Kit starts smiling beside me, and then she grins, and air escapes her in one big relaxed breath. I’m not sure what that’s about.
“You met Hayley, I see,” Paul says to Kit. She nods as Paul takes her from me. “See, Hayley,” he says to his daughter, “now you won’t be the only girl in the house.” He dances around in a circle with her. I’m reading his lips, because it’s really hard to sign when your hands are full of baby. I can’t see what he says when he dances around in a circle, but whatever it is makes Kit smile.
Kit points a finger at Paul and smiles. “She’s yours?” she asks.
Paul looks from me to her. “You’re not trying to use my daughter to score with chicks again, are you?” Paul asks, punching me in the shoulder. “I can’t let him take her to the grocery store. He gets too much attention from the ladies.”
Paul looks around the apartment and grins. “What the fuck happened here?” he asks.
Kit scowls at him, too. “Language,” she says, looking toward Hayley. She’s smiling now, though, and she looks like she’s taking deep breaths, which she wasn’t doing when I first walked into the house.
“Who cleaned?” Paul asked. He wipes a spot on Hayley’s cheek with his thumb and says, “And who gave you chocolate?” He scowls at me. I shrug my shoulders and grin.
Kit cleaned up. I pull her into my side, and she wraps an arm around my waist, lays one hand on my chest, and looks up at me. Isn’t she amazing?
Paul looks from me to her and back again, sticks his finger down his throat like he’s going to hurl and walks away with Hayley toward his bedroom. He looks back at me long enough to say, “You’re going to be late for work if you don’t hurry.” He looks down at Hayley. “Tell Uncle Logan he’s going to be late.” He shows her the sign for late and she does it. She’s adorable when she signs. They disappear into his bedroom and I look down at Kit. I bend my head and touch my lips to hers. I don’t want to pull back, but I do have to hurry. “I have to go out,” I say.
Her brows raise, and she looks wary. “Out?” she says.
I nod. “I have to work tonight. Do you want to go with me?”
She looks down at her wet shirt, and brushes a lock of hair from her forehead. “I haven’t even had a shower today.”
“How quickly can you get ready?” I ask, looking at my watch. I have thirty minutes before I have to be there.
Emily
Warm water sluices over my body, and I force myself to hurry up. Logan is probably dancing from foot to foot in the living room waiting for me so he won’t be late for work. Apparently, he’s a bouncer at some club around the corner on Friday nights. And he wants me to go with him.
I hear the door to the bathroom open and I freeze. “Matt?” I call. He’s the only one who might come into the bathroom with me, and that’s only if he’s sick.
I open the bath curtain an inch and look out. Logan is standing there, looking at me. He changed clothes, and now he’s wearing a pair of jeans, his boots, and a blue t shirt that says “Bounce(r)” on the front of it. It strains across his broad shoulders. His eyes are a startling shade of blue against the azure shirt, and he looks at my face as I poke my nose through the curtain. My hair is full of suds, and soap is burning one of my eyes. “Is something wrong?” I ask.
He shakes his head and smiles at me. He doesn’t say anything else, but he stands there with one shoulder against the wall with his arms crossed. “I have a question,” he finally says.
I lean back and wash the soap from my face and hair, and then poke my head back through, blowing water from my lips. “Ask it,” I say.
“It bothered you when you thought Hayley was mine,” he says. His face doesn’t change. He’s still appraising me closely. But he’s not leering, or trying to look at my naked body. He’s totally respectful, just like always.
It did bother me when I thought Hayley might be his. They have the same deep blue eyes, and their hair color is similar. And he was so familiar with her. But then she’s called Paul Daddy, and everything was suddenly all right. I know he can’t read my lips unless I stick my head out of the shower. “What makes you say that?” I ask.
He snorts. “I read people every day, all day, and I have to tell how they feel by the way they hold themselves, rather than the inflections in their voices. And something tells me that you didn’t like thinking that Hayley was mine.”
He looks closely at me, and I know he’s still appraising my reactions.