“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure.” I didn’t want to cry at all.
“Sleep with me tonight.”
“Okay.”
We settled into a spooning position, his arm over the base of my stomach. “Go to sleep.”
And with that, we both slid into slumber.
Chapter 15
“Why are you in Daddy’s bed?”
A little finger was pulling my hair. I opened one eye and got a very close view of Annabelle’s eye, which was right next to my face.
I’d been caught. I hadn’t even thought yesterday of getting back to my own bed.
“Daddy’s normally awake by now,” she said conversationally.
“Can you tell time?” I grunted, embarrassed to be naked. My pajamas were somewhere on the floor.
“Daddy gave me an owl clock. It tells me when I can get up. I can go to the potty by myself,” she said importantly.
“Good for you,” I moaned. “Can you go to the kitchen and get out cereal and milk?”
“Okay!”
I had gotten rid of the Munchkin for long enough to get my pajamas back on. I slid carefully out of Logan’s arms and put on clothing. Then I went to the kitchen to see Annabelle contemplating the milk. “It’s too high for me,” she announced.
“I’ll get it.” Annabelle already had sugary cereal on the table. I figured the cereal wouldn’t hurt her too much; it had a label on it that said it was made of whole grains. I found two bowls and poured them out for us.
“Why were you in Daddy’s bed?” persisted Annabelle. I had hoped that feeding her sugar would distract her.
“Sometimes adults sleep together.”
“Mommies and daddies sleep together on TV,” she continued. “Are you marrying Daddy?”
“Probably not, sweetie.” It was too early for this kind of conversation. I needed coffee in the worst way, but I couldn’t figure out Logan’s fancy machine. I put Annabelle in her high chair and poured out cereal and milk for her into a Donald Duck bowl.
“Morning, girls,” Logan said as he came out. “Yum, sugar for breakfast.”
“She said I could have cereal.” Annabelle had a guilty look on her face that made me realize he probably didn’t let her start her day with a sugar rush all that often.
“Then we’ll all have cereal.” He got a bowl and pulled out a chair. There was some lingering morning-after awkwardness on my part, but he was totally unruffled. We all ate our sugary cereal in relative peace, although Annabelle wasn’t the cleanest eater and some of the slightly tinted milk splashed on her shirt.
“Time to change, pumpkin.” Logan motioned for her to go to her room to change into her clothes for the day. “Put your pajamas in your hamper.”
“Okay, Daddy.” Annabelle held her arms out to be taken out of her high chair. Logan carefully picked her up without getting any of the tinted milk on himself.
“We have a system,” Logan explained to me. “We look at the weather forecast for the week together and choose her clothes accordingly. She can dress herself because it’s all marked in her closet.”
“I can dress myself!” Annabelle parroted. She ran into her bedroom and slammed the door.
“She’s very enthusiastic in the morning.”
“Do you want coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I responded. He got up and touched some buttons on his fancy machine. Within a minute, coffee started pouring out. He got out two mugs, one pink and one white, and filled them with coffee. I savored the coffee. Annabelle was cute but hell on wheels. I wasn’t sure if, as an adult, it was even possible to have that much energy before coffee.
“What are we doing today?”
“Well, I have a few meetings and Annabelle’s nanny will be coming. You’re free to do whatever you want to do.”
Normally, every spare moment was spent checking my email and getting things done. This strange week where I was disconnected from running my business left me wondering what on Earth other people did during their leisure time. “Maybe I’ll check out Disney Plus. I heard they have Hamilton on there now.”
“Yeah, and it’s a pretty good mix of movies.”
“Sounds good to me.”
Logan stood up and walked over to me. “I want a kiss good morning.”
“Good morning,” I said as his mouth came down on me.
Annabelle screamed, “Don’t kiss my daddy!”
We both turned to look at her. “What’s wrong, pumpkin?”
“She said you’re not getting married.” Annabelle was in a purple dress that had glitter on it. “So you can’t kiss her.”
“That’s not always how it works, pumpkin.” Logan was kneeling now. “Adults don’t have to be married to kiss.”
“I don’t want another mommy,” wailed Annabelle. “I already have one.”
We were about to see a full-scale meltdown from Logan’s toddler. I got to my feet and cleared my bowl. “It sounds like she doesn’t want me to be around today.”
“She sounds like she wants to go to time-out.”
“No, don’t put her in time-out for saying the truth.”
Logan shook his head at me. “She’s being rude.”
I didn’t know where all of the back-and-forth between me and Logan was going, and neither did Annabelle. She needed a stable home environment, which I was disrupting on my vacation. “I can go home.”
“Mommy always leaves, too. I hate you!” screamed Annabelle. She ran from the room into her bedroom.
“She’s definitely not allowed to say that,” said Logan. “She needs to have a talk.”
We both went into Annabelle’s room, where she had found a pair of lime green safety scissors and was cutting up the pink scarf I had crocheted for her yesterday. “I don’t want another mommy.” Annabelle was crying. I knew that it was confusing for her to see me in Logan’s bed. She was used to being the center of attention in the household; suddenly, there was another woman on the scene. She was too young to know what happened last night, but she could read enough into the kiss to know that Logan and I had something going on. She was a perceptive little thing, and I had broken her heart by telling her that I probably wasn’t getting married to her dad. Logan had kept any dating well away from Annabelle for this exact reason, probably.
Chapter 16
“I should get going,” I murmured, trying not to look at the savaged remains of the scarf I’d made yesterday. “You have enough on your hands.”
Logan looked at me and kissed me fiercely. “I’ll call you. Do you have your same number?”
“Yeah.” I sighed as I looked at all that pink yarn. “Talk to you later.”
I went to the guest bedroom and packed up my stuff. I rolled out my suitcase into my rental. Even though Logan would probably be fine with me staying in his house, I knew Annabelle wasn’t. Pursuing something with Logan for the length of a single week wasn’t going to work well with Annabelle. Logan lived in Indiana because it was the best environment for his child. I didn’t need to mess that up.