Page 43 of Single Dad Dilemma
He leveled me with a supremely unamused look. God, he was so good at those. It wasn’t even fair.
“What?” I asked innocently. “I could’ve saidDaddy.”
“Lily,” he warned.
I sighed. “Fine. Christmas truce?”
Maggie appeared next to me with the rolling pin.
As I hefted it in my hand, Barrett made a small noise of concession. “Does that mean you’re going to be nice?”
“I’m always nice,” I pointed out.God, this thing would make a great weapon.“Ask your children.”
“The nicest,” Bryce said. “Why would you call himdaddy? You’re not related to him.”
“I wouldn’t,” I told Bryce firmly, attention drifting briefly over to the man in question. “Not my thing.”
The set of his jaw and the glint in Barrett’s eyes were just about my undoing, and I swallowed, tearing my gaze away as I took thecontainer of flour from Maggie and began sprinkling a thin layer across the counter’s surface.
She leaned in next to me. “Why is the dough cold?”
“Because if we don’t chill it for a few hours, the butter melts and we get big blobby shapes for our cookies—and I promise, no one wants that.” I tilted my head toward the table. “You think your dad will eat a blobby reindeer? I don’t think so.”
“So I am allowed to eat these?” he said. “That’s a surprise.”
I gave him a quick look. “That’s your Christmas present. See? I said I can be nice.”
For a second, we stared at each other across the room, the reality of spending this holiday together draping a blanket of tension thick in the air. He broke first, and a hairline crack slipped down the center of my chest.
Feeling the crack was harder than defining it. It was an awful lot like regret. That I’d said yes. That I’d felt lonely all day—sick of my company and a grumpy little dog who kept ignoring me—and was somehow unable to maintain any sort of distance from this family.
Me. With a family—thisfamily—on Christmas. The me from even six months ago would’ve called present me a lying ho.
Maggie and I rolled out the cookies, and I found her to be a perfect baking assistant. She followed directions, wasn’t bothered by correction when it was necessary, and before I knew it, we had a dozen in the oven and another dozen waiting to go.
Bryce and Barrett were engaged in a surprisingly even round of Monopoly, and even though I didn’t want to, I found myself watching them from the corner of my eye.
There wasn’t a single comment made about the mess we were making in the kitchen—and believe me, we were making one. There was flour on the floor, in Maggie’s hair, and a little bit in mine too. It seemed he was watching that out of the corner of his eye, too, both of us circling how the other interacted with our two pint-size buffers. He waspatient with his son, correcting him gently when he’d make a decision, but instead of telling him what to do, or that Bryce was wrong, Barrett managed it in a way that never came off heavy-handed.
Which ... shock of the century, right? I thoughtheavy-handedwas his middle frickin’ name.
“Think about the properties you didn’t buy when you landed on them,” he said. “If you hoard all your cash, it makes it harder down the road.”
“But I have more money than you,” Bryce said. “Isn’t the goal of the game money?”
Barrett nodded, hooking his arm over the back of the chair next to him. The muscles in his biceps did things to the stretch of the shirt, and when I found myself staring, I gave myself a mental bitch slap.
No, Lily. His sleeves are no business of ours.
“You grow your money with investments. We haven’t played this in a while, and I probably went easy on you the last time, but make sure you’re thinking about how to win long term, not just right now.”
Bryce sighed. “This game takes forever, doesn’t it?”
Barrett smothered a smile as he stared fondly at his son. “Yeah.”
The look in his eye held more of my attention than any single part of his body in that damn shirt. The way he loved his kids wasright there—like I could scoop it up and hold it in the palm of my hand. The dichotomy of how he was withmetwisted my brain a little bit. A Christmas truce with this version of Barrett was about seventeen kinds of dangerous.
“How do these cookies look?” Maggie asked, leaning in front of the oven window. “Should we take them out?”
