Of something.
Damien squinted at the lines and colors. It wasn’t like Emily to make something so messy. As far as six-year-olds went, she was an excellent artist. Just the other week, she and Damien had collaborated on a drawing of all the main characters from the most recent incarnation of theMy Little Ponyfranchise, which had sold on the market for a cool half mil.
Not really, but Gwynn’s husband, Alex, had praised it, which was about as close to renown as Damien was ever going to get. “It’s nice.”
Emily puffed her cheeks.
“It’s… not nice?”
“Mimi!” Emily waved the picture angrily. The paper it had been drawn on flapped from the force of her onslaught. “It’sbeautiful.”
“Oh, right. It is beautiful.” Damien ruffled her hair. “It’s very abstract. I like it. Has Grandpa Alex been giving you lessons?”
“No.” She lifted her chin proudly. “Bimimi and I made it together to put in your office.”
“Bimimi?” Damien inched forward on the couch cushion to check on his seventeen-month-old son. Bryan was on his stomach on the floor, the hood of his furry blue monster onesie draped over his head. He was in the middle of redecorating the antique wood floor planks that Matthew had hand-selected for their remodeled living room with a green crayon.
“Uh-oh,” Emily said, vocalizing the dialog running through Damien’s head in a much nicer way. “Bad baby!”
In the approximate year and a half that Damien had been the parent of a very young child, he’d learned a great many things about patience and self-censoring. Faced with an “oh shit” moment, he remained calm and collected—at least on the outside. On the inside there were a few dozen curse words rattling at the bars of their cages, dying to come out.
Matthew was scheduled to be home from school in minutes.
Damien was going to be indeepshit if Matthew found out that he’d been chatting with his friends instead of preventing their son from making modern art on their new floor.
“Emily,” Damien asked in as level and kind a voice as he could muster. “Could you please help me by putting your crayons back in their box and taking them to your room?”
“Okay, Mimi. Then I’ll go look for Daddy.”
Emily set about her task and skipped out of the room, leaving Damien with a child in a monster costume and a mess he had no idea how to clean up.
It was time to bring in the big guns. Damien didn’t know what to do, but one of his friends might.
KnotMyProblem: SOS
KnotMyProblem: HUGE SOS
TeenDad2: What’s up??
LoveHarley: everything okay, Knot?
KnotMyProblem: How do you get crayon off your antique wood floor?
KnotMyProblem: Gwynn, breathe a word of this to Matthew and I’ll bust something out of the not-so-secret blackmail vault
Gwynning: My lips are sealed
KnotMyProblem: What about your fingers?
Gwynning: My fingers are tied. He’s not going to be hearing about it from me in any way, shape, or form
Gwynn was a smart man. In addition to the whole Alex-wearing-lace-panties thing, Damien had accrued a wealth of blackmail-worthy moments since he’d moved to Aurora.
It turned out Damien wasn’t the only one who liked being called Daddy.
xVerity: Do you have any mineral spirits?
KnotMyProblem: What the hell are those!?
