His question caused her body language to change. “Oh, that.” Her shoulders tensed, and she tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “When Brock and I first got together, he called me his princess. Then after we’d been married for about a year, he started calling me a princess. It was a subtle shift, but…” She took in a breath. “Pretty soon, anytime I tried to talk to him about anything or bring up any issue, he would say, oh is the princess not happy, or some other derogatory slant on me behaving entitled. It was just his way of gaslighting me. By our third anniversary, he was calling me Tiara instead of Tiana.”
“What an asshole.” Niko hadn’t meant to state his opinion out loud, it just sort of came out.
There were a few moments of silence before Tiana asked, “How long have you worked with Fostering the Future?”
It took Niko a second to make the shift in the conversation. “Oh, um, since its inception. I went to school with the guys who founded it.”
He glanced over and saw her looking in his direction in surprise. If she knew who the founders were, then that was most women’s reaction to them. “Aren’t they all really?—”
“Hot?Yes, but they’re taken, so you’re too late,” he teased her.
She stared at him for a moment and blinked before she started laughing and shaking her head. He loved her laugh. He loved that he could make her laugh. “No, I mean, I’m sure they’re hot, but I was going to say rich.”
“Oh, right. Yes, they are all gazillionaires.”
“Gazillionaires?” she questioned, her wide smile still in place.
Damn. She was reallyfunto flirt with.
“Okay fine, billionaires, but I think gazillionaires sounds better.”
“I read about them. Didn’t they all grow up in care?” she asked.
“Oh, you read about them?” he glanced at her.
She nodded.
“Areyou trying to make me jealous?” he teased, sort of.
“No.” Her smile was still in place. “I’m just curious.”
“Yeah, Nick, Alex, and Maddox all grew up in foster care. It was not great, but they had each other. They all became very successful in their chosen fields and wanted to give back. As soon as I found out what they were doing, I told them whatever I could do, just let me know. I usually try and visit with the kids I sponsor every other month, but at minimum four times a year, and I keep in contact with them all the time.”
“Oh, you sponsor kids?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’d love to foster one day, but I can’t with my schedule and lifestyle. Or I guess, now I don’t know. But before I couldn’t, so I sponsor six to ten kids at any given time, sort of like a big brother situation. I’m there if and when they need me.”
Niko could feel Tiana staring at him. He glanced over at her. “What?”
“You would foster kids?”
“Yeah. Of course I would. I’ve always wanted to. There are amazing kids in the system, and they need families and people that love them just as much as anyone else—no, actually, more than anyone else.”
Tiana quickly whipped her head, turning to look out the passenger-side window. She was quiet for the rest of the ride to the Airbnb, which thankfully, was only about five more minutes. It only took that long because downtown was blocked off due to the festival, so he had to go the long way.
Niko knew that his views on fostering weren’t typical, so he wasn’t surprised that she seemed taken aback. It was a lot to take on kids that weren’t your own.
They pulled up to AJ’s Airbnb in the center of a quiet street in the affluent Hope Falls Hills community, which Niko would now be residing in alone since the newly engaged couple was going to be living in Poppy’s house across town.
When Tiana started to get out, he instructed, “Wait.”
He came around to open her door.
“You don’t have to do that, no one is around.”
“I’m not doing this for an audience.” It really bothered him that Tiana clearly thought he would only be a gentleman if someone was watching.
He grabbed her bags out of the back.
