I shove more pancakes in my mouth. But I bank that visual to get me through what I know will be very many lonely nights ahead.
“Okay, so you’re not an online adult entertainer. Are you a content creator? I’ve heard there’s a lot of money in that.”
“Right. Because I’m on my phonesooooo much.”
“Mmmm. True.” He tilts his head, studying me. “I’ve got it. You’ve been studying finance. You’re a very successful day trader.”
Amelia comes bounding up the stairs, her normal whirlwind of joy shifting the energy in the room. “I smell chocolate.”
Carter’s eyes don’t stray from mine. He seems disappointed that his inquisition didn’t come up with anything. He moves on quickly, though, and pulls out a chair for Amelia then tousles her messy hair. “Morning, pumpkin. How many pancakes would you like?”
Her eyes go wide at the tall stacks in the center of the table. Just how many people did he think he was cooking for?
Amelia claps excitedly. “Ten!”
Carter laughs and forks a couple onto her plate. “How about we start with two? You can always have more.”
He proceeds to cut them up for her. And my insides melt.
Why? Why is that so attractive? So… sexy and enticing and… everything.
She douses them in syrup and shoves a large bite in her mouth.
“What do you say, Amelia?”
“Thank you,” she says, but it’s barely recognizable as words with the mouthful she’s working on.
In record time, Amelia makes one of her trademark messes. Syrup dribbles down her chin and onto the front of her pajamas. Chocolate is smeared along one cheek. She drops no less than two forkfuls of pancakes onto the floor. And she misses her plate altogether when she tries to squirt whipped cream.
“Amelia!” I say, horrified, my eyes instantly shifting to Carter.
But his reaction is not at all what I expect. He’s amused. I might even say he’s endeared. Instead of muttering curses under his breath, he squirts a perfect spiral cone of whipped cream onto the remaining pancakes. And I can only sit and stare in awe when he wets a paper towel and wipes her sticky face, smiling as if he’s enjoying every second of it.
If she’d made this kind of mess in front of Cyrus, he would have berated me for preparing such a stupid meal then blamed me for not teaching her to eat properly. And he’d have held it over my head for days, making me question not only my mothering abilities but my decision-making skills as well.
“You’re a good dad,” I say as Amelia runs out of the kitchen, syrup free. “You have far more patience than most.”
“I’ve no choice but to have patience raising a kid like Christian.”
I hear him, but it’s more than that. Not every parent has patience, no matter the challenges their children face in life. I’d venture to say there are some who face the difficulties he and Christian have faced together who never develop the kind of mentality and outlook he has. While Christian may have brought it out in him as a parent, there’s something far deeper there. It’s just… him.
“Speaking of Christian.” I glance at the hallway. “You don’t think he thinks we… you know.”
“I haven’t been a fifteen-year-old boy in nearly two decades. I have no clue what is or isn’t going through his head. But I do know what’s going throughmine.”
His intense, smoldering, almost dangerous stare tells me exactly what’s going through his head.
I’ve seen it in movies, but I’ve never once had the urge to swipe everything off a table, climb onto it, and crawl my way to the man on the other side. But I’m doing it now. In my head. In my momentary fantasy. The uber-erotic one that has us getting naked and sticky. Sticky with syrup. Oh, Lord… and whipped cream.
Scraping of chair legs on the floor pulls me back into reality. Carter puts his plate in the sink, hovering longer in that spot than I would expect. When he turns around, I don’t miss how his sweatpants are slightly tented with the outline of his penis.
He follows my gaze as I blatantly stare. Then he strides over behind me, puts his hands on my shoulders, leans close to my ear, and whispers, “Nobody haseverlooked at me the way you just did.” He gives me a squeeze then disappears down the hall.
I want to disappear too. Inhim.
Instead, I clean up after my daughter, put away the leftovers, tidy up the kitchen, then go downstairs and use my phone to search for the nearest branch of my bank.
Chapter Seventeen
