Page 603 of Lodestar

When the fuck had that happened?

How had seven years spun by like the blink of a goddamn eye?

How was this her debutante ball? How was it that I’d had to teach her to dance the cotillion?

I scratched my jaw from the sidelines, watching as her aunts got her ready for the big event while Star and I sat together, seeing our little girl become a woman before our very eyes.

“I knew Camille would get the makeup right.”

Star had to referee over which of her sisters-in-law would ‘do’ Kat’s face for the big day. She’d offered to get a professional in, but that had caused more of an argument.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to know how she’d picked the winner. As each of my brothers’ wives aside from Savannah had given birth to boys, I figured they’d clashed over this moment because Third, our nickname for baby Aidan, wasn’t going to be ready for this occasion for another thirteen years.

“I’m not looking,” I grumbled. “If I don’t look then she’s still ten.”

Star snorted as she pressed a kiss to my cheek. “Think about your ma having to care for all the grandkids tonight. That should make you laugh.”

“She thought it was bad having six sons. Ten grandkids.” I whistled under my breath. “Thank God Paddy’s with her. It’ll stop her from pulling out her hair.”

“You just have to love how, out of all of them, Third’s the worst.”

I shuddered. “The terrible twos were nothing in comparison to the terrifying threes.”

She nodded. “How did she even get on the kitchen counter yesterday?”

“Probably bribed one of the boys into lifting her up,” I said with a grimace. “It’s a good thing you saw her trying to grab the handle of that knife.”

“You need eyes in the back of your head with Daniels’ kids. You think she’s bad, you should have been around for Aspen and Paris. Jesus Christ, it’s no wonder Dagger went prematurely gray.”

“Two of them,” I breathed, eyes widening with horror. “At once.”

“Exactly.”

“Daddy, what do you think?”

My heart stopped at that title.

It always did.

But especially at a moment like this, when she was nervous and excited at the same time.

‘Daddy’ had come after a year of us being a family. It had morphed into ‘Dad’ when she was a teenager. That we’d reverted to Daddy broke my heart even more.

It wasn’t right that she was growing up.

God, all my kids were going to do this to me, weren’t they?

I turned to stare at her and tried to brace myself for the fallout, but there was no bracing big enough for this.

“You look beautiful, Katty,” I choked out, using the nickname so that I didn’t totally crumple into a ball of misery and joy.

She giggled. “Katty? Really?”

“Really,” I teased, helping Star off my lap so that I could stride over to our daughter and tug her into a hug. In her ear, I whispered, “You’re going to be the belle of the ball.”

“Don’t tell Lyra that. She’ll be jealous when it’s her turn next year. You know she’s all about being Belle.”

I chuckled. “You know what I mean.” I squeezed her. “You okay?”

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