“No boys allowed!”
“I washed your hair two days ago and you didn’t say a thing then, young lady.”
Uh-oh. He’d dragged out young lady. This wasn’t going to be good.
I came around the corner to find a frazzled Seth crouched next to the door with his fingers fisted in his hair. The dark wavy strands were sticking up in damp tufts. Wet splotches arced across his chest and his arms were beaded with water.
“Didn’t even let you get a towel, huh?”
He spun on the balls of his feet and stood. “Thank God.”
He was wearing his oldest jeans—you know, the kind that were worn at all the good stress points—with bare feet and a waterlogged blue Oxford dress shirt open a few extra buttons to show off way too much of his chest. There was obviously no justice in this world.
“I just tried to go in again. I’m her father, for God’s sake. We just had a bath the other day without incident.”
“That was the other day.” I swallowed down my nerves. If he could act normal, I could act normal. I strode down the hall and knocked on the door briskly. “Hey, can I come in, munchkin?”
“Ally! Do you have my Care Bear bubbles?”
“Honey, you dumped your tubby bubbles, remember?” Seth called through the door.
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“No! My bubbles. I want bubbles.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Does she mean like blowing bubbles?”
Seth tipped his head back. So much throat and chest on display. His chest was mostly smooth save for a sprinkle of dark hair between his pecs. I’d seen him without a shirt a million times, but now just seemed so much worse. God, stop looking.
“Honey, we play with those outside.”
“No!” Laurie screeched.
My eyebrows shot up. “Tell me you have bubbles.”
His dark brows knitted, then cleared. “Yes. I have to go get them.” He started to stride down the hall then stopped. “Are you okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re asking this now?”
His gaze dropped to my chest and his eyes heated briefly. “Your shirt says maybe not.”
I glanced down at the words on my chest and cursed my headlights coming out to play. Timing was wrong as always, but this time there was a weight to it I didn’t want to examine. At all. “Yeah, well, adulting comes around whether you want it to or not.” I opened the door and slid inside before he could say another word.
The little girl in the tub obliterated any other issue I had with daddy dearest. I put my hands on my hips. “I hear you’re giving your dad some trouble.”
Laurie grinned up at me, her freakishly long eyelashes starred from the water. She was sitting in about six inches of water that was mostly foam. She also had an array of plastic ducks, fish, whales, dolphins, and yes, Care Bears in the tub with her. She held a bright pink netted puff in her hand as she painstakingly washed her blue Care Bear.
Fittingly, it was a plastic version of Grumpy Bear.
Just like me.
Well, until this little girl was in my space. I couldn’t be grumpy around her, even if I wanted to strangle her sometimes. Cuteness always won out.
She smiled up at me with a dimple winking. “This is a girls’ party.”
I kneeled beside her and brushed her damp bangs out of her face. “Is that so?”
She nodded and bit her lower lip in concentration as she washed under Grumpy’s armpit.