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I looked at my surroundings near baggage claim. "Think that ship sailed last night, darlin'."

"Damon."

"Stop worrying, I’m sure we’ll get along just fine. She seems nice."

"She is not nice,” Mikayla shot back. “She's charming. There's a difference."

A laugh escaped me. “I’m a big boy, you don’t need to worry about me.”

"I'm worried about what she's going to say."

That was interesting. "About you?"

"About everything."

There was something in her voice that made my smile fade. I remembered how she'd looked the night before. How quickly she'd gone from annoyed to overwhelmed. How she'd struggled to catch her breath.

I lowered my voice. "Hey."

"What?"

"I've got this."

Silence.

Then, softer, "You don't know what you're getting yourself into."

"Probably not."

"Damon—"

"But I can handle your mom."

She let out a short laugh. "Famous last words."

"Just enjoy your spa day."

There was another sigh. "Bye, Damon."

The call ended.

I stared down at my phone, still smiling.

"Well, well, well." A woman's voice cut through the noise of the terminal. "Damon Lockhart."

I looked up.

And there she was.

Claudia Parsons.

I'd seen pictures of her online, but they hadn't done her justice. In person she was the spitting image of the actress Lisa Bonet, who I’d had a crush on from her role on A Different World.

And she looked young. She didn’t look a day over forty, but since that would mean she’d had Mikayla at ten, I doubted that was her age. If I hadn't known she was Mikayla's mother, I'd have assumed they were sisters.

She wore a flowing floral dress, oversized sunglasses pushed onto her head, and enough jewelry to set off a metal detector from fifty feet away.

She studied me with the sharp, assessing gaze of a woman inspecting a horse she wasn't entirely convinced was sound.