Page 66 of Child of Mine

About everything?Quinn asks.

About Lilah,Izzy clarifies.

Forcing my lips to separate from each other, I spill out the only confession that I tell myself really matters. “I will be extremely angry with you if you give up on her after one bump in the road. I was mad at you earlier for no good reason. I was really jealous, I guess”—gesturing at the kitchen—“so discombobulated by being on my own that I reorganized all the cabinets.”

He laughs. “That’s desperation.”

“Tell me about it.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks everywhere but at me. “I wish there were a manual.”

It takes me a minute to figure out what he means. When I do, I have to laugh. “For Lilah?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “I don’t want to screw her up any more than I already have just by not being there.”

My hand lands on his muscular forearm and squeezes, but when our eyes meet, I jerk my hand away. “Sorry, I, uh…”

He grins. “Apology not accepted. You can touch me anytime you want.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “I’m trying to keep things simple here. You want to do what’s best for Lilah, right?”

“Having a sexually satisfied mom isn’t good for Lilah?”

I knew I liked this man,Quinn sighs.

Ticking a finger in the air between us, I aim a glare at him. “It’s not that simple, and you know it. Anyway, don’t distract me. In fact, follow me.”

Grabbing the keys from the hook, I lead the way downstairs. After unlocking the door that connects our apartment with the shop, I turn on a few lights and head for the Parenting section. There, I gesture like Vanna White. “Voila: manuals.”

Henry steps up to a shelf and runs a finger over the spines, reading the titles out loud. “Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World.Not sure about that.Making Children Mind Without Losing Yours. That sounds like what I need.” He gapes at me. “Have you read all of these?”

I don’t get it, but this is turning me on for some reason,Quinn whispers.

I get it,Izzy says breathily.A man who wants to be a good father?That is so… beautiful.

Hot as fuck, you mean,Quinn snickers.

Kiss him,they say in unison.

And I do want to. But… it’s too much. Too complicated. Using the parenting skills I did acquire by reading, I school my thoughts to the topic at hand. “Some, but not all.”

Unfortunately, my arm brushes his as I reach for a book, and my body’s reaction is as heady as if I’d copped a feel of his butt.

I guess we get what we get and we don’t get upset,Quinn mutters.

“I’ve heard good things about this,” I say, handing himYour Child’s Growing Mind.

“What about this one?” He holds upThe Secret of Happy Children. “Too good to be true?”

“With a title like that? Probably. But I haven’t read it. Um…” I scan the shelf. “I feel like we got one recently that had really good reviews. I hope I didn’t send it back already.”

“Because a customer returned it?”

“No, bookstores have this business model where we can return stock if it doesn’t sell. It’s the only way we have room to keep adding new books. But now we’re returning books because— Oh, there it is. Someone put it on the wrong shelf.” I hand him the book.

“Raising Self-Reliant Children,” he reads. “Sounds like a good premise.”

As he flips through the book, that flop of curls falls across his brow, begging me to brush it out of his eyes. Full lips framed by a trim beard the exact same color as his caramel irises remind me of the night in the cabin when their contrasting textures woke up nerve endings I’d forgotten existed. Every bit of me yearns to revel in those feelings again, and when he looks up from the book, I’m tempted to indulge.

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