Ignite (Cloverleigh Farms #6)(11)

“I told you, Halsy pal, we can’t have a pet because I work twenty-four-hour shifts. There would be nobody here to feed it.” I spied the two bags at the foot of the staircase and handed one to her. “Take this up to your bedroom.”

“Maybe Winnie could feed it when you’re not here,” she said, lugging the bag up the steps.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want a stranger in our house.”

“She’s not a stranger. She’s a friend.”

“We don’t even know her, Hallie.” Frowning, I followed her into the bedroom and dumped out the contents of the bag onto the carpet. “She could be a lunatic. Or a serial killer.”

“But she has princess Band-Aids. And she believes in happily ever after!” shouted Luna.

“Then she’s definitely a lunatic.”

“After you know her better, can you ask her?” Hallie pleaded.

“I’m not getting a cat. There’s nothing to ask.”

“Daddy, can we paint the walls in here pink?” Luna asked, hopping onto her mattress and starting to jump.

“Not pink, purple!” Hallie began bouncing up and down on her bed too.

I held up Luna’s fitted sheet and studied it. “Should I wash this stuff first?”

“Maybe. Smell it,” Justin shrugged.

I sniffed the sheet—it smelled like maple syrup. “Guess I should. Come on, girls. I’ll teach you how to do laundry. Whoever finds the box with the detergent gets a ride in the truck.”

Squealing with excitement, they leapt off their beds and took off running, elbowing each other to get ahead as they raced down the stairs.





A few hours later, the laundry was done, clean sheets were on the beds, and the truck had been returned. I’d let the girls ride in it while Justin followed in my SUV, and they’d chirped like magpies the whole time. My head was fucking pounding.

After dropping my brother-in-law off, we returned to our new home to see the girl from next door on our front porch.

“Winnie’s knocking on our door!” Luna said excitedly from the back seat. “Hurry, Daddy!”

No sooner had I pulled into the garage than the girls unbuckled their seatbelts and bolted for the porch. It was like they’d spotted a celebrity.

I got out of the car slowly, eyeing the door that went right into the kitchen and wishing I could just slip inside without talking to anyone. But I walked around to the front door.

The girl still had those tiny shorts on, and my eyes were immediately drawn to her legs again. And since she faced away from me as she spoke to the girls, I accidentally got a good eyeful of the way the denim hugged her ass before I forced myself to look down at my feet.

Knock it off, old man. Just because you haven’t had sex in over a year doesn’t give you permission to gawk. She’s way too young for you.

“Winnie brought us cupcakes,” Luna called out as I approached, gesturing at a white bakery box in Winnie’s hands. “And she says they don’t have nuts in them!”

“They’re from my mom’s pastry shop, Plum & Honey.” Winnie smiled brightly at me as I climbed the steps, causing the tiniest catch in my chest. “One of my little sisters has nut allergies too, so she’s very careful.”

“She said there’s two in the box for each of us.” Hallie clapped her hands with excitement.

“I wasn’t sure which flavors you’d like, so I just chose some of my favorites—sugar cookie, chocolate chip pancake, maple bacon cinnamon—”

“Bacon!” Hallie and Luna looked at each other and made their that’s disgusting face, generally reserved for meals I’d botched and asked them to eat anyway.

“Bacon on a cupcake?” Hallie was incredulous. “That doesn’t sound good at all.”

Winnie laughed. “I know it probably doesn’t to a kid, but I like it.”

“You can have that one, Daddy,” Luna said benevolently.

It actually sounded fucking great to me—I’d eat bacon on anything. But I said nothing as I moved around the trio to unlock the front door.

“Will you feed our cat?” I heard Luna ask Winnie behind me.

“Oh, do you have a cat?”

“No,” I said, giving Luna a menacing glare over my shoulder. “We don’t.”

“But we might get one in the future,” Hallie said.

Luna tried again. “Will you feed our future cat?”

That made Hallie laugh. “Future Cat sounds kind of like a cartoon or a superhero. Hey, maybe our cat will have superpowers!”

“And we can get it a little cape,” Luna said.

“There will be no cats, with or without superpowers,” I announced.

“He’s still grouchy about the couch,” Hallie said to Winnie, who tried not to laugh. “And because he has to go to a party tonight and he doesn’t like them.”

“Go on inside now, girls,” I ordered, propping the screen door open with my back. “We have to start getting cleaned up soon. I want to leave before seven.”

Luna beamed up at Winnie. “We get to go to the party too.”

“How exciting! Well, I won’t keep you—I just wanted to drop these off.” She met my eyes and handed over the box with a smile. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”