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“He wasn’t thrilled, but he seems to have calmed down.”
“I’ll bet.”
There was something in her tone I didn’t understand, but I let it go.
“So, what’s the priority today?” she asked, shifting gears as we reentered the office.
I grabbed the notebook from the desk and waved it. “I had some new ideas for Jewel and Rocky’s story over the weekend. I’m going to make a start on those. I’m sure you’ve got plenty for the upcoming release to get on with.”
She nodded. “Sure do.”
One of my medieval romance novels was releasing soon. I wrote historical romance books over a range of eras, but medieval was my most popular. However, the story I was currently writing was a passion project set at the time Destiny Falls was established as a mining town, featuring Jewel and Rocky, who were loosely based on a real-life couple who had inspired the town’s romantic mythology. I’d been doing as much research on the real couple—Pearl and Charles—as I could, but information about them was scarce, so I’d had to improvise a lot.
I sat and flipped through my notebook to the most recently used page. I skim-read my notes from the weekend and mulled over how to incorporate them into what I’d written so far. As I was thinking it through there was a knock at the office door. I glanced around. A sheepish-looking Ryan poked his head around the corner, holding up a pair of mangled high-heeled boots.
I groaned. “Isn’t Felicity supposed to train them not to do that?”
He shrugged. “He’s a puppy. Puppies do puppy things.”
A whining sound came from near the floor. Duke sat there, somehow looking both proud and contrite.
A laugh burst from me before I could contain it. “At least he’s good entertainment value.”
9
NATE
“Canwe have fried potatoes for breakfast?”
I woke up with Tess hovering over me and blinked, trying to clear my blurry vision. Slowly, my daughter’s beautiful face crystallized, surrounded by a halo of dark blonde hair. She batted her eyelashes, but I knew she wasn’t trying to manipulate me with them. Tess honestly had no idea how adorable she was.
“Daddy?” she prompted. “There are leftover potatoes in the fridge.”
“Yes, sweetheart, we can make fried potatoes.” My voice sounded rusty. As it should, considering I’d been sleeping for hours.
I sat up, and she shuffled backward to sit on the edge of the bed. With her bottomless blue eyes that landed somewhere between the greenish blue of mine and the sky blue of her mother’s, she watched me stretch a kink out of my back,.
“Have you washed your hands?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Good. How about you go and get out the frying pan and the butter? I’ll be there in a minute.”
She left quietly—the same way she did everything. It was strange that Maddy and I had managed to produce a shy child. Tess hadn’t inherited either my directness or Maddy’s social nature. The only two things she was willing to speak up about were food and books. She read more than any other kid her age, and when she hadn’t eaten in a while, she gave hangry a new meaning.
I got up and dressed quickly, worried she’d turn on the stove if I took too long to get there. The fact that she’d woken me meant she was probably already on the verge of a hunger-induced meltdown. She didn’t like to disturb either her mother or me if she could avoid it, no matter how many times we told her we were happy for her to do so. I hurried into the kitchen. She was waiting, a slice of butter already in the pan. I switched the element on and started the kettle to make coffee.
“Would you like a hot chocolate?” I asked, thinking it might take the edge off.
She gave me one of those shy little smiles that punched me in the heart every time it made an appearance. “Yes, please.”
“Great. Grab the marshmallows and the chocolate powder. I’ll get started on the milk.”
She did as I said, her face furrowed with concentration, and my heart squeezed again. It was crazy to me that despite being a grumpy, hot-tempered bastard most of the time, I’d somehow helped raise a big-hearted, well-adjusted little girl.
Together, we made hot chocolate, and while she drank, I sliced potatoes and added them to the melted butter in the pan. I found a couple of leftover sausages and added them as well. I wasn’t much of a cook, but Tess never seemed to mind.
“Can we visit Grace’s new puppy?” she asked as I served her breakfast.
