Page 44 of No Knight (My Kind of Hero #3)

“Just thought I’d check. Matt said you hadn’t started to get things in for the baby yet.” Her delivery is halting and awkward.

“ Yea-aah. ” My answer is dragged over too many syllables.

I’ve been avoiding all conversation of baby things.

It all just seems so ... “It’s kind of overwhelming.

I just don’t know where to start. Do I need a crib or a cot, or are they the same things?

Do I choose a stroller with a car seat—one of those three-in-one things?

What kind of baby monitor do I choose, and do I really need a white noise machine? Also, what the hell is a butt spatula?”

“It’s like a whole new world,” she says with a laugh. “I’m no expert, but I could help you, if you like? We could go shopping, head into town. It might help you to get your mind around things even if you order what you want and need online later.”

“Really?” I feel my shoulders stiffen, as though I’m asking her for a limb. “You wouldn’t mind?”

“Who doesn’t like to shop?”

“I do love a little retail therapy.”

“We’ll make a day of it. Have lunch,” she says, rounding the couch as she heads for her shopping bags.

“That would be so good. I also think I might need new pants soon,” I murmur, stroking my stomach now.

“Oh, you’ll need a lot more than pants before you’re through,” she singsongs in a tone of one who knows all the secrets and isn’t telling. That’s fair, I guess. Can’t scare people to death the first opportunity you get them alone.

“This is for you,” she says, coming back and setting a buttermilk-colored box next to me. Tied in a white satin ribbon, the box is so pretty.

“That’s so kind of you,” I murmur, running my hand along the edge. I don’t remember the last time someone bought me something. Well, there was coffee and zeppole. And before that, a night in the Pierre. Room service and champagne.

“Are you gonna open it?” Clo asks, looking across at me.

“Would you like to help?”

Her mother laughs. Boy, would she ever.

“Yes!” The little girl abandons her pencils and scrambles from the couch. “I’ll pull the end of the ribbon.” And she does.

My heart. Letty’s gift is so, so thoughtful. A selection of upscale lotions and potions for expectant mothers, and a bunch of the tiniest socks rolled to look like pastel-colored rosebuds.

“This is for when the baby gets a little older,” Clo says, handing me a fabric rattle. “It’s soft, see? So it won’t hurt its head,” she adds, giving a short demonstration.

“It’s so cute.”

“I picked it. It’s a zebra,” she says. “Because babies like black and white.”

“Do they?”

“The lady in the shop said.”

“Well, thank you,” I say, smoothing her blond hair from her cheek. “It’s perfect, and I’m sure the baby will love it.”

“And this one here is called boob tube.” She hands me one of the fancy lotions. “It’s for your boobies.”

“Thanks?” I give a stuttering laugh.

“I can say that because it’s not a bad word, right?” She glances her mother’s way but doesn’t really wait for confirmation. “ Bangers isn’t bad either.”

“Clo!” Her mother laughs, exasperated.

“Or ta-tas , or even Brad Pitts. There’s another name I heard Uncle Seb say, but I can’t remember it.”

“Thank God,” Letty mutters.

“I think it was thumb bags , but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would boobies look like a bag of thumbs?” Shrugging the thought off, Clodagh skips happily back to her pencils and book.

“I’m gonna have such a conversation with that man,” Letty grumbles, kind of red cheeked.

Embarrassment, not anger, I think, as I pull the last item from the box. A beautiful hardback book, embossed in gold with the words “Baby’s First Year.”

“I hope you don’t mind I got in first with that,” she says softly.

“Oh, it’s so pretty. The illustrations,” I whisper, turning beautiful page after beautiful page, each with a space for a photo, a thought, or a memento.

“Ma will probably bring Matt’s baby book when she comes to visit and bore you half to death with tales of himself and his grand escapades.”

I look up. “You all have a book like this?”

She nods, her flash of surprise evident. “At least one each.”

“That’s so sweet,” I say, looking down again, embarrassed by the slip.

“I’m gonna draw the baby a picture,” Clo says, filling the awkward pause.

“That’s a grand idea. Scuse me,” Letty adds, pulling her phone from the back pocket of her jeans. “Ah, shit!”

“I better get my swear jar.” Clo drops her pencil and clambers from the cushions.

“No time. We’ve got your parent-teacher conference in half an hour. It’s a good thing one of the other moms thought to remind me.” She shoots me an apologetic glance. “Honestly, baby brain lasts for years.”

“I don’t wanna go,” Clodagh whines. “You said I could have a hot chocolate at Uncle Matty’s.”

“Maybe later. Come on, we don’t want to be late.”

“I know we don’t want to be late, because I don’t wanna go!”

“Why don’t you leave Clodagh with me?” I suggest, surprised by the offer myself. But the little girl is really not keen, and her mom looks so frazzled. And I just put my foot in my mouth.

“You’re sure?”

