Page 7

Chapter

Seven

“ D addy. Can I go play on the swings?”

“Uncle Xander is going to take you because I have to go to a meeting.” With the biggest, grumpiest, most gorgeous alpha alive. “And Uncle Xavi has to work at the coffee shop.”

And their house was going to be overrun with ghost hunters.

“Likes coffee, Daddy!”

“I know.” He liked when Xavi gave Abby ‘coffee’ too, because at Xavi’s place coffee meant chocolate milk with absolutely no coffee in it. He didn’t know what he was going to do when she finally figured that out, but right now, he was safe.

Xavi had been up since four a.m. making pastries and muffins and shit for his little coffee shop.

And then, because it was the only coffee shop in town, everybody who had to drive over the mountain pass to go to work somewhere else stopped there and everybody who was in the hotel stopped there, and, well, the town might only have three hundred people in it, but if all three hundred people showed up at the coffee shop before nine in the morning, and sometimes they did, Xavi had a very busy little thing going.

“I go have coffee with Unca Xavi?” she asked, pulling on her favorite Blue’s Clues sweatshirt, her hair a mop of curls.

“We are totally going to have coffee with your Uncle Xavi. I want a chocolate croissant. And you want?”

“Gingie piggy!”

“Okay! Put on your shoes!”

Xavi did make an empowering gingerbread pig.

Once they were both dressed, he grabbed Abby’s little backpack and they wandered downstairs into the shop.

Sebastian had to admit he loved it down here. It was a mixture of junk store and kitsch and gift shop and games and coffee shop. It was just this warm, wild, wonderful mishmash of crap, and honestly?

It suited Xavi to a tee.

“Unca Xavi! I here!”

“My own Abby! I’m here too.” Xavi called out, and Sebastian heard a couple of fond chuckles from the freshly caffeinated. “Would you like some coffee? Do you have your daddy? I bet he needs a hazelnut latte with two extra shots.”

“I bet you’re right, man. Good morning!”

“Morning.” Xavi bustled out from the back to come give them a kiss and a one-armed hug respectively. “We had such a good night, didn’t we, Abby?”

“Uh-huh.” She bounced in his hold. “Can I color, Uncle Xavi?”

“Sure, kiddo. Bastian, will you get her set up? Ginger piggie, kiddo?”

“Uh-huh.”

Xavi looked at him. “Chocolate croissant?”

“God, yes.” He winked, and he took Abby to the little play table to lower her down, then looked for a free chair.

“Hey, Sebastian, you can have my table.” Shandie March stood up, coffee in hand, and grinned at him. “I have to head off to range the forest.”

“Good luck.” He winked.

She toasted him and walked out, waving to Xavi, who was steaming milk. He always set Abby’s aside to cool a lot while he made Sebastian’s.

“So, how’s it going, Sebastian?” Loyal Blanchet, who was a long-haul truck driver, leaned over from the next table. “Hear you’re having some house trouble.”

“Yeah. It’s been a wild ride.” Everyone knew by now, so why bother to try to hide the crazy? He didn’t want to have to worry about someone giving the TV crew a hard time. They were just here to work, and didn’t need a bunch of folks questioning their right to be there.

He needed this done. Abby had to be safe in the house, or he had no idea what they were going to do. He didn’t want to have to sell it. His family had built the damn thing.

“Well, if you need help, you holler. We got that little cabin down by the falls if you need a place to stay. I can help move stuff.”

“Thanks, Loyal. I really appreciate that.” He tried for a smile, even if he was tired of that when he didn’t feel like it.

“No problem.” Loyal grinned, his missing front tooth gap clear, and then he went back to his coffee and cinnamon muffin.

He took a deep breath, checking on Abby, who was gently coloring a green spiral on a picture of a dragon in a coffee cup. So cute. She was very Zen about it.

He did love his baby girl. She was such a happy kid.

“Here you go, hon,” Xavi said, bringing over the drinks. “I’ll bring the pastry right back. Abby, do you want your coffee? Do you want a booster seat?”

“Yes, pwease.” She carefully put away the crayons and brought her picture over to him. “Dis yours, Daddy.”

“Thank you, sweetie.” He lifted her as Xavi pushed a booster under her butt.

“Want my coffee!”

He fastened her with a look. “What do we say?”

Abby beamed at him. “Pwease!”

“Very nice.” He put the little sippy cup lid over her barely warm chocolate milk and handed it to her along with her gingerbread piggy breakfast.

He told himself that it was totally reasonable to have gingerbread cookies for breakfast, because there was butter, which went on pancakes, and flour, which went into pancakes, and ginger, which was good for digestion. And it didn’t matter, because that’s what she was getting was a gingerbread pig.

Xavi handed him his coffee. “How are you doing? You ready for today?”

