Page 60 of Hey, Daddy

The woman on the phone and I both paused as he went into his angry explanation of how the last fifteen minutes had gone for him.

Which completely didn’t align with everything I’d just told her about her warm welcome to me.

“So it’s men,” she mused. “This definitely makes more sense to me now. Thank you so much for doing this. I had no clue you had male staff working with you.”

“Oh, my brother was a happy addition,” I said. “I don’t have male staff, but I’m definitely going to use him more.”

After we hung up, we headed to the next boutique.

“Why did I have to buy my own blanket?” I frowned at him.

His eyes sparkled as he said, “Because you bought it before I could.”

I winked at him and said, “Why don’t you go in first.”

He did, and I followed suit ten minutes later.

Dima was in deep discussion with the woman behind the counter, who’d also pulled in another employee that was on the side of the counter that Dima was on.

She was leaning into him, flirting and laughing.

Both women turned to me as I came into the room, and I could see the clear disgust on their faces when they took me in and clearly found me lacking.

I glanced at Dima to see that he was wearing his usual attire of Polo shirt, nice jeans, and nice boots.

He’d worn the same thing since high school when his high school crush, Ellia, had told him he looked nice in Polo shirts.

But, compared to me, he was in much better clothing than I was wearing.

I smiled and went about browsing, finding a few really cute keychains near the front.

“Of course she’d go to the sale items,” I heard one of them mutter.

Dima snorted.

A sales rack in the back caught my eye, and I moved toward the back corner with my eye on a shirt that said “Hey, Daddy” on it.

Grinning like a loon, I picked it up off the rack and hooked it on my finger and started to go through the rack.

A charged silence, paired with the door opening and closing, the little “dee-doo” of the chime announcing a new customer sounding, had me glancing toward the front door with curiosity.

What could cause the two chatty women to go that quiet?

Haze.

He came through the door, and his eyes went to me immediately, almost as if he’d known exactly where I was before he’d come through the door. Which I knew to be impossible due to the position I was standing in, paired with the sheer amount of shit they had in their front window impeding his ability to look through.

Both women went to greet him, but he completely dismissed them and walked straight to me, completely dismissing Dima also.

When he got to me, he hooked his finger into the front of my sweatshirt and pulled me to him.

I went willingly, and he dropped a soft kiss onto my mouth before saying, “Hey.”

I smiled and replied with a simple, “Haze. Hey.”

He pulled the sweatshirt neck out, and then glanced down my shirt, grinning. “I was hoping to find you bare under here.”

“Why are you looking down my sister’s shirt?”

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