“I’m down for great news,” Noah says, taking a hasty bite of his chocolate-glazed donut.
“Good, Uncle Noah,” Evie beams. “Because I want you to hear this, too.” She takes a deep breath, clearly preparing for a dramatic announcement, and that alone gives me pause. “Dash and I are about to be related!”
The statement hangs in the air like an unresolved legal motion. Lemon’s eyes widen twice their size, and I can practically hear her mental gears grinding as she tries to process this information.
“Related?” I ask, tipping my ear her way as if prompting her to go on.
“How exactly?” Lemon asks with a similar tone because we happen to be in sync when it comes to sniffing out potential trouble.
Dash bounces on her toes with excitement. “Well, you know my mom is recently divorced, and she’s, like, totally on this crusade to take back her life and stuff. Basically, my mom is looking to get knocked up again, and she’s short one man.” She turns to look directly at me. “So she needs to find one ASAP, and Evie totally volunteered you for the effort!”
“What effort?” I ask, tilting my head at the two of them, trying to decipher a better picture of what’s transpiring here.
“You know,” Evie shoots me a look. “In the baby-making department.”
“No way,” Lemon squawks, her voice rising to a pitch that could probably be heard in the next county. “Your daddy is taken.”
A dull laugh rides through my chest. They can’t be serious.
Evie and Dash exchange the kind of look that passes between co-conspirators who’ve clearly thought this through extensively.
“It’s not like that,” Dash explains with the patience of someone addressing a particularly slow jury. And suddenly I don’t like being on the receiving end. “She just wants to borrow his, you know, swimmers. It’s all totally clinical and stuff.”
“My swimmers?” I blink at her, and Noah howls out a laugh.
Evie nods earnestly. “After her divorce, she decided she wanted to expand her family, but now she needs to resort to?—”
“Using someone else’s husband?” Carlotta cuts in with a laugh. “Honey, I can relate. I’ve had to resort to that a time or two myself.”
Lemon takes a moment to glare at Carlotta, and the look she’s giving could freeze water at forty paces. Carlotta isn’t lying. That’s exactly how Lemon and her sister Charlie came to be. “I’m sorry, girls,” she’s quick to tell them. “But the answer is no.”
Both Evie and Dash look affronted.
“We’re not giving up so easily.” Evie shakes her head with the determination of a defense attorney who’s found a loophole. “This is our big chance! Dash and I are destined to be related. We’re like sisters with a missing link!” She turns to me with complete confidence. “Don’t worry, Dad. You are so going to knock this out of the park.”
Noah nearly chokes on his coffee. “Well, that’s one way to make a family connection.”
“You know what?” Evie continues with a sly grin rising on her lips. “I think you should put your hat in the ring, too, Uncle Noah.” She turns to Dash with growing excitement. “I mean, how cool would that be if your mom ended up with twins?”
Dash squeals with delight. “Like, totally! One that belongs to your dad and one that belongs to your Uncle Noah!”
Carlotta barks out a laugh. “Now that would give Dash’s mama something in common with our Lot Lot, wouldn’t it?”
“No, it wouldn’t,” I tell her. “The twins are one hundred percent mine.”
“Says you,” Noah taunts while holding back a laugh.
“Very funny.” I shake my head his way.
The girls head toward the counter, still chattering excitedly about their grand plan, undeterred by the unanimous lack of enthusiasm from owners of those swimmers, and Lemon, of course.
“Well,” Noah says dryly, “that’s certainly an interesting proposition.”
I growl his way. “Interesting is not the word I would use.”
“Oh, come on, Sexy.” Carlotta grins. “Where’s your sense of adventure? Your sense of civic duty?”
I consider my response as if weighing evidence in a complex case. “My daughter wants to orchestrate a situation that would involve me donating genetic material to her best friend’s mother. Not happening. Not in this life, not in the next.” I shake my head at the thought. “In my courtroom,” I say finally, “we have a term for propositions that sound reasonable on the surface but are actually fraught with unforeseen complications.”
