Sugar Daddy (Travis Family #1)(48)

For the first time in my life I was filled with a sense of possibility. I had a degree and a license, and a job that might turn into a career. I had a six-hundred-and-fourteen-square-foot apartment with beige carpeting and a used Honda that still ran. And most of all I had a piece of paper that said Carrington was mine, and no one could take her away from me.

I enrolled Carrington in preschool and bought her a Little Mermaid lunch box and sneakers with flashing lights embedded in the sides. The first day of school I walked her to her classroom and fought to hold back my own tears as my sister sobbed and clutched at me and begged me not to leave her. Withdrawing to the side of the doorway, away from the gaze of the sympathetic teacher, I crouched on the floor and wiped Carrington's streaming face with a tissue. "Baby, it's just for a little while. Just a few hours. You're going to play and make new friends—"

"I don't wanna make friends!"

"You're going to do artwork and paint and draw—"

"I don't wanna paint!" She buried her face in my chest. Her voice was muffled in my shirt. "I wanna go home with you."

I cupped the back of her small head, holding her securely against my damp shirt. "I'm not going home, baby. We both have our jobs, remember? Mine is to go fix people's hair, and yours is to go to school."

"I don't like my job!"

I eased her head back and applied a tissue to her runny nose. "Carrington, I have an idea. Here, look—" I took her arm and gently turned it wrist up. "I'm going to give you a kiss you can carry with you all day. Watch." Bending my head, I pressed my lips to the pale skin right below her elbow. My lipstick left a perfect imprint. "There. Now if you start to miss me, that will remind you that I love you and I'm coming soon to pick you up."

Carrington regarded the waxy pink mark dubiously, but I was relieved to see her tears had stopped. "I wish it was a red kiss," she said after a long moment.

"Tomorrow I'll wear red lipstick," I promised. I stood and took her hand. "Come on, baby. Go make some new friends and draw me a picture. The day will be over before you know it."

Carrington approached preschool in a soldierly manner, regarding it as a duty that had to be performed. The ritual of the goodbye kiss persisted, however. The first day I forgot about it, I received a call at the salon from the teacher, who said apologetically that Carrington was so distraught she was disrupting the class. I raced to the school on my break and met my swollen-eyed sister at the classroom door.

I was rattled and out of breath, and thoroughly exasperated. "Carrington, did you have to make such a fuss? Can't you go one day without a kiss on your arm?"

"No." She extended her ami stubbornly, her face tear-streaked and mulish.

I sighed and made the lipstick mark on her skin. "Are you going to behave now?"

"Okay!" She bounced and skipped back into the classroom while I hurried back to work.

People always noticed Carrington when we went out. They stopped to admire her and asked questions, and said what a pretty little girl she was. No one ever guessed I was related to her—they assumed I was the nanny, and they said things like '"How long have you been taking care of her?" or "Her parents must be so proud." Even the receptionist in our new pediatrician's office insisted I would have to bring Carrington1 s forms home to be signed by a parent or legal guardian, and she treated me with open skepticism when I said I was Carrington's sister. I understood why our link seemed questionable: our coloring was too dissimilar. We were like a brown hen with a white egg.

Not long after Carrington turned four, I got a glimpse of what dating was going to be like—and it wasn't pretty. One of the stylists at the salon, Angie Keeney, arranged a blind date for me with her brother Mike. He had been divorced recently, two years after marrying his college sweetheart. According to Angie, Mike wanted to find someone completely different from his wife.

"What does he do?" I asked her.

"Oh, Mike does real well. He's the top appliance salesman for Price Paradise." Angie gave me a significant glance. "Mike's a provider."

In Texas the code word for a man with a steady job is "provider." and the one for a man who doesn't have or want a job is the all-purpose "bubba." And it's a well-known fact that while providers sometimes turn into bubbas. it seldom goes the other way.

I wrote down my phone number for Angle to give to her brother. Mike called the next night, and I liked his pleasant voice and easy laugh. We agreed he would take me out for Japanese food since I'd never had it before.

"I'll try anything except the raw fish/' I said.

"You'll like it the way they fix it."

"Okay." I figured if millions of people ate sushi and lived to tell about it. I might as well give it a try. "When do you want to pick me up?"

"Eight o'clock."

I wondered if I could find a babysitter who'd be willing to stay until midnight. I had no idea what a babysitter would charge. I wondered how Carrington would react to being left alone with a stranger. I wondered how I was going to react to it. Carrington. at some stranger's mercy...

"Great," I said. "I'll see if I can get a sitter, and if there's any problem, I'll call you b—"

"A sitter," he interrupted sharply. "A sitter for what?"