunately, she was getting the brunt of it since she was the first person he could talk to about it.
All those emotions he felt when she had taken Amelie had flooded his system again. For one brief moment, he had thought Genevieve had done it again. Just as swiftly, he had dismissed it. He’d gotten to know her in the past few weeks and knew she would never do something like that again.
This time had been worse than the last time. Because the first time he had known who had taken Amelie. Anyone could’ve picked his daughter up from the daycare. Any random stranger. Idiots. Never again was he taking her back there.
Time to move on and forget it ever happened. It wasn’t helping to calm him down by thinking about it.
“I saw you talking to the old guy who lives a few doors down.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks flamed red as she turned her attention back to the bottle. “Mr. Bederman. He’s nice. He has a date tonight. I was telling him how handsome he looked.”
Mr. Bederman. Hell, Corey didn’t even know the guy’s name, yet she did.
