It had been a hellish week, and he was ready to cut loose and enjoy himself—and this time, with Caleb and Everett around, Bastian would never be able to steal it from him.
* * *
xVerity livedin a two-story cliffstone behemoth on a quiet street in Aurora. Each lawn was uniformly tidy, and despite the unseasonable cold, every garden along the way was primed for the warm weather still to come. Some bare-root perennials had already flowered, their bell-shaped blooms cheerful and bright. Other households, less concerned with color, favored geometric topiaries. Lush rectangular prisms made of healthy green foliage hugged the perimeter of those homes, their pruned tops meticulously level. Not a single leaf encroached on the spotless first-floor windows.
Jayne supposed he should have been impressed, but he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. Leave it to xV to be the secretly rich Single Dad living in his perfect house on the good side of town. It was a damned good thing that Jayne knew xV like he did, or he would have thought from his choice of dwelling alone that he was made of exactly the same ilk as the doctors Jayne was charged with babysitting through their clinical trials. Men like that—stubborn, pompous, mind-numbingly boring individuals who cared more about being right than they did about almost anything else—drove Jayne up the wall.
But, as far as he knew, xV wasn’t an asshole, so despite his Stepford neighborhood, Jayne figured they’d be good.
As Jayne approached the address he’d been provided, he slowed the minivan to a crawl and pulled up beside the white concrete sidewalk. According to his GPS, the house he was destined for was the one whose lawn was shaded by the city-owned catalpa tree. The house’s large bay window overlooked the street just the same as the neighbors’ did, but unlike every other house along the way, in this particular bay window sat a young girl, likely no more than five or six. Her long brown hair fell in braids down her chest, concealing some of the detailing of her white dress’s wide slash, off-the-shoulder neckline. Her hands were pressed flat against the glass—soon enough, xV’s house would be the only one on the block whose windows weren’t spotless.
Jayne could almost hear the HOA rubbing their hands together gleefully, waiting to slap him with a fine.
When Jayne parked, Shep, who’d been in the front passenger seat, grabbed his overnight bag from the back and bailed out of the car. The girl in the window, who had to be xV’s daughter, Nikki, scooted back from the glass and dove out from behind the curtains that kept the public from observing xV in his natural habitat. By the time Jayne had left the car, collected Parker from his car seat, and started up the driveway, Nikki had tugged the front door open and stood on the top landing. When Jayne looked her way, she smiled like he was her favorite person in the entire world and waved at him with her arm held high over her head.
“Hi!” she called. “Hi! Hello! Are you the glittery doctor?”
If anyone else had called him ‘glittery doctor,’ Jayne’s eye would have twitched, but Nikki was so sweet, she already had him wrapped around her little finger.
“Yes, I am,” Jayne replied. “Although it’s pronounced ‘GlitterDoctor.’”
“Glittery doctor,” Nikki repeated. Barefooted, she curled her toes over the edge of the landing. “Hi, I’m Nikki.”
Two could play that game. Jayne caught up with Shep, who’d come to a stop in front of the few stairs leading to the front door, and shot Nikki a mischievous smile. “Hi, Nikiki, it’s good to meet you.”
Nikki puffed out her cheeks. “Nikki.”
“Nikiki,” Jayne repeated, matching her tone from moments before.
Nikki paused, then laughed. The sound of it was almost shrill with delight, like she’d never known a bad day in her life, and had no fear of indulging wholeheartedly in everything that made her happy. It should have warmed Jayne’s heart, but it dragged him into a dark place instead.
Would Parker ever sound so carefree?
While he struggled with his doubt, Nikki hopped back from the edge of the landing and fixed her curious eyes on Shep. “Who’s that?”
“That’s my brother, Shep.” Jayne gestured at Shep. “He’s going to be helping your dad take care of baby Parker tonight.”
“Hi Sheppy,” Nikki said.
Shep, to Jayne’s delight, didn’t scowl at her. “Hi, Nikiki.”
“You guys are funny.” Nikki craned her head to look into the house. “I hear my daddy inside, but I think he’s still busy with my baby brother and my baby sister. Babies are stinky.”
Jayne nodded—Parker’s diapers didn’t prove her wrong. “True.”
“But I still like them.” Nikki stretched, arching her back and lifting both arms high over her head, her fingers woven together. When she finished stretching, she dropped her arms dramatically and rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. “I’m glad to be a big sister even when they cry at night and then I’m cranky at school. My friend Michael says that he wishes he could be a big brother, and my friend Sara says that I’m real lucky to have little babies as my brother and sister, because her sister is four and Sara says she’s really annoying.”
“It’s fun to be a little older, isn’t it?”
“Yup.” Nikki hopped over the threshold and looked deeper into the house. “I don’t think my daddy knows you’re here so I’m gonna go find him and tell him. You stay here, okay?”
“Okay.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it!”
