Page 113 of Fierce-Dane

“Because she thought she was the one that made you cry and was going to get in trouble. That must have been her punishment before. It’s not nice to be punished for something you didn’t do, is it?”

“No,” Tiffani said. “I’ll say I’m sorry.”

“I expect that you will.” He hugged his daughter and squatted down. “Let’s go over and do it now. You tell her what you told me. You weren’t mad at her but mad at me.”

The two of them walked to the kitchen where Shiloh was standing with Sloane and getting a drink, her tears dried up.

“I’m sorry,” Tiffani said. “It’s not your fault I’m crying. I was mad at my father. I thought he loved you more than me.”

His heart cracked some hearing that.

“Dane is nice to me,” Shiloh said. “But he’s your Dad, not mine. I don’t have a father.”

“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” Tiffani said. “I’m sorry I’m being a brat too. That is wrong of me.”

He took a deep breath and let it out. “We are all learning as we go,” he said.

“Sloane brought nail polish,” Shiloh said. “I’ve never had my nails painted, but she said she’d do yours and mine together. She said you liked blue so I picked out three shades of blue.”

Jesus. This child was trying so hard and was the stranger here. He hoped to hell his daughter saw that.

“What color do you like?” Tiffani said.

“Purple,” Shiloh said. “But we just brought blue.”

“I’ve got purple nail polish upstairs you can use,” Tiffani said. “Then we can each get the color we like.”

“I don’t want my nails done,” Tyler said. “No one is going to make me do it, are they?”

His son had another appalled look on his face.

“No,” he said. “You and I can go play soccer in the yard when the girls are getting their nails done.”

“I like to kick the ball,” Shiloh said.

“Then why don’t you two go do that while we wait for lunch? Tiffani needs to get cleaned up. After we eat you can do your nails.”

Shiloh and Tyler ran out the backdoor to the fenced-in yard and he looked at Tiffani. Before his daughter could clean her face up, she turned to his girlfriend. “I’m sorry. I know I’m not behaving nice. It’s just, I’ve never seen my father with anyone other than my mother and he pays attention to me. Now he has someone else.”

His shoulders dropped over that honest statement that had to be so hard for a seven-year-old to make.

Sloane squatted down in front of Tiffani. “I’m not taking your Dad away from you,” Sloane said. “I’d never do that. He’s always going to be your father. He’s always going to be there for you first and foremost. I’m never going to try to be your mother or interfere with your parents. I’d just like us to be friends.”

“I told Daddy I liked you before.”

“Nothing has changed with Sloane,” he said. “Other than you found out about her sister. Not her child. But her sister.”

“I didn’t mean to be bad today,” Tiffani said.

“You’re hurt and sad,” Sloane said. “We all feel it at times. That’s natural. I want you to be able to tell your father how you feel. I think that’s very mature of you.”

“You do?” Tiffani asked.

“I do,” she said. “Just like it’s mature of you to apologize, but you don’t need to.”

“I do,” Tiffani said. “Dad says if you do something wrong you have to make it right. I’ll try harder.”

He couldn’t ask for anything else.

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