Page 30 of A Package Deal

Now it was her turn to smile. “Also, Georgia has requested you read her a bedtime story. I’ll tell her you’re busy.”

I was on my feet before she finished talking. “I’m not busy.”

And with my heart in my throat and something squeezing my ribs too tightly, I sat on the side of Georgia’s bed and read her a story, complete with animal noises and different voices for each character while Em hovered in the doorway. The little girl clutched the stuffed animal I’d gotten her to her chest, her eyes lighting up when I got to the fun parts of the story.

I realized I may have married her mom…but I was in love with the girl already.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Emmerleigh

“Shit!” I sputtered as quietly as I could, having just stepped outside the guest room I shared with a still sleeping Georgia and ran into a human wall. Warm hands gripped my arms as my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness before dawn.

“What are you doing up so early?” Warrick whispered, his voice a raspy growl that set my skin ablaze. The intimacy of the darkness in the hallway made me want to fumble for a light switch just to flood out this stupid attraction.

“What are you doing up so early?” I countered, shrugging off his hands. I didn’t drop my gaze to confirm, but I was pretty sure I’d hit a solid slab of muscle. A slab without a goddamn shirt.

“I’ve found with age, I visit the bathroom more frequently at night than I used to,” he answered wryly. I didn’t even need light to know his mouth was tipped up in that smirk of his.

“Sucks to be old, I guess,” I snapped, my pulse finally slowing.

And then he must have reached out and hit the light switch because suddenly I was blinking my eyes against the warm yellow light flooding from the bathroom in the hallway. My heart took off again, this time because of the broad muscled chest that didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Except when I took in the sprinkling of chest hair and realized half of it was gray. Somehow that nod to advancing age didn’t detract from the overall look of lean, hard, virile, tattooed muscle. My gaze traced that line of hair down between stacks of ab muscles and finally hit the waistband of slate-blue pajama pants that were most certainly not composed of the same cheap cotton my own sleep shorts and tank top were made of.

Warrick’s throat clearing had my face burning bright and my gaze snapping back to his face. Yep, he was smirking alright. Though he wasn’t meeting my gaze any longer. No, the man was taking me in with the same hot intensity I’d been leering at him. My nipples stood at attention and I crossed my arms over my chest, just now realizing how little I wore.

“I need to place a few more calls to lawyers who might actually call me back, get the dumpster picked up, order more lumber, and double-check the permitted plans for the screened-in porch. Pip will be here right at sunrise to finish up the floors. She does well with a brush, despite her brute strength, so I’m going to have her start painting the walls too. That’ll give me the day to work on the porch. It’s going to be extremely close, but I think we can get it all?—”

“Em,” Warrick interrupted.

I snapped my mouth shut. I’d been babbling, something I rarely did. Then again, I rarely ran into gorgeous, half-naked men just seconds after I woke up.

“I’ll take Georgia to preschool so you can get started on all that. And I’ve got all the stuff for pancakes, so you just do what you need to do and I’ll get Georgia ready for the day.”

Guilt, the kind all mothers carried on their shoulders, but especially single moms trying to get everything done all by themselves, weighed heavy this morning. I bristled.

“I can take her.”

Warrick eyed me for a moment, his smirk sliding off his face. “I know you can, but why should you when I’m here to help?”

Such an easy, kind statement and yet so puzzling. “Why are you helping, Warrick?”

His eyes positively sparkled. “Not Dick today?”

“Not yet,” I snapped.

He bit back a smile. “Why would I not help? Helping you means getting this project done. Plus it helps Georgia.” He shifted on his feet, moving closer to the bathroom. “And it gives me something to do.”

Then he turned into the bathroom, giving me a front-row seat to his muscled ass in those pajama pants and shut the door. I sagged against the wall, back in the dim light of the hallway, and then sprang back upright, not wanting to be caught lingering outside the bathroom like some love-addled teenager. I had serious shit going on in my life and lusting after my client was not anywhere on that priority list.

I managed to leave two more voicemails for lawyers, scheduled the dumpster to be picked up this afternoon, and still had time to swing Georgia up into my arms and press a dozen kisses to her face as she raced into the kitchen. She squealed and kicked and giggled until I put her down. Then she tilted her head left and right, showing off the two lopsided pigtails Warrick must have added to her hair.

“Look what Wa-wy did! Up high and down low. Like a seesaw!”

Warrick, thankfully clad in a shirt and jeans now, slid pancakes on a plate and handed it to me, an embarrassed grin on his face. I took the plate, knowing I would have paid good money I didn’t have to see the giant of a man wrestle her blonde curls into submission.

“They look amazing! Now come eat your pancakes so you and Aster can swing from the monkey bars today.”

“I ate alweady, Mama.”

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