Page 65 of His Innocent Omega
“I’m guessing you didn’t know they were coming?” he moved away when I waved him off with a wan smile of thanks, and a shake of my head.
“They’re supposed to be on their way to a tropical paradise. Definitely not here.”
He shrugged, grinning at Julianna who was sitting on my desk in her carrier, trying valiantly to fit her toes in her mouth. “Maybe they wanted to see Julianna before they left. And you too, of course.”
Abandoning my salad, I brushed a hand down my pants as I stood, unconsciously trying to get rid of any wrinkles. “I don’t know why they would suddenly want to see her,” I muttered, a little pissed off and honestly annoyed that they had just shown up, unannounced. “They haven’t bothered before.”
“Yikes,” Ryan looked worried, “I’m sorry. Should I not have told them that you were here?”
Shooting him a smile that probably looked more like a grimace, I unbuckled Julianna and picked her up, kissing her warm cheek before propping her on my hip. “It’s fine. I’ll see what they want and why they’re here. Are you good if I need to leave?”
Mentally, I was calculating the ratio of kids to staff we had on hand.
He nodded, “No worries, there. Lachlan just picked up the twins, and I’ll have Brendan come get Charlie. That will just leave six kids, and there’s still three staff members here. We’re covered. Go…” he hesitated, a frown between his brows, “take care of what you need to.”
Standing tall, I made my way to the main play area of the daycare. Sure enough, my parents were standing in the middle of the play floor, looking around like they had found themselves somehow transported to Mars.
“Mother, Father,” I greeted them, “what are you doing here?”
My mother sniffed, as if something was rank in the air. “Wyatt, how could you spend your inheritance on this…this….” She looked around in horror, at the colorful play mats, cubbies, toys, and kids happily playing, all supervised by my staff, “place.”
“Now, Jane,” my omega father warned her softly, “you promised.”
My mother towered over my father by a good six inches, her alpha giraffe shifter height no match for his omega gazelle shifter. And he always backed down to her. Always.
“Robert, don’t. This is not acceptable. Wyatt, I insist you stop this nonsense and come home. Major Montgomery still wants you to work on that secret project, and the military has doubled the amount they are willing to pay.”
Sighing, my father turned away, putting a few inches of distance between my mother and me.
“First, I didn’t spend my inheritance on this, Mother. I spent my own money, that I earned. Yes, Mother, I had money and projects you didn’t know about,” I tacked on smugly, and was rewarded with her hard, narrowed gaze. “I’m a genius, remember. Did you honestly think I didn’t? Second, how dare you show up here, unannounced. This is my place of business.”
Julianna, deciding she had been ignored long enough, let out an ear-piercing shriek. She’d discovered last week she could make noise just to make noise, screaming without any tears or anything actually distressing her, and it had tickled her pink. She’d spent the next two hours happily screeching her lungs off. Grayson and I were mostly used to it by now.
Her shriek got my father’s attention, and he turned back to us from where he had been taking in the daycare center, since my mother’s attention was no longer on him. He gave Juliannaa small, wistful smile. I had often wondered if my father had wanted to carry more children, knowing my mother had insisted that“One is quite enough, Robert.”
Mother gave Julianna an annoyed look, waving her hand at us dismissively. “Wyatt, don’t you have people that can take that child from you. I can’t believe you actually watch other people’s children. It’s so beneath you. You are a Cooper.”
Ryan, who had been chasing after one of the kids, having heard my mother, mouthed a“Wow,”at me, and gave me a sympathetic look.
Taking a steadying breath, I closed my eyes, and slowly counted to five. “Mother, first of all I don’t have people. I have employees. And second, meet your granddaughter, Julianna. Or did you forget you even had a granddaughter?”
My father’s eyes lit up, and he stepped forward, crouching down to coo at Julianna, “Well, hello, I’ve been wanting to meet you.” Turning bright, shining eyes to me, he whispered, “She’s beautiful, Wyatt.”
I had never loved my father more than in that instant. “Thanks, Father.”
He started to say something else, but my mother cut him off, “Wyatt, that child looks nothing like you. Her eyes and hair are so dark. She can’t possibly be yours.”
Blinking at her in astonishment, I snapped, “I can assure you she is mine. I was there and had the stitches to prove it. And she looks like her alpha dad.”
“Don’t be crass, Wyatt.”
“I’m not a child, Mother. I’ll remember my manners when you remember yours.”
“All right,” my father got between the two of us, something he had never done my entire life, “let’s all settle down. It’sChristmas–”
I snorted loudly, giving my mother an arched brow when she glared at me.
“And,” my father continued, “we arranged our flights so we would have time to see you today. We leave tomorrow morning for LAX, then our flight leaves from there on the twenty-fifth. We thought we could take you to lunch, catch up this evening. Spend some time with Julianna.”
