Page 67 of If This Was a Movie

“Bye, Daddy,” she shouts, forgetting her previous irritation with him before he moves to me.

“Bye, dollface,” he murmurs, voice lower, huskier now. Then he bends down, a rough hand moving to the bottom of my chin to gently tip it before pressing a chaste kiss to my lips, barely even a brush. He steps back, winking once more before turning toward the door. “Soph, lock this behind me, yeah?”

“Got it!” she shouts, bounding toward the front door, leaving me stunned.

A moment later, she’s back, little feet pounding on the wood floor before she’s standing before me, a wide, gappy smile on her face, hands on her hips.

“My dad so likes you,” Sophie says with a smile.

TWENTY-SIX

JULES

A few hours later, we’re at Ava’s nearly finished place. We’re watching her and Jaime bicker as they tend to do while Sophie pets Ava’s orange cat, Peach.

“I want a kitty just like Peach,” Sophie says with a wistful look, scratching the cat behind her ears the way Ava showed her Peach likes it.

“You can probably just go in an alleyway and find one. That’s how Ava found hers,” Jaime says under his breath, and Ava elbows him in the side.

“Are you insane? That’s not safe, Jaime.”

He raises a thick, dark eyebrow at her, tilting his head. “So you admit it was a bad idea.”

Ava glares at her fiancé, jaw tight. “I will do no such thing.”

Jaime lets out a bark of a laugh.

“You absolutely did, Princess. You just said it was unsafe for Sophie to do it. One would assume that it would also be unsafe for a famous pageant queen with a stalker to run off from her bodyguard into an alleyway to get a cat.”

Ava sighs, throwing her hands into the air.

“Would you rather Peach just be motherless in some alleyway right now? You’re cruel, Jaime Wilde,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at him.

“I’m pretty sure we covered this; Peach absolutely had a mother already, and you stole her from her.”

She waves him off with a hand, and I smile, watching them go at it like a tennis match. I’ve never met two people more meant to be together who also bicker about anything and everything.

“Are they always like this?” Sophie asks, and I snort, nodding.

“Pretty much. It’s all in good fun, though,” I tell her. “They love each other; they just show it funny.”

Sophie nods in that all-knowing, wise way of hers.

“Just like you and Dad?” I choke on my sip of coffee before she continues to answer. “You two pretend you don’t like each other, but you secretly love each other.” I open my mouth to say something, but she just keeps going. “Actually, it’s really just you pretending. Daddy is obviously in love with you. Aunt Sloane says girls like to play hard to get sometimes. Is that what this is?”

I gape at the little girl, and Jaime lets out a deep belly laugh.

“I like you, kid,” Jaime says, bending to grab Sophie and putting her on his hip, Peach cradled in his other arm.

“You’re not bad,” she says nonchalantly. “My dad says you should go on a double date with Jules,” she tells him, looking up at the big man. “I think you and my dad will be friends.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“You’re both really, really big, and you give Ava the same gooey look my dad gives Jules.”

“A gooey look, huh?” Jaime says, a small smile on his lips, that dimple Ava loves coming out. He sets her back down to the ground, ruffling her hair a bit.

“Oh yeah. Jules’s my Christmas wish, you know. So they’re going to fall in love and give me a little sister.”

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