Under My Skin (Stark International Trilogy 3)

I crouch down so that we’re eye to eye and put on my most serious negotiation face. The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing. For all I know, I should be setting firmer boundaries. Making strict rules about ice cream. Watching out for ways to sing the praises of green vegetables.

But I can only do what I can do, so I tap her nose lightly. “I tell you what. If you promise to eat at least a few green beans, you can have french fries, too. Deal?”

“Deal.” She thrusts out her hand, sticky from the chocolate her father snuck her earlier. We shake gravely, and then I turn to Jackson, waving my soiled palm. He shrugs sheepishly.

“Sooner or later you’ll have to quit indulging her,” I tease.

“I’m well aware. Ten or eleven more years and I’ll be completely over it.”

I laugh. Frankly, I think he’s underestimating. I lean against the counter and watch as she holds her hands up, demanding he lift her. He does, and lets her hang on his hip like a little monkey. He looks happy and engaged. Not to mention competent and completely smitten, and I think it’s about the sexiest I’ve ever seen him.

“Okay, you two. I need to go to the store to get everything for our celebration. I’ll be back soon.”

“Me, too! Me, too!”

I glance at Jackson. “What do you think? Can you come?”

He shakes his head. “I have a call. About your resort,” he adds, his eyes crinkling with amusement. “But you two go on ahead.” He grins. “Your first mommy/daughter outing.”

The thought makes butterflies dance in my stomach, and I’m about to protest. But I look at the little girl, so clearly excited to go out into the world. “All right,” I say after a moment. “Why not.” After all, how hard could it be?

I’m pretty certain that every person in Los Angeles is at the Ralphs on West 9th today. At least that’s how it feels as I try to maneuver through the crowd with one hand on the cart and one hand tight in Ronnie’s little one.

“Come on, kiddo,” I say. “Don’t you want to ride?” I’d tried putting her in the cart when we’d first arrived, but she is absolutely determined to help me, and apparently helping me means walking beside me while I try to navigate the crowd and figure out what we need to buy.

She stubbornly shakes her head. “Wanna walk, Sylvie. Wanna push the cart.”

“You can’t reach the cart,” I counter. “But okay. Walking it is.”

I’ve already grabbed the ground beef, eggs, tomato sauce, and ice cream. So now I need to get some potatoes, onions, and the green beans that we negotiated during our ice cream and vegetable summit.

I know my way around this grocery store pretty well as it’s a short walk from Stark Tower and I come here on occasion to grab something for lunch. So it’s easy enough to get back to the produce section and load up on the vegetables we need for dinner. “That’s all we need,” I tell her. “I’m going to weigh these and put on those little price labels, and then we can go check out, okay?”

She’s staring up at the produce scale, watching a woman in front of us type in a code and get rewarded with a white label.

“Me! Me!” she says as the woman in front of us leaves.

“Do you know your numbers?” I ask, and she dutifully counts to ten, albeit out of order after she passes six. I decide that’s close enough. “Okay,” I say, then put the bag of onions on the scale. I haul her up and balance her on my hip, then slowly tell her, “Three, four, one, two.”

She almost messes up on the four, but I redirect her finger and we end up with a label for the onions, which she enthusiastically slaps on.

The process has taken only about eight times longer than it should.

“You did great,” I say. “I’m going to do the other two myself, really really fast. Wanna watch?”

She bobs her head, her black curls bouncing, and I go back to the scale, saying the numbers out loud as I punch them in, like some real life skit on Sesame Street.

When I’m done, I hold on to my vegetables and turn around to lead her back to the cart.

She’s gone.

A bolt of panic cuts through me, and I tamp it down. She can’t be gone. She’s just in the next aisle. She’s just behind one of these people.

But she’s not, and reality is smacking me in the face. I’ve lost her. I’ve lost Jackson’s little girl.

My stomach lurches, and I swallow both bile and fear. I don’t have time for that. All I have time for is finding her.

“Did you see her? The little girl who was beside me?” I practically shout the question at two women who are chatting in the aisle by the tomatoes. But both just look at me blankly. One as if I am nothing more than a nuisance, the other with an apologetic smile and an explanation of, “Sorry, I haven’t seen a thing.”