I took a breath to say I would, but he’d already hung up.
Dawn sighed as I shoved my phone in my pocket and ran my fingers through my hair, tugging on the roots and gritting my teeth.
“He shouldn’t talk to you like that,” she said.
“He sends his love,” I responded.
Maybe he shouldn’t have talked to me like that, but it wasn’t as though that was ever going to change. No point arguing about it.
My phone went off again, a message this time, and I dreaded what else Dad had thought to say to me in the elevator or whatever.
catdad_93: look what I just found
I laughed as a picture of all four kittens curled up on what I assumed was the heating pad Xander had on for Orion. Luna was curled up around the tiny kitten protectively, Nebula and Mercury flanking her.
Part of me was tempted to ask if I could go sit with the kittens for half an hour, but I wasn’t sure we were quite there yet. Besides, then I’d have to explain myself, and it was bad enough that Dawn was judging me.
“So,” I said, grasping for a subject change. “What, uh… what… color are we painting the nursery?”
Dawn narrowed her eyes, but she’d been talking about the nursery plans Roxie had helped her with all morning. Shewantedto talk about this. It was the perfect change of subject.
I was a genius.
“I can’t decide between duck egg and lemon custard,” she said. “Or how I’m gonna fit two cribs in there. I feel like we didn’t so much decide on anything as look at cute stuff on Pinterest.”
A plan suddenly crystalized in my mind, and I would have grinned at my own genius—because I was absolutely a genius—if it wouldn’t have given me away.
“Well, it’s a big decision. Why don’t you invite Roxie over again tomorrow? You’ll have the place all to yourselves.”
Dawn raised an eyebrow.
Now I did grin, because I was so excited about tomorrow night that even Dad couldn’t ruin it for me.
“Did you knowtheHayden Lewis lives in Otter Bay?”
13
XANDER
“Two couplesand a woman who was by herself came into the bakery today because of your Instagram post about it,” I told Milo as soon as I could see him coming down the stairs. “Iggy says both couples stopped in at Grinding, too.”
Milo blinked at me, a stray, still-damp curl hanging over his forehead, lips just barely parted.
See, this was the problem. There was no getting around the simple fact that he was ridiculously attractive. Or that I was ridiculously attractedtohim.
It didn’t matter how bad an idea it was. I tried not to think with my dick for a reason—it wasn’t all that smart.
Not that I was necessarily the smartest man in the world at the best of times. That wasn’t the point.
What gave Milo the right to be hot, was the point.
“Wow,” he said, coming the rest of the way down. “I didn’t think anyone paid attention to me.”
“You have nearly half a million followers,” I pointed out.
Not that I kept tabs or anything.
Except that I did.
