Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(87)

“Sorry?”

“You could’ve had words with her, but you just missed her. She just went back upstairs.”

Erik sighed, rubbing his forehead. “Look. I don’t want to have words with anyone. You know what? Forget it. I’ll just . . . buy earplugs.”

“Whatever you say,” said Mr. Leatham with a sniff of disapproval.

It occurred to him that perhaps Mr. Leatham needed to be reminded that Erik was a paying customer, but since he still had a stay of several days ahead, he figured it was better to just let it go and keep the peace. He grimaced at the salty innkeeper and headed into the dining room where he’d had his first date with the girl of his dreams.

As he entered the room, time went backward for a split second, and he paused just inside the doorway. He remembered the soft candlelight on the tables, the way her green eyes had sparkled after the kiss they’d shared at the top of the dock, and the awkward conversation it had started. She was so innocent, so beautiful, so—

“Table for one?”

Erik looked up from his reverie to see Kelsey Leatham standing with her hand on her hip, breasts pushed out. He kept his eyes up.

“Yes, please.”

Though there were many unoccupied tables in the room, she walked him over to a table by the windows beside the only other diner—a little girl, sitting alone with a stuffed penguin on the table, shoveling pancakes into her mouth like there was about to be a world shortage.

The li’l’un. Hmm.

She leaned over her breakfast, a tiny thing with dark red hair, made brilliant by the sunlight streaming in from the window to her right. Not that he was ever around kids, but if he had to guess, he’d put her age right around four years old.

“How about here?” asked Kelsey, and damn if he didn’t see a challenge in her pretty blue eyes. Her grandfather must have told her about his objections to the noise, and so she was seating Erik beside his nemesis on purpose.

“Perfect,” he said, accepting her challenge by choosing the chair that faced the child.

The little girl looked up at him and waved, her huge, dark brown eyes seizing his. And damn if his breath didn’t hitch for a moment, because the only other place he’d ever seen eyes quite that dark and wide was, well, in the mirror or the face of his mother. He always thought of kids, especially little girls, as having blue eyes like Hillary’s or Vanessa’s—vulnerable and light—not almost black. It was extraordinary. And a little unsettling.

After a moment, she stopped waving, fixing him with a glare and saying, “Mr. Mopples says it’s rude not to wave back.”

Before he could say anything, Kelsey was standing beside his table with a carafe of coffee, and he was gratefully nodding to her to fill his cup.

“Pancakes?” she asked.

“Thanks. Great,” said Erik, his eyes flicking back to the little girl, who seemed to be in deep conversation with her penguin.

“Not everyone has good manners, but we still do our best, don’t we? Yes, we do.”

Kelsey’s lips turned up in a grin, and she shifted to face the little girl. “All good, Ava Grace? Want more pancakes?”

Ava Grace.

All the air was suddenly sucked out of the room as Erik’s head jerked up to look at Kelsey before dropping his eyes to the dark-eyed little girl—to Ava Grace.

Ava! Ava Grace, you need to hold my hand!

Ava Grace. That’s a real pretty name.

You’re pretty like a princess.

The Elizabethan Gardens.

Six years ago.

With Laire.

The little girl who tripped on the path. Her name was also—

“Mr. Rexford? Um, Mr. Rexford?”

Erik exhaled the breath he’d been holding and glanced up at Kelsey, who was looking at him a little funny.

“Wh—yes?”

“Maple syrup or powdered sugar?”

“Syrup,” he murmured, immediately looking back at the little girl who had the same name as the girl who’d tripped on the path, whom Laire had cradled in her arms, who—

“Mr. Mopples says it’s very rude to stare.”

“W-what?”

“Mr. Mopples said so.”

“Sorry. Who?”

“You’re starin’,” the little girl said, her sugar-dusted lips pursed in annoyance.

“Am I?”

She nodded.

“Sorry. Your name is Ava Grace?” he asked.

She nodded again. “Yes.”

“My name . . . my name is Erik,” he said, trying to regain his composure. Damn, but he’d been thrown by the mention of that name. There were only a couples of names in the world that could have shaken him that badly, and Ava Grace was, apparently, one of them.

His little nemesis speared a sausage, looked at the beat-up penguin sitting on the tabletop across from her, then offered, through a mouthful of half-eaten food, “Oscar is your name.”

“Huh? No. Not Oscar,” he said, then enunciated: “Erik.”

She chewed a little more, swallowed, then leveled him with her intense eyes. “Oscar.”

Well, this is annoying. Did the little thing have a hearing problem? He tried again, raising his voice a little. “My name is Erik, not Oscar.”

“You’re yellin’.”

“I’m not . . .” He lowered his voice. “. . . yellin’.”