I nod. Because I can’t really say, Lol, jokes, no, can I? But really, how hard can it be? Clodagh is five—practically self-sufficient! Or maybe that was just me.

“I’ll be an hour. Ninety minutes tops,” Letty says, grabbing her purse after shoving one arm into her jacket. “Her teacher is a bit of a gasbag. It’s hard to get away sometimes.”

“That’s fine. I’ll be here.” As usual.

A quick kiss to her daughter’s head, a grateful smile for me, and she’s gone.

Things start out well enough. We sit on the couch with Clodagh’s coloring book.

“This is you,” she says, pointing to a triangle with a pin head and stringy hair. “And this is Uncle Matty.”

“I can tell.” Because his triangle body is upside down, narrow at the bottom and wide at the shoulders. Story checks out, but for his pin head.

“And this is me next to you, and see, you’re holding your baby.”

“I do see. Is it a boy or a girl?”

“I think it might be a guinea pig.”

“Cool. I’ve never had one of those.”

“Ryan, if you weren’t already family, I would choose for you to be.”

“Oh, Clodagh. That’s so nice of you to say.” My heart does the Grinch thing. I’m not gonna correct her. This is her family and my babe’s family too. But I’m not part of them. I don’t belong here.

“I’m thirsty.”

“Then let’s get you a water.”

Next, Clodagh is hot chocolate thirsty, so I make her one of those with cream and sprinkles and marshmallows, because apparently, she’s allowed all that before dinner.

Then she’s hungry for grilled cheese. Given that it’s almost 4:30 in the afternoon, I don’t see the issue and think I might even be doing her mom a favor. Until I consider allergies. Clodagh settles for a piece of fruit instead.

Then her legs begin to ache, and apparently, the antidote is a run around the garden. Because “growing legs need things to do.” So a run around the garden she gets. Which then necessitates a change of clothes after she skids in the wet grass and mud.

“Don’t worry,” she says as I stare in horror at her once-pink leggings. “I have clothes upstairs in my old bedroom.”

So that’s where we go, and as she pulls on some clean leggings, I take my eyes off her for two seconds. And poof! She disappears. Gone. Like aliens beamed her up out of nowhere. As in, no sight or sound of her is available to me.

I look in the closet and under the bed, the same in the next room, and the next. And so it goes, my voice echoing from the walls as panic begins to spout and grow, twining around my ribs like ivy strangling a tree.

“Clodagh!” Each time I call her name, I sound more than a little desperate, even to my own ears. “Clodagh, sweets, where are you?”

The doors are all locked—where the hell could she have gone? Unless ... she’s tall enough to open them from the inside. And has gone looking for her mom.

She wouldn’t, would she?

I thunder down the grand staircase and check the doors. The kitchen, the pantry, the garden, my rooms, as my heart continues to beat like runaway hooves.

At my wits’ end, I grab my phone and decide there’s nothing for it—I’ll have to call her mom.

So hey, Letty. I don’t quite know how to tell you, but the house ate your daughter. Yep, that’s what I said. She’s gone.

“What’s up, buttercup?”

“Oh!” I turn and practically fall into Matt’s arms. “Oh, thank God!”

“What is it?” he demands, his arms tightening around me.

“Letty left Clodagh with me while she went to her parent-teacher conference.” The words fall so quick, I’m surprised he can follow. “And everything was fine until we went upstairs to get her changed out of her muddy leggings, and now she’s gone!”

“What do you mean she’s gone?”

“It’s not funny, Matt!” I thump his chest with the side of my fist. Because the man is amused. Amused!

“She hasn’t gone,” he says, gathering me close. He folds me under his arm as he turns his attention to the staircase. “Oh, what a pity,” he calls upward. Loudly and with a theatrical exaggeration. “How will I ever survive without my Clodagh!”

“You think she’s hiding from me?” I almost whisper.

“She’s five. And a little shite.”

“But she’s so sweet,” I protest.

“They all are. Until they’re not. You can’t have lost her,” he says, giving a reassuring squeeze. “She can’t work the locks on the external doors. She’ll just be winding you up.”

“What about the swimming pool?” My stomach sinks.

“Also locked by a code. And she’s been swimming like a fish since she was two. Come on, let’s find the tiny terror. I bet she’s run you ragged,” he says, slanting me a look.

“No, she was ... yeah, she really did.” We set off up the stairs.

“That’s kids for you.”

I wouldn’t know. I don’t know how this works. Parenthood. Kids. Any of it.

“Raaah! I’m a monster!”

“Fuck me!” On the first floor landing, Matt’s arms tighten around me as he moves me behind him, shielding me with his body. Instinct, I guess. Not that the threat is too terrifying.

“Uncle Matty, you said a bad word!” the little girl yells, her hands still held in the air like claws. Latex claws. Because hanging from each of her fingers is an extra-large condom.