“Bad word alert, Uncle Tag!” Gage yelled, flying around the freshly framed kitchen doorway, Maizy bouncing on his back.
He backed up to the center island and deposited her on the top of it while she giggled. She gave them all a solemn look, her chocolate eyes smiling. “It’s okay. I know all the bad words, Uncle Gage. I hear Uncle Tag say them every day when he’s working on stuff. He says the F word a bunch.”
Jax narrowed his eyes at his brother before scooping Maizy up. “So, are you ready for the party, Cinderella?”
Maizy nodded, but her nose wrinkled. “I’m not Cinderella, Daddy. I’m Belle from Beauty and the Beast. Grandpa Givens says Cinderella just wanted a boyfriend, but Belle wanted a whole library. I think he said that’s smarter than just wanting a boyfriend.”
Jax shook his head at the conversations between Grandpa Givens and his daughter. He chuckled at her. “Grandpa Givens gives good advice. Besides, I’d never let you live in some ugly castle with a beast just so you can have a library. I’ll buy you a library instead.”
“And I’ll help build it, squirt,” Gage assured her.
“So, you go eat some fancy food for me tonight, okay? You need all the good food you can get,” Tag teased, his face transforming from dark to light when centering his gaze on his niece—he and Jax’s disagreement all but set back on the shelf to be taken down and fought out another time.
Jax tickled her ribs. “We gotta go or we’re gonna be late.”
Tag dropped a quick kiss on her forehead before grabbing the ladder. “Yeah. You don’t want Daddy to miss his chance to ask that pretty Em if she’ll help him with the house, do you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he dragged the ladder up over his shoulder, giving one last disgusted look at Jax before leaving the kitchen.
Jax sighed. Reece was a still-bleeding, open wound between the two of them—for all of them, but especially between he and Tag. Tag had hated her on sight, from the second she’d sat down at the table in that pub almost seven years ago. He’d driven home that dislike like it was his mission after she’d screwed Jax over.
Maizy pulled on the end of Jax’s shirt, reminding him she was all that mattered. “What’s fancy food, Daddy?”
“Wow. We’ve really slacked off in the foodie department, haven’t we, kiddo? At least we taught you manners. Fancy food is food that doesn’t come from a box in the freezer,” Gage joked, lightly pinching her nose.
Jax looked down at his daughter, smoothing her wiry curls, and straightened her headband with the red feathers and fake rhinestones in the shape of a unicorn—her all-time favorite mythical creature.
His heart began that rapid staccato of painful beating—the one that always happened when he let his worst Reece fear surface. The one he pounded down into the ground every time it rose up like the ugly weeds out in that garden Em said he had somewhere under the brush. Jesus, he loved her. “Not icky fish sticks?”
“Are there really going to be pretty ladies there?”
His mood instantly lightened. Well, there’d be at least one. She was the only one he saw. Jax grinned down at his kid. “I sure hope so.”
He damn well did. All day, while he’d pushed Reece’s reasons for calling to the back of his mind, he’d devised ways to put him and Em together—a lot.
Then he’d kicked himself for hatching stupid plots to get her in the same vicinity as him.
After her reaction to last night, she was probably freaked out. She’d avoid him and he’d avoid her, and that was probably better.
Last night had been way out of her comfort zone. She’d all but said it herself. Truth be told, it was a little out of his, too. He’d never found himself so instantaneously attracted to a woman that he was willing to forgo everything just to run his tongue over her lips.
He’d gotten pushy because of it—let his lack of female companionship lately take the reins. But since Harper’s death, since he’d witnessed the havoc unspoken words could wreak on your life, he’d promised himself he was going to live more honestly. For himself and as an example to Maizy. No more holding back. He was going to chalk last night up to that.
Hindsight said maybe his words were a little too honest, and he was going to pay for it tonight at Caine and Dixie’s dinner party. He didn’t want Em to get the wrong impression about where he stood on the single front, and she didn’t come across as the kind of woman who was comfortable with a physical relationship.
There’d be awkward Em silence tonight, for sure.
Despite his firm stance on no dating, he still smiled because the awkward silence would be Em’s.
He gave Maizy one last squeeze. “Let’s get going, kiddo.”
She held her arms out to Gage and gave him a Maizy hug, whispering in his ear, “Say good-night, Gracie.”
Jax’s heart shifted hard in his chest just like it always did when she used the words he’d taught her almost from birth.