Page 37 of The Heartbreaker

“Do I need to smell your breath, or do you promise you brushed your teeth?”

Daisy gave a big smile, showing her missing front tooth that she’d lost last week. The tooth fairy had made a very expensive stop at my house. “Promise, Mommy.”

“And you haven’t forgotten anything in your room?” I asked. “Everything is in your backpack?”

“Yep! And I brought my colored pencils because if we get to color something like the golden puppies and I don’t have the right color, I want to have the right color for the doggies, and I have every color.”

Jana put Daisy’s lunch box into the backpack, and after zipping it closed, she lifted the top, measuring the weight of it. “Daisy, are you sure this won’t be too heavy for you to carry?”

“Nope. I’m so strong.” She made a muscle. “Just like Daddy. Haw!”

“That’s my girl,” I said.

Jana leaned down in Daisy’s face, fixing her ponytail since it had gotten messy from all the stair jumping. “Just so you know, Mommy is very strong too. I gave birth to you. Do you know how much strength that takes?”

“More strength than I have,” I said to Daisy. “Because I can tell you right now, I wouldn’t have survived what Mommy did.” Especially without an epidural, which had blown my mind, but she’d gone into labor so fast that she didn’t have time to get one.

I checked the time and said to Jana, “We have to go.”

Jana hung Daisy’s bag over her shoulder. “Do you mind bringing me back here so we can drive together?”

“Of course not.” I nodded toward the front of the house. “Come on.”

Daisy took off to the backseat of my Range Rover—what I normally drove when I was with my daughter, given that it was safer than the Bugatti—and Jana followed. I locked up the house before slipping into the driver’s seat, making sure Daisy was fully secure before I even started the engine.

“Daddy, I wanna hear Taylor. Play my favorite song,pleeease.”

I scrolled through the playlists on my dashboard until I found Daisy’s favorite song, and “You’re on Your Own, Kid” instantly came through my speakers.

“I can’t believe you’re playing this for her too,” Jana said, keeping her voice down. Not that Daisy was even listening. She was singing too loud to hear us. “I thought I was the only one who had caved.”

“It’s Rowan’s fault she even knows who Taylor is. She took her shopping with Rayner, and Daisy heard this song in the car and the part of the lyrics where Taylor sings about Daisy May, and there was no turning back. She thinks Taylor wrote the song for her.”

“Oh my God, of course she does.” Jana laughed. “Has Daisy asked you to take her to Taylor’s concert?”

I chuckled, weaving down the narrow, tree-lined streets. “No less than twice a day.”

“Ridge, I don’t know how I feel about it. The tickets are outrageously expensive, and I know that’s not a deal-breaker for you—because, knowing you, you’d probably get her backstage passes—but I just don’t want her to be spoiled rotten.”

“You mean more spoiled than she already is?”

“Exactly.” She paused. “She comes from a family who can give her the moon and stars, but I want her to know the value of that sky and what it takes to earn it and the meaning of hard work.”

“She’s six,” I said gently.

“There still has to be a balance.”

“I don’t disagree.”

“What if we make her work for the tickets? We can assign her a few jobs around our houses. Use a notebook to keep track of all the hours she puts in and have her chip away at the goal. The concert isn’t for a while. That’ll give her plenty of time to earn the money.”

I slowed at the light, the song changing so there was a bit of quietness in the SUV before Daisy started belting out the lyrics of the new song.

“I’m sure I can have the housekeeper assign a few of her tasks to Daisy.”

Jana rolled her eyes, laughing. “Such a bougie answer.”

“I’m bougie.” I chuckled. “Says the woman who lives in a three-million-dollar house and employs the same housekeeper as me.” My smile told her I was just teasing.