One Chance, Fancy (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 5)

I mentally scanned through people that I knew that would be able to help her. I knew a speech pathologist that had graduated with me. I also knew a couple that worked with early childhood intervention.

I could ask all of them.

“I know a few people that work with children,” I said. “She might do better if she was taken to a counselor first, though. A male one.”

Bayou nodded. “I’ve already thought of that, and I agree. I have a list on my phone thanks to a buddy. His wife works with children, and she is supposed to be finding me a male that does the same thing that can work with her.”

I looked at the clock on the wall. “Did you feed her breakfast?”

He nodded. “Bacon and eggs from Sonic. She ate every bit of it. At least I don’t have to worry about her appetite.”

That was true.

“Then you should probably go. Leave her here and pray that there are no riots while you’re gone.” I paused. “And don’t dilly dally.”

He handed her to me, and Isa came without complaint. Her eyes, so much like her father’s, met mine, and I felt something in my chest pang.

I always knew that Bayou would make beautiful babies.

“I’ll be back.” He left, only taking two seconds to look over his shoulder at the both of us before finally leaving completely.

I studied the little girl.

“You’ve got the big man tied in knots,” I told her. “Your daddy is scared to death right now, and barely hanging on by a thread.”

The little girl’s gray eyes, filled with intelligence, seemed to comprehend what I’d just said.

She pressed her fingertip to my hair and ran it down from root to the hair tie that I had holding my hair into a tightly-controlled bun.

“I don’t really know what to do with a three-year-old,” I told her teasingly. “Would you like to play on my phone?”

I pulled it out of my pocket and unlocked it for her, thinking about what I had on there that a three-year-old could play.

Nothing. I didn’t have a single game on there.

“Umm,” I quickly went to the app store and found a puzzle game that she might like, downloading it and opening it all within about a minute.

All the while she sat calmly on my lap watching me.

No impatience at all.

No…nothing.

After showing her how to work the puzzle game, I handed the phone to her, which she took.

Moments later, she was finishing the puzzle and handing it back.

“Smart girl,” I teased.

A big man walked in and my heart leapt.

It settled back down when I saw who it was.

“Hello, Rome,” I said softly.

Rome’s eyes were warm when they met mine. Then they slid to the girl on my lap, and something in his eyes went haywire for a long moment before going soft.

Rome’s son, Matias, had died of leukemia. I was sure that it was still as raw and fresh now as it was the day that it’d happened.

“This Isa?” he asked softly.

I nodded. “It is…did Bayou talk to you?”

He pulled up the chair from Diane’s desk—Diane that I noticed was late as hell today and hadn’t called to tell anybody that she was going to be late or call in sick—and sat down.

He was such a big man that his size was intimidating, but the smile he had on his face for the little girl in my lap was nothing short of beautiful.

“She looks a lot like him,” Rome murmured, eyes trained on the girl’s face. “The hair. The…holy shit.”

The eyes.

“Yes,” I agreed as Isa looked at Rome and let him see her eyes. “She has his eyes, too. And like I just told Bayou, you should really watch your language around her.”

He chuckled and leaned back in his chair as he studied the little girl.

Isa nudged me and I looked down to see she’d finished the second puzzle.

I found her a new one just as the phone rang.

“Shit.”

“What was that, Ms. Mackenzie? I don’t think we heard you.”

I flipped Rome off and stood up to walk to the phone that only rang when I had an inmate on the way down.

Usually it was a courtesy warning for us to put up any objects that shouldn’t be out when inmates were on their way down—like pens, or guns…things like that.

My heart leapt. I couldn’t handle an inmate right now! Not with Bayou’s daughter in the infirmary with me while he was in a meeting.

I answered the phone with a curt, “Hello?”

“Ma’am,” the officer on the other end said. “I have a Slate Solis on the way down to you with a laceration that needs to be stitched up.”

“Slate Solis?” I confirmed.

“Yes,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, sounding much calmer than I felt.

I pulled up Slate’s file on my computer and scanned his records, all the while my stomach was churning.