Page 33 of The Live-In Temptation (Steele Brothers of Starlight Cove #2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

XANDER

It was midafternoon on Saturday when I carried Emma into the living room, both of us exhausted. She had pink glitter smeared across her cheek, a mostly empty juice box squished under one arm, and the telltale wobble of a kid who’d burned through all her emotional regulation hours ago.

It had been a fucking day.

Chloe was out with Luna, Sutton, and Quinn, which meant I was on solo dad duty, and Emma was one minor inconvenience away from total meltdown.

She’d lost her favorite scrunchie somewhere between the couch cushions and the seventh circle of hell.

She’d tripped over her shoelaces at the library, taken a tumble, and cried like the world was ending.

And the snack tantrum after I’d offered her the wrong-colored apple slices? It was one for the record books.

But we’d survived it. No yelling. No bribes. Just her and me and some deep breaths, silly voices, and more than one mermaid bandage.

She was still off-kilter, and I was exhausted but determined to end our day together on a high note.

“Okay, peanut.” I set her in front of the couch before dragging over the box I’d brought in from the garage. “I was thinking maybe you and I should tackle this bookcase LoLee found for your room. How’s that sound?”

“We can build it?” Emma asked, eyes wide and voice filled with awe.

“We sure can. What do you think?”

“We can do it, Daddy!” Emma stood tall, her ponytail askew, and propped her hands on her hips, just over her tutu-and-leggings combo she’d insisted on that morning. “LoLee said we were gonna have so much fun!”

“What else did she say?”

“That I’m the boss, and you’re Chief Growly, and that if we work together, we can do hard things.”

I stared at my daughter—the little girl I hadn’t even known mere months ago—so overcome that she was… mine . “Well, you’re definitely the boss, so everything else she said must be true too.”

I opened the box, glancing at the instructions and immediately regretting my decision to tackle this. Going by the clusterfuck printed on this paper, I could’ve built this from scratch without a blueprint for less hassle.

But my daughter was right. When we worked together, we could do hard things.

While Emma climbed on the coffee table and shouted demands that had nothing to do with the instructions I was looking at, I focused on the musings of what appeared to be a deranged squirrel and attempted to build something that resembled a bookcase.

It wasn’t perfect. And it wasn’t without challenges—including a splinter and a buttload of money tossed in the swear jar—but we were doing it.

And through it all, I couldn’t stop watching my little girl.

How she furrowed her brow as she placed the special stickers Chloe had gotten for decoration just so .

How she made up silly songs and danced around, a rendition of something I’d seen her and Chloe do a hundred times.

Her laughter was easy now—even after a day of struggles—and that made me feel lighter than I had in a long time.

Lighter than I could ever remember being.

All because Emma was blooming. Right here, in this house, with me.

With Chloe.

Once the bookcase was standing—and I had only one extra screw I couldn’t find a purpose for—I filled the empty box with the trash, ready to take it outside, when a pink Post-it Note stuck to the back caught my eye.

For Chief Growly and The Boss?—

I can’t wait to see the magic

you make together!

xoxo LoLee

It wasn’t long. Wasn’t fancy. Just that bubbly handwriting I could now spot a mile away, but my throat went tight anyway.

I stared at the note for a second too long as Emma sang a song about the moonfish and astronaut duck. And then I folded it up and tucked it into my wallet, right behind Emma’s preschool picture. A reminder of what Emma and I could do together.

A reminder of what an important part Chloe was in our little family, even though she was trying so hard to stay on the edge. But it didn’t matter how hard she tried—she was already here. Woven into everything.

“Can we add books to it now, Daddy?” Emma asked, standing next to our masterpiece like we’d built the Eiffel Tower.

I gave a short nod. “As many as you can fit on it.”

Emma beamed at me, glancing down at our bookcase, before running over and throwing her arms around my legs. “We’re builders.”

“We sure are,” I said, voice low as I brushed a hand over her hair. “We’re a team.”

“You, me, and LoLee!”

One Night Stan’s was packed, though that wasn’t surprising for a Saturday night. It hadn’t been my first choice to take a four-year-old who’d just discovered the echo properties of her Velcro sneakers and had decided to demonstrate every five seconds, but it was where she wanted to go.

Emma ran through the throngs of people and straight behind the bar like she owned the place.

“Bean!” Lincoln yelled as he picked Emma up. “You came to visit me?”

“We came to cebrelate!”

Lincoln cocked a brow and glanced at me as I took a seat at the bar. “What are we celebrating?”

“Me and Daddy built a bookcase and I decrated it with stickers LoLee got me and now all my books have a ’pecial place to live!”

“Well, that does sound like it’s worth celebrating.” He hoisted Emma over the bar and sat her on the stool next to me as she giggled with glee. “You sit right there, and I’m gonna whip you up something special.”

I eyed him warily as he began mixing up something obnoxiously pink and fizzy. “You gonna feed my kid sugar?”

Lincoln shot me a grin. “Please. I’m a professional. I balanced it with fruit.”

