He’d done well on his own and had learned how to be okay exactly as he was. Sometimes he was even more than okay. Sometimes there was actual joy and excitement—like five minutes ago when he’d still been sleeping, his dream starring one sexy, smartass nurse named Jane. Unfortunately, his reality was as far from that erotic dream as humanly possible.
That was when his niece, Peyton, bounced into the room like the Energizer Bunny in a tutu and tiara, waving a sparkling staff.
Jasper jumped down—finally—and ran to his favorite person.
“Down,” the six-year-old commanded, the one who weighed less than the dog.
Jasper lay down like a perfectly behaved dog. Probably because Peyton was also carrying a bowl of cereal, and Jasper knew only good boys got bites of cereal.
Peyton leaned over Levi, her warm little girl breath scented like the Froot Loops she’d carried in. When she saw his eyes were open, she grinned her toothless grin. “Uncle Levi! Uncle Levi! Uncle Levi!”
“Yes, baby.”
“Is your girlfriend here?”
He narrowed his eyes. “Did your mom tell you to ask me that?”
“No. Grandma.”
Levi sighed.
She giggled. “Where is she hiding?”
He had no problem bending the truth for his nosy mom and sister, but he wouldn’t lie to Peyton. “Can we talk about something else?”
“Okay, let’s talk about my tea party. It’s soon. You’re coming.” She had a purse around her neck, one of Tess’s, and from it she pulled a small notebook and pencil. She opened it and made some scribbles and quickly closed it back up.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s my secret diarrhea.”
He bit his lower lip so as not to laugh. Maybe one day he’d correct her, but today wouldn’t be that day. “What do you write in there?”
“Important notes. Mommy writes important notes in her diarrhea to save and show Daddy so she can kick his ask if he comes to visit.” She lowered her voice. “Don’t tell her I said ask, okay? Ask is a bad word.”
Levi mimed zipping his lips closed.
“Do you think my daddy’s coming soon?”
“I don’t know, baby.” But he’d gladly help Tess kick the guy’s “ask” for leaving two of his favorite females hurting. He sat up and realized that his dad sat only a few feet away, behind his desk, head bent to an awkward level so he could peer over the top of his glasses instead of actually using said glasses. He was muttering about “bullshit, crap internet reception” as he pecked with his index fingers on his computer’s keyboard.
Paying none of them any mind at all—not the dog, the man, or the little girl. Just as well. Peyton was back to jumping up and down, and shit, she was making him dizzy as hell.
“Can we have a tea party?” She put her face back close to his. “Can we? Can we? Can we?”
“I might need a nap first.”
“But! But! But!” Peyton liked to repeat herself. At high decibels. “I’m ready now!”
“Peyton!” Tess yelled from somewhere down the hallway, also at high decibels. The apple never fell far from the tree . . . “Don’t wake up Uncle Levi!”
“He’s already awake! Jasper did it!” Peyton squatted down and carefully picked up her bowl of . . . yep, Froot Loops. Sans milk because everyone was tired of slipping or sitting in spills that never got reported. “I brought you breakfast,” she said, the bowl balanced precariously in her little hands.
Levi leaned in to take a Froot Loop, but she held up her wand. “Any color but red,” she said very seriously. “The red ones are my favorite.”
“How about the yellow?”
“Those are my next favorite.”
“Green?”
“You can haz green,” she decided.
“Thanks.” He popped one in his mouth and she grinned at him, a sweet guileless toothless grin that tugged at his heart. He playfully pulled on a strand of her hair. “You know they all taste the same, right? They’re not individually flavored.”
She blinked, this new intel sinking in. “The reds are the prettiest.”
“Understood.”
She did the Energizer Bunny imitation again. “Get up, get up, get up!”
“Okay, okay.” He started to sit up before remembering he’d stripped down to just boxers last night. “Uh, why don’t you get the tea party all set up and I’ll come meet you after I shower.”
“Yay! Yay! YAY! DON’T BE LATE!” And she skipped out of the office.
Silence filled the room except for his dad’s two pointer fingers continuing to pound away on his keyboard.
Levi stood up and groaned. The bed sucked. Or maybe it was his life.
His dad slid him an unimpressed glance. “’Bout time you got up. I don’t know what you do in the city, but here in the mountains, our mornings start before ten.”
Levi had always operated on the assumption his dad enjoyed pushing his only son’s buttons. And he was good at it. It hadn’t been easy growing up knowing he’d been expected to stay in town, take over the family business, and live happily ever after—without following any of his own hopes and dreams.
He’d gotten past all that. Okay, so maybe he still harbored a little resentment. But since his stint in the hospital and now his stay here at the house, Levi was starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t that his dad didn’t respect or understand his son’s choices. Maybe . . . maybe the guy was just doing the best he could to get through his own day, and being a cynical ass helped him do that. “What’s going on, Dad? What’s with all the mumbling?”
“Don’t ask when you don’t really want to know.”
The family store was the only sporting goods store on North Shore, which meant it was highly trafficked and did great business. But there wasn’t a huge profit margin in it, and Levi’s family had struggled plenty—something he hadn’t appreciated growing up because his parents had never let on about any financial strain.
Knowing that they’d protected him and Tess from that stress usually gave him more patience when his dad pulled the holier-than-thou crap. But he felt pretty rough this morning, and was definitely short on patience. “Dad, just tell me what’s going on.”
His dad pushed his chair back from the desk, looking disgusted. “The store’s books are a mess.”
For the past decade, Cal—Tess’s soon-to-be-ex-husband—had been doing the accounting for the store. He’d started right after college, the first nonfamily member to ever handle the books.
But when Cal took off with the babysitter a month ago, he’d walked away from the job. If he was being honest, Levi hadn’t even given it a single thought, knowing someone else would now be handling the bookkeeping.
Apparently that someone had been his dad. This wasn’t good because, though the man knew his stuff, he was impatient as hell when it came to the business side of the store.
His dad tore off his reading glasses and tossed them onto the desk. “Cal’s a piece of shit.”
“Agreed.” Levi took a closer look at his dad and saw the tight grimness to his mouth and the stress lines around the eyes. “What’s wrong?”