Match Me If You Can (Chicago Stars #6)(43)

“See my wand?”

“Hey, that’s a wand, all right.” He crouched, pretending to check out her artwork, but really getting down to business. “Pippi, show Uncle Heath where you put his phone.”

She gave him a killer smile, front teeth the tiniest bit crooked, probably from that thumb. “Want phone,” she said.

“That’s great. Me, too. Let’s go find it together.”

She pointed to his pocket. “Want that phone!”

“Oh, no, you don’t.” He shot to his feet and strode away so that, if Pippi started to cry, he wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity. “Who’s ready for a picture?” he called out, hearty as all hell.

“Princess Rosa, you’re ready,” Molly said. “Go sit on the throne and let Prince Heath take your picture.”

A snort came from the general direction of Glinda the Good Witch.

“I’m scared,” the little girl whispered to Molly.

“As well you should be,” Glinda muttered.

Her comment should have aggravated him, but he hadn’t wanted to crush her spirit, just to teach her a lesson about business that was ultimately for her own good. “Do you want me to go with you?” Molly asked the child. But the little girl was gazing adoringly at Annabelle.

“I want my pitcher with her,” she said.

Molly grinned at Annabelle. “Fairy Godmother, you seem to have a photo call.”

“Sure.” Annabelle took the child’s hand and headed toward the throne. As she reached his side, she stuck her nose in the air and swept past him. The nose, he couldn’t help but notice, had a pink glitter smudge at the tip.

After that, it seemed as though every princess in the land wanted her photo taken with the good fairy godmother, who, not coincidentally, acted as if the royal photographer didn’t exist. He knew how to play that game, and he confined his comments to the girls. “Give me a smile, princess. That’s good.”

Annabelle might be ignoring him, but she giggled with the children, cast magic spells, arbitrated disputes, and let Princess Pilar see what fairy godmothers wore under their gowns. He was more than a little interested himself. Unfortunately, this particular fairy godmother wore gray drawstring shorts instead of the bright red thong that would have been his choice. But, hey, that was just him.

Before long, he forgot about the phone calls he needed to make and concentrated on getting good pictures of the girls. He had to admit they were cute. Some of them were shy and needed encouragement. Others were big talkers. A couple of the four-year-olds wanted Annabelle to sit on the throne so they could perch in her lap. A few had her stand next to them. She made them laugh—made him smile—and by the time they’d gotten to the end of the photos, he’d decided to forgive her. What the hell. Everybody deserved a second chance. First he’d give her the lecture of her life, then he’d take her back on probation.

Photos done, she set off to help Hannah, who was supervising a game of pin the kiss on the frog. Since Hannah wasn’t making anyone wear a blindfold, it didn’t look like much of a game to him, but maybe he was missing something. Phoebe and Molly, in the meantime, had started a treasure hunt.

Pippi popped up at his side and tried to frisk him for his backup phone, but he distracted her with an open pot of green eye shadow.

“Pippi! How did you get into that?” Molly shrieked a few minutes later.

He busied himself with the camera and pretended not to see the hard, suspicious look Phoebe shot at him.

Molly gathered the girls under a shady tree and entertained them with a story she seemed to be making up on the spot called Daphne and the Princess Party. She incorporated all the girls’ names and even added a frog named Prince Heath who specialized in taking magical pictures. Now that he’d decided to forgive Annabelle, he relaxed enough to enjoy watching her. She sat cross-legged in the grass, her billowing skirts enveloping the children around her. She laughed when they did, clapped her hands, and, in general, acted pretty much like a kid herself.

While the tables were set up for refreshments, he was put in charge of the dragon pi?ata. “Don’t make them wear blindfolds,” Hannah whispered. “It scares them.”

So he didn’t. He let them whack away to their hearts’ content, and when the pi?ata refused to break, took a swing at the sucker himself and finished it off. Goodies flew. He supervised the distribution and did a damn good job of it, too. Nobody got hurt, nobody cried, so maybe he wasn’t entirely clueless about kids.

The refreshments arrived in a sea of pink. Pink punch. Sandwiches made with pink bread, a castle cake complete with pink-frosted ice-cream-cone turrets and a chunk conspicuously missing from the pink drawbridge, undoubtedly the work of young Andrew Calebow. Molly slipped him a beer.

“You’re an angel of mercy,” he said.

“I don’t know what we’d have done without you.”

“It was fun.” Well, the last twenty minutes anyway, when there’d been some action with the pi?ata and at least a faint potential for bloodshed.

“Princesses!” Phoebe called from the cake table. “I know we all want to thank our fairy godmother for taking time out of her busy schedule to be with us today. Princess Molly, we loved your story so much, and Princess Hannah, everyone appreciated all the hugs you gave out.” Her voice dropped to that coo he’d come to dread. “As for Prince Heath …We’re so glad he could help us with the pi?ata. Who knew his talent for battering things would come in so handy?”