“Don’t panic,” I whisper.“Not yet.”
But parental instinct already snaps tight inside me.
“Mila?”
Still nothing.
I check the bathroom.
Her reading corner.
Behind the armchair where she likes to hide with the snacks, she thinks I don’t notice.
Empty.
Okay.She’s smart.She’s responsible.She knows the rules.She knows not to leave the place by herself.She knows to wait for me.
I grip the handrail, hurrying down the stairs.
The kitchen comes into view—and I freeze.
There’s a note waiting on the counter:
The umbrella gremlinis with me across the hall.I will return her fed, unless you come over to have breakfast with us.The door’s unlocked.
—AH
I let outa breath I’d been choking back—relief sweeping through me with enough force to weaken my knees.
And then another emotion slides in right behind it.
One I really shouldn’t feel.
One I’m definitely not ready to unpack.
He took care of her.
He took care of us.
I don’t waste another second.Mila is almost certainly charming or terrorizing Alec Hovarth—who doesn’t care much about children, yet, he’s been gentle and understanding with Mila.
I rush across the hall and push the door open.
And there she is—my child, absolutely covered in flour, staring into a frying pan like she’s attempting surgery with a spatula.
“What are you doing?”I manage, my voice wobbling between panic and disbelief.
“We’re making pancakes,” she announces proudly.“They’re supposed to look like animals, but right now they look like ...blobs that won’t even make it to circles.”
“You’re not using enough imagination,” Alec says beside her.
He looks up at me then—tired, rumpled, wearing a shirt that probably belongs in a laundry basket—and that quiet tug in my chest from last night returns, harder this time.
And for one terrifying second ...I don’t know how to protect myself from it.
Before I can process this, a second male voice rises from the kitchen island.“Music.That’s his only talent.That’s why I had to come save breakfast.”
I blink.
