“You think you’re ready for this?” Ethan passed the spatula to Emmaline with an intense reverence.
Well, no. Not at all. She wasn’t ready for any of it—the eggs or the sticky daughter situations. But he hadn’t waited for an answer, so she didn’t have a choice. Ready or not, here she came.
“I’ll supervise her,” Cress assured.
While Em poked at the edges of the eggs, Ethan lifted Annie until he got her to giggle. He firefighter-carried her to the sofa and took no time in pulling the wonky braid from her hair, finger brushing the locks and leaves, and then starting a new French braid.
“The man knows how to braid his daughter’s hair,” Lauren said on a gasp.“I think I want to date this celebrity dad, too.”
Emmaline’s mouth parted at the sight of Ethan braiding his daughter’s hair.
Hell, she was done having kids. She was a one and done. But her ovaries perked to attention at the way Ethan made a braid. Over and under and…shit. He even understood how to make it work at the neckline so there wasn’t a funky bump there.
She shattered her focus of his braiding skills and turned back to the eggs. A little too brown. Ugh.
“I thought you were supervising,” she muttered to Cress.
“Shh,” Cress replied. “I’m busy.”
Em slid the eggs onto a plate and practically threw them in Barbie’s direction before flicking off the fire so she could pause and take a breath. Or four. All while she observed Ethan in his natural habitat.
“Do mine next?” Fiona asked, plopping right next to Annie.
“Ohhhh-varies in overdrive,” Cress muttered under her breath.
Uh-huh. That. Also, hold up because for the record? Emmaline tried to braid Fiona’s hair often, but Fiona would have none of it. Sometimes she’d go for a ponytail. On a special day, she’d let Emmaline curl it.
But she never let her mother braid her hair.
Then again, Em didn’t have forearms like Ethan’s. Forearms that flexed and bunched with muscles under the ink. Twisting the hair in perfect proportions and not looking perturbed at all about any of it.
“Sure thing.” Ethan pulled the elastic from his teeth—Yes! His teeth!—before he twisted it at the end of Annie’s braid.
Fiona handed him her own elastic—where in the world had she Smurfed one of those into existence?
That’s the moment Ethan Greene braided her daughter’s hair. The moment Emmaline might’ve limped unwillingly over a line—a line that marked something more than lust with him and scared the pants off her.
(Figuratively, because they had company.)
All that to say, a woman did not watch her pretend boyfriend braid her kid’s hair without falling a little in real love with him.
Nope. Dammit all. That wasn’t possible.
“Somebody get some popcorn or something,” Barbie said.
Hoo boy, yep, because Ethan put on quite a show.
Em pulled her lip between her teeth.
Watching him with her kid, she was feeling all kinds of conflicted about their charade. Because she wanted to hide again, slide into the invisible.
But, also, she didn’t want to.
That didn’t make any sense, but there it was.
Chapter Twenty-One
ETHAN
