Bond (Klein Brothers 1)

After it, Bond’s feet might have looked nice and be fresh to death, but he was using the bottom of his t-shirt to wipe under his eyes from where the tears had fallen as he laughed.

“Let’s move onto you, Heidi,” Jess said, her eyes dancing to Bond periodically as she got up and moved her stool close to me. Once she had it where it needed to be, she sat down and began working on my fingers.

“I’m sorry about that. I had no idea his feet were that ticklish.”

“It happens. Usually it’s men who have the worst reaction to pedicures and ticklish feet anyway, so you learn to be prepared just in case.” Leaning in closely, she said under her breath, “Yet another reason why women have the babies.”

True story!

Glancing over the top of her head, I noticed Bond had fallen asleep. With the hours he worked, the fact he added a workout to his days, and how he always seemed to be moving and doing something, I’d often wondered where he got his energy. Now I felt sorry for him and was glad we’d come here so that he could switch off while I had my nails done.

When Jess was done, I thanked her and said we’d meet her out at the desk to pay the bill.

I was careful when I woke Bond up, gently shaking him awake and smiling when his eyes shot open, and he looked around the room with surprise.

Yeah, this guy needed more downtime.

It was just as we were leaving that my phone rang, with a client needing their cake sooner than they’d said.

“Don’t worry about Nemi,” Bond reassured me as I had a mini panic. The cake could get done, that wasn’t an issue, it was my daughter and him that worried me. “If you let the daycare know I’m coming, I’ll drop you off at home and go and pick her up.”

In the three years that I’d been parenting, nothing had ever been as easy as that. Usually, I had to call around my family to find someone who could drop what they were doing to help out.

“Are you sure?”

Checking his watch, Bond nodded. “Absolutely. We’ve got two hours until she needs to be collected, so you work, I’ll make us some lunch, and then I’ll bring her home.”

Rolling onto my tiptoes, I caught his face in my palms and planted a noisy, dramatic kiss on his lips. “I love you. Thank you so much. I promise I’ll pay you back.”

Smiling softly down at me, he murmured, “You just did.”

We might not have all of the same interests in our downtime, but it felt like we’d grown as a couple today. I could seriously see myself spending the rest of my life with Bond.

And that didn’t scare me at all.

Chapter Seventeen

Bond

It’d been three months since we’d had our couple’s day together, and both of us had been working our asses off since. Things had changed between us as well—not in a negative way, in a good way.

Two days a week, I collected Nemi from daycare and either dropped her off at home or I took her in to work with me. We had a great routine going, and I loved spending time with both of my girls.

“Gotta say, man,” Cason said, leaning back in his chair as he smirked at me. “Never thought I’d see the day Bond Klein settled down with not only a girlfriend, but a kid as well.”

He’d been in dropping off the instructions for this month’s cocktails and had caught sight of the wall filled with the drawings Nemi had done for Canon and me.

“To be fair, it’s a hot woman and a seriously cute kid,” my brother pointed out from his desk, then picked up a piece of paper to show Cason what she had given him last night. “Smells like bubblegum and candy. Here, try it.”

Cason’s jaw dropped for a moment, but then curiosity got the better of him, and he got up to check it out for himself.

“Well, shit,” he said between sniffs, “it does. Where do you get pens like that?”

“From Canon,” I snickered, ignoring the middle finger my brother shot back at me.

“I found them online. I’ll send you the link.”

Cason continued sniffing the thank you card after he sat back down. “Why can’t I stop doing this?”

I wasn’t surprised. It’d happened to everyone who’d smelled it so far, including Jarrod when he’d stopped in earlier. “Because they smell like your childhood?”

He nodded, acceding this was a fair point. “They smell like Nerds.”

That they did.

“Anyway,” I said slowly, tapping the menu he’d dropped off today with the cocktails listed on it. Yes, it was a gimmick having a setup like this with the cocktails and cakes, but it was working for us, and our customers appreciated it. “Unless we’re doing the next menus in Nerd smelling pens…”