Life and Other Inconveniences(90)

“You too. What can I do for you?”

“Uh . . . it’s cocktail hour?”

“Oh! Um . . . Genevieve’s not here. She’s in the city with Donelle doing a pub crawl. Which, given the state of that toe, is an accurate description. But come in, come in. We’re having girls’ night.”

“Shit. She did leave a message, and I forgot. I’ll go. I don’t want to interrupt.”

“Miller. I assume you have a babysitter, right?”

“Right.”

“So get your butt in here and have a margarita and hang out with us for a little while. We’ll kick you out when we start talking about periods.”

He almost smiled. No, he did smile, and suddenly I realized that he was . . . well . . . kind of hot in that tragic, manly way. Jason was the looker of the two, but Miller had a quiet appeal that was . . . well . . . very appealing.

Perhaps I should also stop with the margaritas.

“We’re on the deck,” I said.

“No,” Jamilah called. “We’re in the room with the stone floor because the mosquitoes were killing us. Oh, hi, Miller! How are you, hon?”

“Jamilah.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Hey, Beth.”

“Hey, hottie.”

“Miller,” I said, “this is my best friend from back home, Calista Daniels.”

He nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

“Miller is Genevieve’s friend and Jason’s cousin, Calista. He’s got a three-year-old named Tess, and Riley’s helping take care of her here and there.” Like I hadn’t given Calista the details already.

“Nice to meet you.” She winked at me, sort of blowing my cover.

“How about a margarita, Miller?” I asked.

“I’ll take a beer. I’ll get it, though,” he said.

“You forgot the guacamole, princess,” Calista said.

Miller and I went into the kitchen.

No doubt about it. Miller was a hottie, and I was a little surprised I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I mean, there had never been anything wrong with his looks, but age had made him more attractive. His dark hair was graying a little in a way that made my ovaries squeeze—the tragedy of the widower was shamefully sexy . . . so much cleaner than a sloppy divorce. And his sense of duty got me right in the feels, because a father who put his daughter first was not something I’d seen a lot firsthand.

“How’s Tess?” I asked, handing him an IPA from the fridge.

He shrugged. “She’s fine.”

I sliced an avocado carefully. Helga did have very sharp knives. “Riley adores her.”

He gave a half smile, and my ovaries stirred again. “Riley is amazing. She knows all these cool things to do that keep Tess interested. Little things, too, like pulling all the pots and pans out of the cupboards and giving her a wooden spoon and whisk and letting her bang the hell out of them. Or the other day, she filled up the sink with water and put dish soap in and just made bubbles and splashed. This morning, they put rocks in a bucket for forty-five minutes, and Tess was happy the whole time. Where do they teach that stuff? All my time with Tess is spent trying not to get her to break things and hurt herself.”

I smiled to myself. Riley had learned those things from me, because I’d done them with her. My mother had done them with me. “Well, it’s a lot easier when your job is just to entertain someone. You have to do all the work, too. Cooking, laundry, cleaning, taxes, doctor’s appointments . . .”

He picked at the label on the beer bottle. “Does it ever get easier?”

“Hand me that cilantro, okay? And yes. It does.” I mashed up the avocado, added the cilantro and some jalape?o and red onion. “You’re a good dad, Miller, and you’ve had extraordinarily hard circumstances.”

“I’m not really a good dad,” he said, and there it was, his deepest fear, out in the open. I could tell both from his tone of voice and the way he was so carefully studying the remains of his beer label.

“Do you hurt her?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Do you feed her?”

“Yes.”

“Do you keep her safe?”

“Mostly.”

“Do you take her to the doctor when she’s sick?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes.”

“Do you try your best, even though she’s a fiery little demon, and tell her you love her?”

He sighed. “Yeah. Even when I don’t mean it.”

“Then you’re a good dad, Miller. Trust me. I’ve seen bad fathers. You’re not even in the same neighborhood.”

Suddenly he met my gaze. “Sometimes I think I hate her. Ashley died because of her.” He looked away and took an unsteady breath. “Shit. I never said that out loud before.”

I put down the fork I was using to mash the avocados, rinsed my hands, dried them, then set his beer bottle on the counter and held both his hands in mine. They were workingman’s hands, and I held them tightly and looked into his dark, dark eyes. “That’s a perfectly normal way to feel,” I said. “It doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you a grieving husband.”

He looked at me, too, his eyebrows drawn together. Then he was hugging me, and God, it felt good, because in that moment, I knew I’d said the right thing at the right time, and it hit him in the exact right place.