Page 77 of Bargain With the Boss

I rolled onto my knees, then stood.

“Bye, Xavier,” Maddie said in a sing-song voice.

I resisted the urge to lift my shoulders in reaction. This was exactly why I hadn’t wanted to come to see Jude. I still had her taste in my mouth for fuck’s sake. It was probably obvious.

I followed the path around the back of the house and found Jude at the table in the kitchen. He had schematics for something spread out, held down by used juice glasses. I tapped on the glass pane of the door, and he looked up with a frown.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as I opened the door.

“Hello to you too.”

Jude pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry, Nessa was up all night. I tried to let Maddie get some sleep, but Nes wasn’t having it.” He yawned as he grabbed his mug of coffee.

“She’s sleeping like a little princess out there now.”

“Figures,” he said around another huge yawn.

“What are you doing?”

“Building a Jurassic Park bed for Owen.”

“Of your own design.”

He reddened. “Maybe.”

I laughed. This Jude was much different from the man I’d met a few short years ago. Even tired as hell, he had an easiness around the eyes since he’d found Maddie. I let him show off the blueprints—honest to God blueprints—for the twin bed that could easily be deconstructed when Owen lost interest in dinosaurs as only a young boy could.

I’d never lost my love for Transformers and Voltron, personally. Owen was a bit more fickle. He’d already lost interest inBlueyandPaw Patrolin the last year. Three was coming on like a freight train.

How the hell had that happened?

My own nephew, Milo, was firmly in the toddler phase of life. Every time Luna sent me a new photo in text, he seemed to double in size. It gave me a pang to think about it followed directly aboutthe broken condom of the night before.

Hell, we didn’t even bother to think about a condom after that.

I knew Syd said she was on the pill, but the thought of her having my kid should have sent me into orbit, instead I was almost disappointed when she’d said it.

I needed my damn head examined.

“Earth to Xavier.”

I looked up from the blueprints that I was obviously not reading. “Sorry. Hey, have you seen Sydney today?”

“Is that what you’re doing here?”

“Sort of. She kind of went MIA today. I thought maybe she stopped in here.”

“Kind of MIA?” Jude leaned his hip against the table and crossed his arms. He wore workout pants and a T-shirt with something on the shoulder that was probably baby spit-up.

“Yes. She doesn’t have a car, and she wasn’t at the Sherman.”

He didn’t need to know that I’d been there without her.

Jude’s eyes narrowed.

Well, maybe he’d figure it out for fuck’s sake. I was incredibly bad at this. It was probably the first time I’d chased after a woman since college. And it wasn’t even like I was chasing her. She worked with me. It wasn’t out of bounds to know where she was.

I tried not to remember that there’d been little to no boundaries last night.