Page 91 of The Very Naughty List

NICK

Our niece ispure and absolutechaos.

“Wait, wait! Hang on before you do that.” I reach out to grab the sprinkle jar from her hand, but it’s too late. Iris has already dumped a small truckload of sprinkles into a messy pile atop a Christmas cookie.

“Uncle Nick,look!” Iris beams, clearly proud of her handiwork. “That one’s mine,” she declares, eyeing the sprinkle covered cookie with the look of a child who’s anticipating a major sugar high.

“Well, so much for that container of sprinkles,” Sebastian comments wryly. “We’ve got backups, right?”

“Yeah, right here.”

Reid brings out a few more of the small plastic containers while Hailey indulgently oohs and aahs over our niece’s decorating skills.

The kitchen is a total mess, Bruno keeps getting underfoot because he’s trying to lick up any spilled sprinkles, there are cookie cutters everywhere, and… I’m actually having a great time.

When Addison called yesterday to see if we could watch Iris for a bit today, we all agreed quickly. My brothers and I adoreour niece, even though she’s a bit like a tiny walking tornado sometimes. Actually, that might be the exact reasonwhywe love her so much.

“This is so fun! I love Christmas cookies!” Iris exclaims, kneeling on a stool by the counter and watching as Hailey rolls out more dough. She beams.

I hide a grin, my gaze shifting from my niece to Hailey. The Christmas cookies were her idea, and she seems to be having a great time with Iris. And for Iris’s part, every time she looks at Hailey, I swear she has stars in her eyes.

I don’t blame her for that one bit.

Hailey finishes rolling out the dough, and I watch as she, Iris, Reid, and Sebastian all gather around and start using the cookie cutters to cut out shapes. I snort when Seb tries to wad a bunch of extra dough into a cutter to get one last cookie out of the scraps of rolled-out dough.

“You’re not using it right,” I tell him. “I don’t think the cookies are supposed to look all irregular like that.”

“What are you talking about?” He shrugs, continuing right on with his mission. “They’re cutouts—they’re supposed to be all different shapes.”

He places a cookie that looks like a dangerously deformed reindeer on the tray, then dabs a splotch of frosting on Hailey’s nose. She grins, trying to lick it away, but she can’t quite reach it.

With a quick glance at Iris to make sure she’s not watching, Sebastian pulls Hailey away and licks the frosting off for her, following it up with a kiss on her lips.

“More sprinkles please!” Iris calls, holding out her hand like a doctor asking for a scalpel.

Reid shakes his head wryly, opening up a container and handing it to her.

“I blame you for this, you know,” he tells Hailey as she and Sebastian return to rejoin the cookie decorating. “You put allthose sprinkles on that test cookie we made, and it gave her ideas.”

Hailey sticks out her tongue at him. “Maybe you just don’t understand art. Stop trying to stifle my creative expression.”

He smirks at her. “Sassy.”

“Bossy.”

The two of them share a look, amusement and attraction clear in their expressions, and another smile twitches at the corners of my lips.

“Come on, Nick!” Hailey glances over at me, gesturing me closer. “You haven’t made a single cookie yet. You have to try doing at leastone. Maybe Reid will approve of your decorating techniques more than ours.”

She nudges Iris, who giggles.

I’m standing a little apart from all the action, and I hesitate. Although I love having Iris over, it’s not really in my nature to just throw myself into the hustle and bustle of activities like this. Normally, I feel more comfortable on the sidelines, but as Hailey raises a cookie cutter invitingly, I find myself stepping forward.

The movement is automatic, almost instinctive, and I can’t quite tell if it’s because a part of me has been itching to join in or because I’d do pretty much anything this woman asked me to.

I cram my large frame in around the counter with the rest of them, taking my time cutting out and decorating one perfect cookie as the rest of the batch gets made and decorated in a flurry of activity.

Once the tray is full and the last of the dough has been used up, Sebastian leans over to inspect my cookie.

---