Page 31 of Power Play

I’d had my share of women, but I was never careless with them. Ever.

“He’s…not in her life. I told you that. Trust me, I wouldn’t be asking you. But this opportunity is so much money I can’t walk away from it. Between what I’ll earn in two weeks and my savings, I’ll finally be able to buy a house for us. I would take her with me, but I’m going to be working crazy hours and I wouldrather Tess be someplace familiar than alone with a strange babysitter.”

I got that. I did. However, there was a bigbutcoming. “Do I really seem like the kind of guy you should leave a kid with for two weeks? I have a woman who comes in to take care of my plants so I don’t kill them.”

“No, you have an ex-girlfriend who you help out by giving her a job.” she said and cupped my face in her hands. “Liam, you can do this. You’re great with Tess and I…I trust you more than anyone I know.”

Her brown eyes got damp. And then there were tears trembling on the ends of her lashes.

“Oh, no. Don’t. Please don’t do that!” God, if there was one thing I couldn’t handle it was tears. A woman in tears brought me back to my childhood and problems I couldn’t fix no matter how hard I tried. “So where is this job?”

“Carson City, Nevada. It’s fire season and they need extra staff equipped to handle trauma situations.”

“Can’t I just pay you whatever you were going to make?”

“No,” she sighed. “This is important work, and I do have some self-respect. I’m not taking your money.”

“Okay, how about I just buy you the house you want?”

Janice gave me that look she always did when she was trying to communicate what an idiot I was. Tess sometimes gave me that same look.

“What about Tess? Does she even know you’re doing this?”

“Of course. Do you honestly think I would have even asked, if she wasn’t okay with the plan? She adores you. This is going to be like mini-fun camp for her.”

“What if I mess her up?”

Certainly, I wasn’t the only one who could compile a list of all the ways I could mess up a kid.

“You just make sure she doesn’t spend all her time reading and try and get her to eat something besides bubble tea and graham crackers. I’ll FaceTime her every day and I’ll be back before you guys even miss me.”

Well. Shit.

I could feel it happening. Like a cramp in my foot. Like the flu.

Two weeks with a kid.

How hard could it be?

8

Kit

Isat down on the bus that would take me up to Liam’s house and a newspaper crinkled under my thigh. I pulled it out from under me and turned it over to the front page. Where there was a full color picture of Liam Locke pushing a little girl in a swing at some park.

Both of them were wearing matching scowls.

The headline wasn’t subtle.

Daddy Liam?

Apparently, yesterday Liam went to a park with a little girl and the whole town lost its mind.

“I knew one of these days he’d end up being some woman’s baby daddy,” said the woman next to me with her shopping bags gathered around her feet. “That boy is too pretty for his own good.” She shot a significant look at the paper in my hands.

In the picture he wore a baseball cap and sunglasses, but a man that size would stand out anywhere. Also a guy whowore two carat diamonds in his ears and custom blue and gray Jordan’s on his feet didn’t look like any other dad in the park.

“Sure is a looker though,” the woman next to me said. “Wouldn’t mind making a baby with him.”

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