"Sorry, I was—" Her words caught in her throat, her brain short-circuiting. Why was a man standing on her porch? With her ten-year-old daughter? She set her phone on the edge of the pillar next to her so she could grip the towel with two hands.
“I can see that.” The stranger shuffled on his feet, then awkwardly put out a hand. “Ryan.” Aelin didn’t take it since her hands were currently the only thing keeping her from starring in a neighbourhood soft porn.
Ryan glanced down, then pulled his hand back. He leaned on the railing, but his elbow slipped, and he nearly smashed into the porch column.
Aelin jumped and barely kept her feet from slipping off the threshold. “I’m Aelin.” She pursed her lips as he straightened and smoothed his shirt.
Ryan gave that look that everyone gave her when they first learned her name. The one that said“Are you Eastern European or do your parents speak Elvish?”
“It’s the second one,” she said. Ryan blinked. “My parents were obsessed with Lord of the Rings, so they gave me a name that sounded like I was an elvish princess.”
“Oh.” He frowned, then scrubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Are you the nanny, or?—”
“I’m the mother. Her mother. That’s—” She pointed at Bailey standing in front of them like a child zombie. “Bailey is my daughter.”
“Did you leave her at school this morning?”
Aelin frowned, bristling, and yet it didn’t keep her stomach from flipping. His dark eyes stared right at her, and with his dirty-blond hair tied up and his obvious musculature, she somehow felt even more naked than she was. She cleared her throat. "Idropped my daughter offat school this morning if that’s what you meant."
“Choir was cancelled.” Bailey huffed and slid past her into the house, making her towel split, revealing her entire upper left thigh.
“Cancelled?” Aelin turned. “How do you know it was?—?”
“The door was locked. She was sitting outside,” Ryan recited, his tone cool.
“Dad!” A little girl who looked to be the same age as Bailey leaned out the back window of the car. “Your work is calling!”
Ryan pulled his phone from his pocket. “I have to go.”
Aelin’s cheeks flushed. “She walked through the alcove, and I was in a rush.”
“Yeah. Well, maybe next time, wait two seconds to make sure she actually got in.” Ryan nodded once and headed for the steps.
“I did wait,” she snapped. Why was she trying to defend herself to this asshole? Who showed up on someone’s porch first thing in the morning when there’s been an obvious miscommunication and accuses them of being a terrible parent? “What a treat, to meet the world’s most perfect dad. Had I known you’d be on my doorstep, I would’ve dressed up for the occasion!”
Ryan stopped and glanced over his shoulder. His eyesdropped to her towel as if that was enough of a rebuttal, then continued toward the car. Before he passed the last lilac bush, a voice boomed from the speakers.
“—meeting starts in less than thirty minutes, and I don’t have those numbers in my inbox.”
Ryan started to jog. “Amaya, did you answer?”
“I didn’t mean to! It was ringing, and I tried to hit the red button?—”
“Who the hell is that?” the voice snapped.
Ryan yanked on the passenger door handle, then swore under his breath when it wouldn’t open. He lunged to the back, throwing his head through his daughter’s open window. “Marc, I’m here. Sorry, the phone picked up through my car’s Bluetooth.”
“You’re not in your car? You were supposed to be here?—”
“Yeah, I know. Had a bit of a snafu this morning.”
Aelin smiled to herself. She didn’t usually enjoy witnessing another person’s pain, but in this instance, it filled her with warm fuzzies.What, Ryan? Are you caught in an unexpected circumstance and can’t control every second of your life because you have children?
She remembered that he’d been the one to pick up her daughter standing alone in front of the school and bring her home, and a bit of the self-righteousness drained out of her. But just a bit.
“I need those numbers. Now,” the voice barked from the window, and Ryan smacked the top of his car, exhaling an inventive string of curse words that would’ve made her football coach of a father blink.
“Your daughter is right there,” Aelin snarked, then realized she’d been standing on the porch in a towel for the past five minutes with her daughter very much not at school and an appointment of her own that she was supposed to get to.
