I don’t think.
3
Zander
I step from a hot shower and wrap a towel around my waist. As I saunter to my room to tug on a pair of clean jeans, I glance in and smile when I see my daughter sleeping soundly in her pink convertible bed, a gurgling sound coming from the fish tank in the corner.
My heart wobbles a bit as I stare at her. I really want to do right by her, and give her the world. I know I can be an overprotective dick at times, but that’s just part of who I am. It’s important to me that I don’t make the mistakes my parents made—leaving us to fend for ourselves—yet I don’t want to turn her into one of those self-entitled children I see in the parks and at Quinn’s daycare. It’s a balancing act for sure, and I’ve read all the books. Still, there is no one answer. Every child is different.
I pull her door, leaving it open an inch, and pad quietly to my room. I’m about to drop my towel when my doorbell rings.
Who the fuck would be at my house this time of night?
I glance at the clock on my nightstand and shake my head. Fuck, I’m twenty-nine, and now I consider eight o’clock late. Shit, whatever happened to the guy who stayed out all night, partied endlessly with the puck bunnies?
He grew up.
Yeah, he grew up in a hurry, especially after finding out he had a daughter to raise, single-handedly. Well not really. I do have Quinn and Jonah.
I drop my towel and hurry into a pair of jeans. Foregoing a shirt, I race down the stairs and make my way to the front door. I yank it open—
And find Sam on my stoop, a pie in her hand.
I stand there for a second, my brain racing to catch up. She blinks up at me, arousing the animal in me.
Am I hallucinating? If not, what the fuck is going on?
“Hi,” Sam says, breaking the awkward silence. “I was talking to Quinn, and she said cherry was your favorite.” She holds the pie out and my stomach grumbles. Tonight’s dinner consisted of grilled-cheese sandwiches—and that was hours ago.
But why is Sam bringing me pie?
As if reading my mind she says, “I wanted to thank you for fixing my door.”
Ah.
“You didn’t have to go through the trouble.” Her smile falls, and she takes a small step backward, the pink flush crawling up her neck making her look so adorable. She opens her mouth, but I cut her off and say, “But I’m glad you did.”
Her smile returns, and it’s like a punch to the gut. My God, she’s gorgeous. Which begs the question, why is she home baking a pie for me on a Friday night, and not on some hot date?
“It smells delicious.”
She beams up at me. “It tastes even better than it smells.”
“You made it?”
She nods. “My mother’s secret recipe.”
“The kind of secret where if you tell me, you’d have to kill me.” She laughs at that, and I wave my hand toward my hall. “Then let’s see if you’re right.”
“Oh, I wasn’t…”
“You don’t know the pie rules?” I ask, before I can second-guess what I’m doing. Christ, I haven’t had a woman in my home, other than my sister or Daisy’s nanny, for years now.
She crinkles her nose and shifts from one foot to the other. “There are pie rules?”
“Sure. If someone makes you a pie, you have to have the first slice together. If you don’t, you’ll have seven years of bad luck.”
She plants on hand on her hip. “You’re making that up. Seven years bad luck comes from breaking a mirror.”