Sebastian shook his head. “Absolutely not, but has to be done. Right?”

Xavi nodded. “Yeah, there’s only so long the three of us can all live up in my apartment.”

“Dork.” He cracked up. “I don’t want to live in your apartment. I want to live in my house. I was born there. My dad was born there. His dad was born there.”

“So is there like a spot where you all were born, like?—”

“Shut up.” He grabbed his chocolate croissant. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

The doorbell dingled as he was taking his first really big drink of coffee, and he heard Abby say, “Hello.”

Which was fine until Colton said hello back.

“Who are you?” Colton asked, and Sebastian looked at Xavi with panicked eyes.

He was going to just grab her up and run in sheer panic, when he heard her say, “Abby! I Abby Belle!”

“Well, hello, Abby. My name is Colton Maxwell. What kind of cookie is that? I might have to get one.” Colton’s low rumble was so damn…kind. This was so not fair. Colton glanced up and met his terrified gaze, and Abby grinned over at him, and their eyes were just so unmistakably the same.

“Gingy piggy and coffee.”

“Wow, you get coffee?” Colton looked at him with wide eyes, and Sebastian shook his head, then nodded.

Abby beamed at Colton. “Uh-huh. Uncle Xavi make me coffee. And I drink it.” She offered him her cup, and he shook his head.

“No, that’s okay. Thank you, honey. I’ll get my own.” Colton walked up to the counter, looking back at Abby over and over. “Can I have a cup of decent coffee, please?”

Xavi arched an eyebrow. “What? The shit that they pour in the hotel isn’t good enough for you?”

Sebastian did grin, hissing through his teeth. “No cussing in front of the baby.”

“So, you’re Uncle Xavi, I assume?” Colton asked, giving Xavi an obvious once-over.

“That’s me. Doing my part. It takes a village to raise a baby, right?”

This was not happening. Sebastian made shushing motions.

“What? I’m not supposed to point out the fact that you did this by yourself, and that it was friends and town folk who helped you out when you were needing? Who were in the delivery room, who do the babysitting? I’m not supposed to mention that? Because I could stop if you need me to.”

“Xavi!” Sebastian was going to sink into the floor.

“Just a cup of coffee please.” Colton didn’t look like he was going to kill Xavi, which was good because this was the best coffee in town. But he did have that clenched jaw sort of expression that Sebastian remembered meaning he was super-frustrated. Maybe now it meant he was hurting?

Oh, who was he kidding? If it was him, he would want to punch Xavi in the face.

“He takes cream, no sugar.”

Colton blinked at him. “You remembered.”

Sebastian shrugged one shoulder, going for cool and casual. It wasn’t working, but that’s what he was going for. “I made you a number of cups of coffee. There’s nothing about you that I knew then, that I don’t remember now.”

Colton blinked at him, then the gaze hardened. “Then maybe you could remember that obviously you felt like I was a decent enough human being to sleep with.”

“Not appropriate.” Also ouch, but he wasn’t going to let that show. He was the dad here. He had a responsibility to this little girl, and he was not going to allow Colton to disrespect him.

So there.

Ha.

Colton held his hands up. “You’re right, you’re right. I apologize. I just got my back up. Would you like to sit and have coffee together?”

“Sure. No problem. Have a seat. How’s your leg?” See him. See him be a decent person.

Colton shrugged. “It’s been worse, but I’ve had better days.”

“Yeah, you had to pick a hotel with stairs. You had to pick a house to investigate that has three stories and no elevator. That sucks for you.”

Colton closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. Then he gave Sebastian a strained smile. “I’ll live. You sleep well?”

They sat after Xavi handed over Colton’s coffee. “I did. No ghosts dropping things on my head.”

“Yeah. I can imagine that leads to bad nights.”

“It can be challenging, yeah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I have good nights, but yeah. Xavi’s is a good place.”

Abby wiggled down out of her booster seat and came over, arms up. “I sit with you, Daddy?”

“Sure, baby.” He lifted her up, set her on his lap. “This here is Mr. Colton.”

“Him’s nice?”

The temptation to tell her he was the antichrist was huge. “Yeah, he’s a nice guy.”

She pointed to the cane. “What’s that?”

Colton’s eyes crinkled up. “That’s my cane. It helps me balance when I walk. I have one leg that doesn’t work so well.”

Abby frowned mightily. “Gots an owie?”

“I do. A bunch of rocks fell on me.”

“Oh no! Daddy kiss it? Make it better?”

He was going to die.

“Oh, thank you, honey,” Colton murmured. “Maybe later, huh? It would make people stare if Daddy did that here.”

“Or at all.” Xavi plunked a plate of cookies and pastries down on the table, glaring at Colton. “Enjoy.”

Colton waited until he walked off. “He is hostile.”