The Forever Girl (Wildstone, #6)(41)

She laughed again. “This isn’t the military, Walk. She’s not your little soldier.”

“It’s about logic and common sense.”

Maze just shook her head. “You poor, ignorant man.”

He decided to overlook this. But he was having trouble overlooking her thin, lacy see-through sweater over a cami, both topping denim shorts that showed off her legs. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to concentrate on anything else, but then the Frozen CD started playing and Sammie began to sing. At high volume and off-key. He turned the music down, but she just got louder.

Halfway to Home Depot, while Walker’s ears were already starting to bleed, Sammie yelled, “Potty!”

“We’re almost there,” he told her.

“There’s a gas station on the corner,” Maze said. “Maybe you should stop.”

“I’m not taking her to a gas station bathroom,” Walker said.

“Potty!”

“We’re hurrying,” he said via the rearview mirror. “Two minutes.”

He pulled into the Home Depot parking lot. There was a light cool wind, but hell if he wasn’t sweating. He got out, pulled Sammie from her car seat and set her down. He stripped off his sweatshirt, and before he could toss it into the driver’s seat, he heard water splashing.

Sammie had hiked up her princess nightgown and spread her legs, and had her head bent, watching herself pee through her Wonder Woman undies.

In the parking lot.

A woman got out of the car across from them and tsked at him.

Maze was grinning. “Tried to tell you.” She crouched next to Sammie, they did some quick maneuvering, and then Maze was carrying Sammie toward the entrance.

Walker, who rarely, if ever, felt clueless and uncertain of his next move, but who felt both of those things now, strode after them. When he caught up, he looked at Maze. “How we doing?”

“Well, Sammie’s commando since her babysitter didn’t listen to her, and I need some more caffeine, but other than that, we’re both hanging in there.”

Three aisles in, Walker was holding Sammie in one arm, pushing the cart with his free hand, and trying to keep up with Maze, who was deep in her list and concentrating. Sammie was crying again because he wouldn’t let her have any of the mountain of bags of M&Ms they’d just passed, done up for Valentine’s Day.

“Ms!” Sammie sobbed, staring despondently over his shoulder with an arm outstretched dramatically as they passed them by.

“Bad for your teeth,” he said.

Sammie sobbed through three more rows until he caved and gave her a bag of M&Ms for each hand to keep her from ripping random shit off the shelves.

He could hear Maze, out in front of them, laughing her ass off. He set Sammie in the cart and came up behind a still-chortling Maze, where she was facing a row of unfinished frames. “What the hell is so funny?”

“Not supposed to swear around impressionable ears.”

“Trust me, she can’t hear me over her own inhaling of the M&Ms.”

“Maybe I meant me,” she said.

Now he laughed. “I’ve never made a single impression on you.”

“Wanna bet?”

He wanted to give some brainpower to that confusing response, but he was distracted because she’d reached up to a high shelf, her perfectly shaped ass about an inch from his—

“Ms!” Sammie yelled at him. “More!”

What felt like five lifetimes later, Maze finally had everything on her list. By the time they checked out and got a commando, chocolate-covered Sammie back to the car, Walker was also covered in chocolate and wanted to stab himself in the eye with a stick. Repeatedly.

“You smell like candy.”

He sent a death glare at Maze, who just laughed at him again. He didn’t get it. In his world, he was feared. Men backed down whenever he gave them this same look.

Not Maze. She actually moved into his personal space, piercing his armor with nothing but that smile. “I can’t tell you how much fun I just had.”

He crossed his arms and stared down at her.

Not intimidated in the least, she just grinned. “Poor big, tough, untouchable Walker. Taken down by a little girl.”

“By two girls, actually . . .” he said with a rough laugh. “I seriously underestimated and underappreciated parenthood.”

Sammie fell asleep in her car seat as he and Maze loaded the trunk.

“That was like taking your most badly behaved buddy out when he’s shit-faced,” he said. “No filter, wanting every ridiculous thing he sees, crying and getting mad over nothing, singing nonsense at the top of his lungs . . . I kept expecting to get kicked out and banned from the store for life.”

“Hmm.” She sipped the coffee he’d bought her. “You do realize we were that level of annoying ourselves in Vegas.”

He stared at her, surprised. It was damn hard to surprise him, but she’d never once brought up the subject of Vegas first. Stepping toward her, he trapped her up against the car, an arm on either side of her head, palms flat on the roof of the vehicle. Her breath caught, and as a result, so did his, but he ignored that and met her gaze. “Thought you didn’t remember a thing about that night.”

“I remember you getting into our hotel room minibar.”