Page 102 of Protector Daddy

“Yeah, I’m learning to not tangle with you on this subject. Consider it closed.” He started to stand.

“Mav, wait.” I raked a hand through my hair. Truth be told, my spur of the moment comment this morning had not landed in a good way. I still wasn’t sure where exactly I had gone wrong. “Honey confided in me that she wants to try the whole stay at home mom thing.”

“She did what?”

“Before she thought anything was amiss.” I lifted my brows so he would hopefully get the drift without me having to spell the whole thing out while sensitive ears could be listening. Meaning anyone nosy in our department, which granted wasn’t many people since the place was almost empty today.

“Huh, now that you mention it, Brady told me something about that. He said she dropped out of school and wants to procreate.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “Wonder who put that idea in her head.”

I leaned back in my chair and held up my hands. “I wasn’t privy to what she said to Brady about school. She told me after she told him. And we were super new at that point. I put nothing in her head.”

“I just never guessed she was that into kids. This is probably Brady’s fault. Presley is pretty damn cute, and I don’t even have a baby fetish.”

“You’re forgetting her favorite brother is also having a kid.”

He preened. “I am her favorite brother. But she’s my favorite sister.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I typed a bit more on my report, erased it, then typed again before dropping my hands in my lap. “I didn’t know she needed like a formal proposal.”

Mav’s head whipped toward me. “Wow, you are clueless. They all need a formal proposal. Even I figured that out and Van isn’t inherently as romantic as Honey.”

“You think she’s inherently romantic?”

Had she hidden that side of herself from me so far?

Then again, we’d only been truly getting to know each other for weeks instead of months. We had so much more to learn about each other.

“The girl had pictures of One Direction all over her walls. Some of her posters had lipstick marks on them.”

Huh. Well, that explained the Harry Styles dude on her Kindle case. I’d had to reverse image search him on Google to even figure out who he was.

I asked Mav if I was correct on the identity of the abs dude and he nodded soberly. “Poor Harry. Damn Kindle is deader than a doornail. Won’t hold a charge and when that happens, it’s about to be a pretty paperweight. She asked me to get her a new one for Christmas. Texted me just a while ago.”

“Why not me?”

“Um, because you should be buying her something romantic.”

“Like what?”

“Do I have to tell you everything?”

“I’d love it if you would. Is there a handbook for this kind of thing?”

“Nope,” Mav said cheerfully, chewing on his toothpick again. “This is a torment every man must experience for himself.”

“Should I propose this soon? I feel like it’s too soon.”

“Then wait. But it’s also too soon to announce you’ll pay her bills if she wants to stay home and clean your house and bear your rugrats.”

“I said nothing about rugrats or cleaning. I clean my own house pretty damn well, thank you. But if she wanted to cook—”

Slowly, Mav shook his head. “You need a lot of help with this stuff. Is this how you proposed to the first one? No wonder she split.”

The pain hit me fast and hard, like a short-armed karate chop directly to the heart.

This was why I didn’t confide in anyone. This was why I kept my own counsel.

Maybe I couldn’t come up with the right answers on my own, but at least my pain didn’t get turned into a punchline.

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