“We can go to a restaurant for dinner,” he tells her. “It’s not dinner time yet.”
“I’ll wait,” she tells him. “How ‘bout some dessert first? I want a cookie.”
Carter shakes his head. “This is a cookout, not a bake sale.”
“Well, I want a cookie,” Chloe announces, like this should be sufficient reason for cookies to appear.
I’m not sure I should offer cookies to the five-year-old who hasn’t even eaten yet, but I give her brothers metaphorical cookies before dinner all the time, so what the hell? “We do have cookies,” I tell Carter. “Chocolate chip. Two for a dollar.”
“Two cookies! I want two cookies,” she tells him.
Carter pulls out his wallet, fishes out a dollar, and hands it to her. “Here you go. See that girl with brown hair?” he asks, pointing. “That’s Grace. Give her the dollar and tell her you want to buy two cookies.”
Chloe snatches the money and runs over to Grace’s side of the table.
Shaking his head, Carter stays right where he is. “Picky little shit.”
I grin. “Hey, I don’t blame her. Pasta is delicious. I would probably choose that over a boring burger, too.”
“You don’t work tonight, do you?”
I shake my head. “I work tomorrow, but I’m off today.”
“Perfect. When you’re done doing all this, I’ll take you both out for dinner.”
“Are your parents still going out?” I ask, mildly surprised. After seeing them at breakfast, I assumed they weren’t getting along today and might cancel whatever they had planned that meant Carter had to babysit.
“Yeah, they’re still going. Mom’s having an episode though, so she and my dad will end up fighting before he eventually drags her out of the house. Just better for Chloe not to be there for all that.”
“How is that all going to work when you go off to school? It seems like you’re a crucial cog in Chloe’s life.”
He glances over at her, paying for her cookies in her cute little ballet outfit. “Yeah, I’m not sure yet. Caroline says she’ll help out, but she and her husband are planning to start their own family soon and she doesn’t have enough time as it is.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know.”
“Are you really going to have a spare bedroom at your apartment for her?”
Carter brings his gaze back to me. “Yeah. It’s a three bedroom, so there’s enough space to set one aside for her. I figure bedroom, office, Chloe’s room. Unless I knock you up, of course. Then we’ll probably need a nursery.”
I widen my eyes and look around to make sure no one overheard, then glare at him. “Really? At a church function?”
Carter smirks. “Hey, you were doing it in my kitchen with my parents in the next room.”
“I was trying to scare you straight; you’re just bein’ a troublemaker.”
“No, I’m being a problem-solver,” he offers back, lightly. “If I knock you up, we already have to accommodate one kid. We could probably just have Chloe move to New York with us, wouldn’t be much added trouble.”
“I’m growing increasingly worried that you’re startin’ to view knockin’ me up as a way to lock down a dedicated nanny.”
“And lover,” he adds. “I’m seeing a lot of perks.”
“You are an insane person,” I tell him. “I want to go to college, not be trapped at home with Carter clones, watching you become successful. Especially because come your mid-life crisis, you would undoubtedly leave me for a co-ed after I gave you my best years and gave up my own goals to accommodate you and raise your babies. Sorry, it’s a hard no. I’ll be focusin’ on my own goals, thank you very much.”
“Pessimist,” he accuses. “I already told you I wouldn’t ruin your life. It’s like you don’t believe me or something.”
“Go figure,” I toss back.
Chloe comes running back over with a cookie in each hand. “Look what I got!”
Carter’s attention is still on me, though. He’s studying me again, a look on his face like the one that was probably on mine while I was theorizing about his relation to Chloe. “Where’s your father?”
“What?”
“Your dad. You live with your mom and a stepdad, right? You’ve never mentioned your father. What happened to him?”
I don’t like that question. It’s unreasonable to be annoyed by such a common inquiry, but I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to pin my fears about him on an absent, disappointing father—and I have an absent, disappointing father, so if I tell him that, he’ll be able to.
“I don’t have daddy issues,” I say instead.
“Then tell me what happened to him,” he counters.
“I don’t want to,” I state.
Carter smirks. “Because then I’ll be able to logically argue against your fears. Right. Why would you want that?”
“My fears have nothin’ to do with my father, Dr. Mahoney,” I say, dryly. “My fears have everything to do with what I know about you as a person, your life goals, and men just like you. Selfish people can’t be relied on, and a relationship is not a life plan. It’s important to do your own thing, that way you never come to a point where you’ve built your whole life around someone else and then they decide to leave and your whole world crumbles. A romantic relationship can be the icing on the life-cake, not the flour in the batter.”