Page 23 of The Strawberry Patch Pancake House

Like a girl losing her mother at five years old and being forced to live with the father she’d never met? Yeah, he’d noticed, but neither of them said it out loud.

Iris turned back to Olive. ‘Look kid, sometimes crappy…’ She paused and leaned toward Archer. ‘Can I say crappy?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know.’ He hadn’t exactly had time to formulate his parental stance on cursing.

Iris shrugged. ‘Sometimes crappy things happen to you even if you’ve done nothing wrong.’

Olive looked at him pointedly, like he was the crappy thing, and he just nodded because he kinda was.

‘But,’ Iris went on, lifting her tea cup, ‘we just have to keep going and find the good things. Like tea parties with friends. Isn’t that right Mr. Higgenbottom,’ she said, patting the bespectacled frog sitting next to her.

Olive giggled. ‘That’s not his name.’

‘Of course it is. He told me.’

More giggles. ‘No! His name is Hoppy.’

Iris frowned. ‘Hoppy? That is an objectively terrible name for a frog!’

‘I think it’s a good name,’ Archer chimed in, and Iris sent him a bemused smile.

‘Oh, really?’

‘Sure. He hops, doesn’t he?’

‘Yeah!’ Olive chimed in. ‘He’s a frog. He hops.’ And maybe she wasn’t talking directly to him and maybe this wasn’t quite the bonding moment he was making it out to be, but she was talkingwithhim,nearhim, and goddamn if that wasn’t something.

‘Okay, okay.’ Iris held her hands up in surrender. ‘You guys win. But then what are we going to call this guy?’ She pointed to the blue bunny. ‘Also Hoppy?’

Olive’s brow furrowed in thought and Archer had to bite down on a smile.

‘How about Mr. Blue?’ he suggested, and Olive’s face lit up. In his direction!

‘Yeah. Mr. Blue.’

Iris rolled her eyes, but she was also having trouble keeping the smile off her face. ‘You guys are the worst at this.’

Olive was on her feet now, too excited to sit anymore. ‘No, we’re the best at it.’

We, as though they were a team.

Iris stuck out her tongue and Olive returned the gesture. ‘Well, this little lady here is obviously Prunella,’ Iris said, holding up a pig wearing an apron.

Olive squealed in delight. ‘No! Not Prunella.’

‘Maybe Pinky?’ Archer suggested.

‘I think her name is…’ Olive tapped a finger on her nose as she thought. ‘I think her name is Polly! Polly Pig.’

‘Good one,’ Archer said, and his daughter beamed.Beamed at him.

And Iris looked smug as hell that her little tea party had worked. Between the accent and the hat, Archer was wondering if maybe she was a bit moreMary Poppinsthan he’d originally thought.

But then he remembered her ass under that T-shirt and he thought maybe not.

ChapterEleven

He heard Iris’s footsteps this time, so he was prepared for her appearance in the kitchen and didn’t make a fool of himself by pouring pancake batter down his front.