“Maybe the ones that eat their vegetables are exactly this big.” My biceps give a little flex, one Fee doesn’t miss, even if she’s quick to glance away.
“He isn’t a house elf”— Fee’s second glance seems to confirm I’m too big for the roles—“and you haven’t met him before, which makes him a stranger.”
A stranger whose dick you happen to have sucked.
A stranger who’s currently looking at a kid wondering just how old she is, mentally doing the math.
“But he can’t be a stranger ’cause I knowed his name. He told me to call him Uncle Carson.”
Her mother’s gaze cuts to me so full of loathing it’s as though she’d just overheard me ask Lulu if she’d like to earn some illicit candy. While I’m not ordinarily so Zen about being insulted in my own home, I’ll make an exception in this instance. Mom wakes alone and finds her daughter hanging around with a strange man—I guess some would find me strange—but more to the point, a strange man who might be . . .
Could it be that I’m—
Fuck, I’ll make an exception because I don’t have the capacity for much else right now. Does she even recognise me herself? I take a good look at her and decide she does. The best offence is the good defence, right? And fuck knows she has an abundance of that. Walls and walls of that shit.
But what in the name of hell is going on?
“You don’t know that man,” she whispers fiercely. “You shouldn’t be in here by yourself. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“I tried, but you said ‘five more minutes for fluffs sakes’.” Lulu imitates a snuffling yawn. “Your five more minutes are always so long, and Norman’s tummy was already talking to me.”
“If I could just say something here.” The mother’s gaze cuts my way once more, still unimpressed, but thankfully, no longer revolted. “It was Fee, wasn’t it?” To think Rose knew her all this time. “I am actually Uncle Carson. At least to Rocco.”
“Really?” Funny how, with that kind of delivery, the word sounded more like ‘bullshit’. “Rocco who?”
“You haven’t forgotten who Rocco is already, Mummy!”
“Shush, Lu. I’m talking to the man.” She may address her kid, but her gaze is all for me, even if it’s not exactly flattering.
The man. Is that the man from my past or the man from my past who . . .
My gaze slides to the little girl again.
“Rocco is the son of Rose and Remy. Friends we have in common. Small world, right?” Her response? Nada. “They live in Monaco.” Still nothing. Maybe she’s trying to process the coincidence. Or maybe she’s trying to work out how to tell me something I should’ve been told a few years ago. Except we never exchanged names, just a whole lot of heat and passion. The likes of which I’d never felt before or since.
You know what else we exchanged? Fluids. Maybe even a little of the accidental baby-making kind.
“The three Rs of the house Durrand? Imagine the confusion with their mail.” At least she’s trying to process this insanity with dignity. Meanwhile, I’m spouting garbage while trying to remember the failure statistics of condoms. “It’s kind of ridiculous that they gave the kid the same initials.”
“Ridiculously cute,” she asserts, her words short and her diction sharp as she tightens her arms around her daughter as though I’m some sort of threat.
Is that another sign? Might I be—
Or maybe I was more of an ass last night than I thought.
I push my hand through my hair and sigh. “I’m really only Rocco’s honorary uncle but close enough that his parents trust me enough to be in his company.”
“I’ve never seen you before.”
“No?” I quirk a brow, my tone calling her out. I know you remember it. No one could forget a night like that.
“I-I meant at their house. You weren’t at their wedding,” she adds quickly.
That’s right because there’s no way that night could be a one-way remembrance.
“You could say Remy and I were estranged at that point.”
“You weren’t at Rocco’s first birthday, either.”
“That’s not—” My style, I was about to say. “That is, I wasn’t in the country at that point. I try to spend as little time on the Riviera as I can,” I answer truthfully.
“None of this alters the fact that you don’t know Lulu. Or me, for that matter.”
“True. I don’t know you as well as I’d like.” That might’ve sounded a little suggestive, judging by the widening of her eyes. “That goes for both of you.” Damn. I’m not at all sure that was any better.
“And you,” she adds firmly, tightening her grip on her daughter, “you should’ve stayed in the bedroom with me.”
“But it’s Saturday, and Uncle Carson said he’d make me pancakes.”
“If I overstepped the mark, I’m sorry,” I add soberly, not truly sure if I mean I’m sorry for feeding her daughter an illicit breakfast or for suggesting I feed the naked woman in my tub last night something else entirely. Maybe sorry for the way I looked at her, for the things I said, sorry for the later imagined acts of depravity inspired by the sight of her in my tub. “Blame the angels,” I find myself muttering.