Heiress for Hire (Cuttersville #2)(52)
Author: Erin McCarthy

Then he grinned, his hand falling away. "Except for your dusting. You can’t dust for shit."

She gave a watery laugh. "Watch it, White Butt."

But it was too late. She had fallen in love with Danny. She couldn’t go backward now, and she wasn’t sure how to go forward. So for now, she’d just stand still and see what happened.

Chapter 19

Danny licked his ice-cream cone and relaxed as much as he could in a plastic chair too small for him. Piper had chocolate from her nose to her waist, specks and dribbles and smears. He wasn’t sure if she was actually eating her ice cream or just throwing it all over herself.

He would have thought a kid at eight could be a little neater, but he had soon learned he didn’t remember a whole lot about being eight. In all fairness to Piper, it was near ninety degrees and her cone was melting faster than she could lick. Amanda was in line getting another ice cream since she had dropped hers leaning over to wipe off the bench with a napkin before she sat down.

They were in town to collect Brady, the maestro who supposedly was going to turn the splotchy walls of Piper’s bedroom into a butterfly garden. Danny had his doubts as he took a gander at

Brady, sitting with his broken leg out in front of him, sucking industriously on a shake.

He’d done something different with his hair. It was short all over, except for the front, where it cascaded straight down in individual spokes of hair. It looked like an art experiment gone wrong. A red waterfall. Weird. It was weird. And he wasn’t sure how the hell Brady could see around that hair enough not to walk into walls, let alone paint them.

The urge to just reach out with the scissors and snip was overwhelming.

The kid had always been a little rebellious, slamming Cut-tersville every chance he got and counting the days until he could leave, but walking around with hair in your eyes didn’t seem rebellious, just stupid. And if Danny wasn’t mistaken, Brady was wearing black eyeliner.

Yet Piper adored him. She giggled at everything he said, handed him his crutches every time he stood up, and generally flirted with him without knowing that’s what she was doing.

It gave Danny indigestion. Having a girl was complicated. The thought of facing the teenage years struck terror in his heart, and he hoped like hell promiscuity was taught, not inherited. If some boy touched Piper at sixteen like he’d been touching her mother, Danny wasn’t sure he could be held accountable for his actions.

It also made him wish Piper would have a stepmother to talk to. A blond one. With long legs.

"Butterflies like this?" Brady asked, showing Piper a sketch of a cartoony, smiling butterfly on a napkin.

She shook her head. "No… that looks babyish. But I don’t want one like in magazines. I want a butterfly who looks like she’s going to fly over the rainbow." And she capped this thought off with a shy smile.

Brady lifted an eyebrow. "Over the rainbow, huh?" He looked at Danny. "The kid’s a tough sell."

Danny shrugged. "Just do to do something in between cartoons and National Geographic." He caught a drip from his cone before it landed on his hand. "And Piper, sweetie, maybe we should just let Brady do what he thinks is best. He’ll make it look pretty, won’t you, Brady?"

The sound of that almost made him laugh. Here he was, a twenty-six-year-old farmer with muddy boots, and Brady looking for a spot in the punk kid hall of fame, and they were supposed to know something about pretty?

Piper bit her lip, so Danny added, "I think it will be a fun surprise for you if he just goes in and paints a butterfly garden. Whattya think, baby girl? We’ll let him do the worrying, and we’ll just enjoy the picture when it’s done."

"Good advice." Shelby strolled up to their table, a big smile on her face.

"Hey, Shel. What are you up to?"

"I’ve been to the doctor."

Danny took a long look at Shelby. Her cheeks were flushed, and she was grinning ear to ear. Couldn’t be too serious then.

"Everything okay?"

"Come here," Shelby said, crooking her finger at him.

"What?" Danny stood up, his back wet with sweat from the plastic chair. "You’re going to steal my ice cream, aren’t you?"

She had a devilish look on her face, and he shifted his cone away from her. "I’ll get you one of your own if you want, Shel."

But instead of grabbing his cone and licking it, she reached up on her tiptoes and whispered in his ear. "I’m pregnant."

Danny snapped his head back and looked at her eyes shining with happy tears. "That was awful fast—you’ve only been married a month."

"Birth control isn’t always foolproof." She squeezed his arms. "Are you happy for me?"

"Yeah. Of course, I am." He felt his own lips splitting in a grin. This was good. This was right. Maybe now that he had Piper and Shelby was having her own baby, they could both heal a little from the loss of their child, the loss of their family. "Congratulations, darlin’, that’s fantastic news."

He picked her up off the ground, ice-cream cone and all, and gave her a big smacking kiss on the lips. "You’ll be the best mom around. Just make sure you take care of yourself, alright?"

"I will." She hugged him back, holding on tightly for a second before releasing him.

Amanda sat down in Danny’s abandoned chair. "When you’re done making out, here’s your change." She threw a dollar and loose coins on the table in front of Piper.

Danny knew that tone of voice. It was Amanda being hurt and trying to act like she wasn’t. It was her fake, sarcastic voice, and it told him clear as water that she was none too pleased with his attention to Shelby.

He didn’t feel the least bit guilty for hugging his ex-wife when she was sharing such happy news with him. But what he wanted to do was snuggle right up to Amanda and reassure her. He wanted to pull her into his arms, plant his hands firmly on her butt, his lips right on hers, and show everyone that he cared about her. That he had seen her naked, been inside her body, and that she was his.

But she wasn’t his. And they had agreed that in front of Piper there would be no butt-grabbing, kissing, or any other male-female relations that would only confuse her when Amanda left.

It was the right thing to do. He wouldn’t hurt his daughter for anything in the world. Nor would he parade casual sex in front of her. Not that he felt casual about Amanda, but there was no other label for a couple who were having sex with no intention of creat-ing a future together. He couldn’t explain mutual consent and living in the moment and enjoying what they had now to Piper. Bad enough some day he was going to be pinned to the mat by her for his relationship with her mother. He didn’t need to open that discussion when she was eight years old.