I glare at him because his smug grin makes me want to hit him in the face, but of course that’s not a new feeling. He’s always saying the exact right thing to get under my skin, and I let out a huffed breath and roll my eyes.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m coming,” I shoot back, and he just smirks at me and then goes up to the door.
I wonder if he’s going to knock or if he has a key. What the hell is this place? For all the reasons I try to come up with for Rory to be coming here, I can’t wrap my head around who or what might be on the other side of that door.
When it opens before he has a chance to do anything more than step onto the front stoop, I’m surprised by what I see. Or who I see, I guess. Somehow, the last thing I expected was a gorgeous woman with rich red hair, standing there with a grin on her face.
“It’s about time you got here,” she says, hands on her hips for a second. “I was about to send out a search party. In case you got lost.”
Rory rolls his eyes, but there’s clear affection in his face as he looks at her. She looks about the same age as him, just a couple of years over twenty or so, and her smile is bright as she reaches out to hug him.
To my surprise, Rory lets her, and I can feel myself bristling. I don’t want to, because it’s no fucking business of mine who Rory wants to hug. It’s his life, and he doesn’t owe me anything. I don’t have any connection to him other than basically being his captive, and I don’t want to.
But that doesn’t explain what we’re doing here. If this is a hookup or something, then why the hell would Rory have brought me along? Is he showing off? Making it clear that even if I don’t want him—and I don’t—he has other women who do?
I can feel the annoyance building, and I want to demand that he tell me what the hell is going on, but I feel like I can’t say anything, standing there listening to the two of them banter lightly before the woman turns to me.
“Who’s your friend, Rory?” she asks, head tipped to one side.
“This is Mercy,” Rory says. “She’s hanging out with me today.”
The woman gives me the same sort of sunny smile she gave him, and I feel a little bit bad for not liking her. It’s not her fault Rory’s an asshole and I’m confused.
“Hey. It’s nice to meet you, Mercy,” she says, reaching out to shake my hand. “I didn’t even know Rory had other friends, so it’s nice to see him with some company for once.”
I blink in surprise, because Rory’s never really alone, considering he lives with Sloan and Levi. And he’s got a bunch of buddies in the Black Rose gang. But maybe she doesn’t know about them? I have no idea what to say, so I just smile awkwardly back and follow the two of them into the house.
The front room is nice and airy, and the furniture looks comfortable and lived in. A few toys are scattered here and there, and I frown, really confused now.
There’s a little shriek of happiness from down the hall, and suddenly, a blur of a little girl comes barreling into the room and throws herself into Rory’s arms. She looks like she’s maybe three or four, small and obviously delighted to see him.
And Rory just scoops her right up with a whoop, swinging her around and dropping kisses to the top of her head and her cheeks. They both laugh together as I watch, staring in shock.
Finally, Rory turns back to me, his eyes bright. “Mercy,” he says. “This is Piper. My daughter.”
18
My daughter.
It takes a second for those words to process in my head, and I just gape at him in the meantime, probably looking like an idiot while I try to wrap my mind around it.
This is so not what I was expecting when I thought he was keeping a secret, leaving the house on his own all the time. An affair with a gorgeous woman? Some kind of criminal activity? Sure.
But… a daughter?
I’m stunned, and I know it shows on my face.
What I hope is less apparent is the way I feel like my ovaries might have just exploded. Because watching him hold a fucking kid like that, like she means the world to him, somehow makes his tattooed, built hotness even fucking hotter. I’m not even sure how that’s possible, but there it is. I’ve never even been a baby crazy kind of girl. Plenty of the girls I went to high school with were all about babies and men with children and thinking they were sexy as hell, but I never really got it.
Until right this moment.
Now I can kind of see where they were coming from, and that’s as much of a surprise as the rest of this is.
The redheaded woman laughs softly and steps forward. “I’m Jen, by the way,” she says, politely choosing to ignore the fact that my mouth is open wide enough for a bat to fly into it. “Figured I should introduce myself since Rory loses sight of everything, including his manners, when Piper’s around.”
“Nice to meet you.” I shake her hand a little robotically, still trying to regain my footing.
She grins at me, her expression friendly and open. When we both turn back to look at Rory and Piper, she shakes her head a little. “You know, it’s really not fair for you to be such a hot dad. You’re going to give someone an aneurysm one of these days.”