Dirty Secret (The Burke Brothers #1)(17)
Author: Emma Hart

She runs my order through without a word, and it’s only when she puts the bunny into a bag that I notice her hesitating.

“Is something wrong?”

“Would you—would you mind signing an autograph for my granddaughter?” she asks shyly. “I don’t like to ask but she’d kill me if I didn’t.”

I smile widely. “Of course, ma’am. Do you have a pen and something to write on?”

She beams at me and hands me a pen and paper. “Her name is Ally.”

I wink again and scrawl a quick note to her, scribbling my name at the bottom. “Thanks for your help today, ma’am. I appreciate it.”

“No problem!” She waves as I take my purchases and head toward the door.

I carry them out to my truck, where a suspicious-looking group of teen girls has magically appeared.

Fantastic.

This is why you never send security for a break.

I grit my teeth and head for the truck, trying not to get annoyed about them touching it. “Excuse me, ladies.”

Giggles.

Giggles.

I fucking hate giggles.

I ignore their gasps because Oh my God, did I really just talk to him? Oh, I did! Oh my God! I pop the trunk, put the gate in there, and close it.

“Do you have a baby?” one of them asks.

“Nope. For a friend.”

I lock the trunk and set the bag with Mila’s bunny on the passenger seat.

“Will you sign some autographs for us?”

My fingers twitch on my truck handle. All I want to do is get back to Sofie and Mila, get this gate up, and then breathe. But if it weren’t for these girls, I wouldn’t even have an autograph. Just a boring old signature no one but the bank teller cares about.

“Sure.” I force a smile and walk over to them.

I sign the back of a receipt, a phone case, a tablet case, and even the inside cover of a book. Phones click repeatedly as they take pictures with me, one after the other, and when they’re all done, I open my truck gratefully.

“Here,” I say, handing them some tickets from the glove box. “This is for a concert we’re doing on the beach in a couple weeks.”

They gasp and squeal and oh, oh, one is hugging me. Okay. I pat her back awkwardly and jump into the truck before one of them tries to kiss me or something.

I turn the radio up and Lady Antebellum blasts out. “I Run to You.” The song Sofie always said reminded her of me—because when it got hard with her dad’s chemo, I was the person that was there. The memory of the day she found out he was never going to get better hits me.

Her eyes, swimming with tears, fill my mind. I remember the broken way she told me, the disbelief that after months of chemo and radiation, his cancer had still spread. I remember how I took her in my arms without a word, how I curled her into my chest and held her while she cried endlessly. How I was there, without a second thought.

It’s just a fucking shame that I obviously wasn’t there enough.

I pull up in the driveway outside her house and stare at it again. It’s becoming a problem, this staring at her house. I can’t really believe she’s back and that we have a baby together.

Maybe in a few days it’ll hit me hard and I’ll feel it all. Until then . . .

I grab the gate from the trunk and carry it in with Mila’s bunny tucked under my arm. She’s still screeching in an ear-bursting kind of way. I walk into the dining room and see Sofie walking around the room with her aimlessly, bouncing her and shhh-ing her while she cries.

I put the gate down and set the bunny on the table. I step forward and lift Mila out of Sofie’s arms, cradling her against me. She rests her head against my shoulder and tucks her face into my neck, still sobbing, but now quieter.

Sofie meets my eyes and smiles gratefully.

“Hey, what’s all that noise for?” I ask Mila quietly.

“Dadda. Bunna.” She sniffs.

“Wanna know a secret?” I turn my face into hers. She nods. “I got a bunna.”

She lifts her head. “Bunna?”

“Don’t tell Mama, okay?” I wink at Sofie and grab the toy out of the bag.

Mila grins when she sees it and snatches it out of my hand, hugging it to her chest. She babbles “bunna” over and over, squealing happily.

“You wanna take a nap?” I ask. “You can take bunna.”

Mila nods and snuggles back into me, so much that I don’t want to put her down. I want to keep holding her, hug her until she falls asleep. But I can’t, so I turn around and carry her upstairs. Sofie follows me up, and I swallow back a snarky comment as I remember I don’t know how she sleeps.

“Blanket,” Sofie whispers. “Then the CD player.”

I tuck Mila in, shut the curtains, and turn on the CD player. I press Play, and I stop, because she wasn’t lying.

The gentle sound of acoustic notes fills the air, and I know the notes, because it’s Sofie’s song. The one I wrote for her, with her, and then sang to her. I got studio time to record it for her so she’d always have a copy.

I honestly never could have imagined it’d be used for a lullaby.

I swallow and shut the door, not trusting myself to look at either Mila or her.

Right now I wish I’d never come back, that I’d stayed in LA or something. I wish I didn’t know any of this, not because I don’t want Mila, but because I don’t want to want Sofie.

That’s it. I don’t want to want her, but I fucking do, and there isn’t a single thing I can do to stop it.

I lay the baby gate flat on the floor and unpack it. I rip the tape too roughly, throw the inner packaging to the side too hard, tear open the screw packet too fiercely.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

I barely glance at her. “I did.”

My words are short and sharp and I know they’ve hit her hard, because she doesn’t respond.

“Tools?”

“In the shed,” she replies quietly.

I head out to her dad’s shed and grab his toolbox. When I get back to the dining room she’s gone, and I’m glad. Having her there watching me every second is driving me crazy.

I take the gate and the parts to the bottom of the stairs. After about twenty minutes, I step back to admire my handiwork.

Not bad for a guy who usually only messes around with guitars and microphones.

I shove all the packaging back into the box and carry it outside to the trash cans at the side of the house. I shut the lid and lean against the wall for a minute, just breathing.