“Those are gummy bears.”

“Yeah, and the red ones are cherry. See? Fruit.” He passed it to Emma with a flourish. “I call it the Sugar Rush. Sprite, pink lemonade, splash of grenadine, and a gummy bear floater.”

Emma’s eyes widened. “It’s for me ?”

Before I could snatch it away from her and tell Lincoln water would do just fine, thank you, she grabbed it and took a huge drink.

She let out a hum and danced in her seat, her grin a little unhinged. “It tastes like fireworks !”

“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, grabbing the glass halfway through her second chug. “Easy there, champ, or you’re gonna be hyped up enough to shoot straight to the moon.”

Lincoln chuckled under his breath and shook his head.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just thinking about how lost you were three months ago, and now look at you.” He lifted a chin toward me, where I was setting up a place mat for Emma to color on. “Being a dad and shit.”

He wasn’t wrong. Three months ago, Emma and I had both been fumbling, trying to find our way. She’d been a lost little girl, and I hadn’t been anyone’s daddy, just a guy trying not to drown.

And now? It no longer felt jarring when she called me that. Now, it felt like it had always been true.

Emma was halfway through her order of chicken fingers and fries when the back door opened hard enough to bounce off the wall, and Lincoln’s entire body tensed.

I glanced at him with a raised brow as Willa marched up to the bar, eyes stormy, expression stormier. She set a pallet of jars filled with honey on the bar top hard enough for the cocktail shaker to jump.

“Here’s the last of your order,” she said without preamble. “Now where’s my money, jackass?”

Lincoln just shot her a smile, that cocky grin firmly in place. “Nice to see you too.”

“You know what would be nice ? If you paid your damn bill. I’ve texted you. I’ve sent you four invoices. I even left Post-it Notes on the mirror in the office because I figured you’d look there at least seventeen times a day?—”

“Are you saying you think I’m handsome?”

“—and still nothing . So this is me escalating.” She held out her hand, palm up, and made a gimme motion. “Pay up, or you’re cut off.”

Emma was too entranced in her drawing of a unicorn and a spaceship to pay any attention to the bickering in front of us, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the two of them.

“You always threaten people over artisanal honey, Willa?” I asked.

She didn’t remove her glare from Lincoln. “Only the ones who think it’s cute to call it ‘bee juice’ and try to pay me in expired bitters.”

Lincoln chuckled under his breath. “That was a joke .”

“I’m not laughing.” She really, really wasn’t.

He sighed, pulled out some crumpled bills, and handed them over. “There. Paid in full.”

Willa huffed and rolled her eyes but grabbed the money, stuffing it into her pocket. “You still owe me for emotional damage.”

“Just put it on my tab,” he called after her as she strode out the way she came, not looking back.

I sat there for several long moments, watching my brother watch the back door. Finally, I said, “You wanna tell me what that was all about?”

That snapped him out of whatever trance he was in, and he glanced at me with a brow raised. “You wanna tell me what’s going on with your hot nanny?”

I stared at him and he stared back and neither of us said a word.

At least until I couldn’t keep it in anymore. “Don’t call her hot.”

He barked out a laugh and knocked twice on the bar top. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Before I could tell him he didn’t know what he thought—mostly because I didn’t and I was living the damn thing—the front door opened, and in walked Chloe.

She looked windblown and flushed and fucking gorgeous, her eyes bright and smile wide as she said hello and chatted with people who stopped her on her way toward us.

And there I sat, watching her the entire time. Watching as she charmed people just by breathing, her infectious laugh making everyone smile a little brighter. Making me feel a little brighter. But it had nothing on what happened when she glanced my way and spotted Emma and me.

Her grin widened, her shoulders relaxed, and she looked…content.

She looked like mine.

“Hey,” she said once she reached us, brushing a hand down Emma’s hair. “You survived.”

“Without you, chaos?” I said. “Barely.”

Chloe’s smile faltered—just a little, but I saw it.

The surprise and disbelief written plainly on her face.

I didn’t know why either of those were there, but I hated them both.

Yeah, Emma and I had survived today on our own, but it hadn’t been without Chloe’s help.

Maybe not there, in the moment, but in all the other times behind the scenes.

In her gentle parenting of Emma and in her encouragement of creativity and curiosity, and in her confidence in me.

Before Chloe could reply to that, Emma spun around on her stool and launched herself into Chloe’s arms, babbling a mile a minute about our entire clusterfuck of a day and ending with the masterpiece that was her bookcase.

“And me and Daddy did it all by ourselves! We made it, LoLee!”

“I knew you could,” Chloe said, splitting her gaze between Emma and me. “I can’t wait to see it.”

“It’s there,” I said. “Waiting for you when you get home.”

The word came easily…effortlessly. But it landed like a bomb. Chloe’s entire body jerked as if she’d been electrocuted, and she breathed out a shaky laugh, once again giving Emma all her attention like nothing was amiss.

But I’d seen it. Seen how she’d flinched at the single word. As if it didn’t belong to her.