Page 24 of Fierce-Jax

He couldn’t fix this.

He couldn’t make the guy ask her out on a date when she was all but throwing herself at his feet.

How much more of an idiot did she have to make of herself before Jax figured it out?

She told him she wouldn’t mind if he gave her a rash!?

Who the hell says that?

And all he did was flush and laugh nervously. Kind of adorably too.

No way he was interested in her other than being nice at this point.

Hell, any other guys she might wink at would be buying her drinks and trying to get her drunk, then invite her back to their place. With her kid in front of her!

But nope, the one she was interested in just wanted to carry a cake to her office for her.

“Nothing is going on and nothing to fix. I promise.”

“I know what your promises are like though,” her father said. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard everything was fine in your life only to find out it’s not?”

“More than I care to count,” she said.

Her father opened his mouth and closed it again. “You’re agreeing with me?”

“Why argue?” she said. “It serves no purpose.”

It just reminded her what Jax said. Couldn’t change it or her father. No use complaining if it just worked her up.

Might as well accept it.

“I’m not sure what is going on,” Dylan said. “But you’ve got a child of your own now. A daughter. You always told us things were fine and we believed it. That you had a good head on your shoulders.”

“I got it from you,” she said, smirking at him.

“You did, but we won’t tell your mother we are agreeing on that either.”

She laughed. “It can be our secret.”

“Things weren’t so good when you found out you were pregnant,” he said. “Best happy surprise in my life and might be yours too, but at the time, you weren’t thinking it.”

If her father hadn’t said what he had about it being the best surprise of his life, it might have just started another major fight for his sales staff and customers on the floor below him to look up and see family drama in Dylan Patrick’s big glass office where he sat and oversaw the action daily. Like the big man he was here and in her life.

A king on his throne.

She supposed her father deserved it after his hard work over the years.

She just didn’t think she deserved a lecture at thirty-three years old.

“I wasn’t at the time,” she said. “I had too many plans it was going to mess up. But I wasn’t supposed to do it alone.”

“No,” Dylan said. “And if things didn’t happen the way they had, my guess is you’d still be doing it alone and you know it.”

As much as she didn’t want to acknowledge that, her father wasn’t wrong there.

“We’ll never know,” she said. “Alec never got a chance to see Gianna like I have.”

There was a pang in her heart over those words.

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