Page 20 of On the Wild Side

But he’s already sitting in the chair, Daisy curled up against his chest, and they’re rocking back and forth.

“What else can I do?” he asks me, his voice hushed as Daisy starts to fall asleep.

“Will you just…stay?” I bite my lip, hating how vulnerable I sound, but he smiles at me over Daisy’s head.

“Looks like you’re stuck with me for a while,” he replies as he brushes his hand down her long hair.

“I’ll get some things, just in case.”

I bustle about, gathering the puke bowl, wet cloth, and cold compress and then pour a sports drink from the pantry—on hand for just these occasions—into a bottle with some ice so it’s cold, and set everything on the table next to Brady and Daisy, and then I lower myself onto the couch and rest my elbows on my knees, watching them.

Brady kisses the top of her head, rocking gently back and forth, back and forth.

“She’s already asleep,” he says in surprise.

“Throwing up’s hard work.” I offer him a half smile and then rub my hands down my face. “Hopefully, she’ll stay that way, but she’ll probably be in and out. Oh, I need to check for fever. I’ll be right back.”

I rush upstairs to Daisy’s bathroom and grab the thermometer, then return to them and point it at her forehead.

“One-oh-one,” I mutter. “Damn. We’ll keep an eye on that, and when she wakes up, I’ll give her some Tylenol.”

“Does she get sick very often?”

“Thankfully, no, but schools are cesspools of germs, so it happens a couple of times a year. I just hope thatyoudon’t get sick.”

“I’m fine,” he says as I return to the couch and sit, then relax against the cushions, watching this handsome, sexy, sweet man rock my daughter. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

“Sure.” I bite my lip, hoping that he doesn’t ask something that I’ll have to lie about.

“Where’s her father?”

Nope. Don’t have to lie. “He passed away.” I pull my legs up under me and sit crisscross. “She wasn’t quite two yet, and herdad contracted pneumonia, and it got really bad. The infection spread through his body, and they couldn’t help him.”

Brady scowls and shakes his head. “That’s not what I was expecting. I thought you’d say that he took off at some point and hasn’t paid child support in years.”

I smile and shake my head. “No, Nate wouldn’t have done that. He was a good guy. Loved her to pieces. He was…comfortable.”

Brady raises an eyebrow at that, and I feel myself squirm.

“I don’t usually talk about him. In fact, I haven’t talked to Erin, Millie, and the others about him. They know he passed away, but that’s all.” I frown at the coffee table and then decide to just let the words come out. “Nate and I were best friends in school. I always wondered why he liked me so much. We were from opposite sides of the tracks, you know? His family was wealthy, and I didn’t have a family at all. I was in foster care. Maybe he thought he could help me or save me. Either way, we were really close, like I said. But never romantically. I was absolutelynotNate’s type of girl.”

“What was his type?” Brady asks.

“Tall, thin, brunette. I’m not even one of those things.” I smile at the memory. “Which was fine, because I didn’t think about him that way either. Our relationship was platonic.”

Brady raises an eyebrow and then looks down at Daisy and back at me.

“Yeah, well, we were at a college party—his college because I didn’t go—and there was alcohol involved.”

“Ah.” He nods slowly. “I get it.”

“Young and drunk and stupid.” I blow out a breath. “And Nate, being the responsible, kind, good guy that he was, insisted that we get married. And this might sound really bad, but at the time, I thought, I could do far worse. I knew him, Ilikedhim,we got along well, he had a stable family, and we’d never have to worry about money. I talked myself into it. I was selfish.”

“You were young,” he reminds me.

“And scared,” I agree. “And pregnant. But, we were excited for her, and we continued being friends. We even had sex sometimes, even though it wasn’t exactly…passionate, I guess is the word. But it was fine. Everything was justfine.”

“Until it wasn’t.”

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