“Yay! My favorites are the mermaid ones and strawberry.”
“Mermaid and strawberry, got it,” Jake confirmed, tapping his temple and leaving me with no doubt next time we visited, there’d be a drawer full of fizzers.
“You ready to get out?” I asked.
“Nope,” she replied, turning away from me and blowing bubbles.
“Okay then.” I wasn’t up for the fight. Between the bull, the brownies, and the bath, I was already exhausted and not ready for another round. “Do you mind watching her?” I asked Jake, and when he shook his head, I slipped by him.
While I took the brownies out of the pan and cut off the well-done edges, I listened to their laughter and conversation. Jake was lecturing her about being careful and only going near Gladiator when he was there with her. When Cassie protested, I expected Jake to crumble, but he held firm. Patiently, he explained that he knew she loved him, but he was so much bigger and heavier than she was, and he didn’t want Gladiator to accidentally tread on her toes and hurt her.
“Mom trodded on my toe,” Cassie told him, and I cringed.
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it,” Jake offered.
“It still hurt.”
“And Mom’s only little. Imagine if Gladiator stepped on you.”
“Oh.”
I could picture Cassie’s face as she scrunched up her nose and pondered Jake’s words. For a kid, Cassie was a deep thinker, and instead of breezing through the conversation, she often stopped to consider it.
“Now, let’s get out of the bath before you go all wrinkly.”
“I’m already wrinkly, Dad,” Cassie replied, and my eyes watered.
For Cassie, it was as easy as that. Jake was her dad, and she was going to call him that. Me, I was still wrapping my head around the situation and then she’d gone and dropped the bombshell on Shelley that she was now grandma. I could only imagine how that went down.
Covering the still-warm brownies with a clean tea towel, I filled a glass with water and stepped out onto the porch, leaving them to have their moment. Eavesdropping was never a good thing, even if it was on your daughter and her baby daddy.
“Baby daddy,” I whispered to myself with a smile as I leaned on the railing and looked out across the fields.
“Who’s a baby daddy?” Jake asked as he came out to join me.
Embarrassed I’d been caught daydreaming and letting my imagination get the better of me, I forced myself to answer. “Technically, you are.”
“She’s not really a baby anymore.”
“Thank God. She was a nightmare.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“Trust me. That girl has one hell of a set of lungs on her, and she was not afraid to use them,” I told him, smiling at the memory.
At the time, I hadn’t been smiling. I’d been covered in vomit, couldn’t remember the last time I’d showered, and was so tired I put the clean clothes in the washer and the dirty ones back in the drawers.
“She’s a good kid,” Jake complimented, his face going soft even under the layer of stubble on his jaw that made him look too sexy for his own good.
“Most of the time, anyway. She damn near gave me a heart attack being in the pen with that bull.”
“Me too. But we’ve had a talk about it so hopefully that helps.”
“I heard.”
“And?”
“And what?”
