Page 72 of Fierce-Jax

He knew Gianna loved dolls and stuffed animals and it wasn’t beneath him to bribe a kid for her friendship.

The garage door opened so he went in that direction, Dillion coming out to meet him.

“What’s her mood like?” he asked.

“She’s fine,” she said. “Gianna is a very open friendly child. She loves meeting people.”

“Like her mother,” he said, leaning down to get a kiss. It might be the only one he got today. He wouldn’t do anything in front of the child.

“She is like me a lot. Looks like me too.”

“Very much so,” he said.

He’d seen several pictures of Gianna in the house and the ones that Dillion showed him on her phone.

His girlfriend had been very open sharing information about her child, but he’d let her control the pace of when the introduction would be.

If all went well, he’d be meeting her parents on Sunday.

“Are you ready for this?” she asked, her head dropping to check out the bag. “Bribery?”

“You betcha. It’s a pound of chocolate. Oh, wait, that works better on her mother.”

Dillion poked him in the side with her finger. “It’d work well with her too, but then we’d have a wound-up child and an angry mother trying to deal with it.”

“As much as I want your daughter to like me, I wouldn’t do it at the risk of pissing you off.”

“Thank you,” she said. “What did you get her?”

“A parrot that talks.”

“What?” she asked. “You bought my daughter a talking stuffed animal? Like it records what she says or has pre-programmed sayings?”

He cringed over the tone. “It records it. But I’ll take the batteries out of the bag and she’ll never know.”

He was reaching into the bag to remove the batteries he bought. He hadn’t installed them since the bird was in a box.

“You thought to get her toy batteries?” she asked, her voice had gotten a little soft. He couldn’t figure out where any of this was going.

“Well, yeah. You can’t give a kid a toy that needs batteries and then not have the batteries in the house. That’s like putting an empty glass in front of someone who has been in the desert for days.”

“No,” she said, “you can’t. And you can give it to her. It was very thoughtful. We’ll just have to teach her to say nice things to it.”

“I can’t imagine she’s going to say anything that isn’t nice.”

“She’s four,” she said. “I told you she called a boy in her class fat.”

“Not very active,” he said. “That is how I described Bethany back in the day.”

She rolled her eyes. “You always were the nice guy,” she said. “Even in middle school.”

“Guess I was just born with that gene,” he said.

“It looks fantastic on you,” she said. “Along with these jeans.” Then she slapped his ass hard.

He hadn’t been expecting that, but Dillion had been surprising him a lot since he met her.

They went into the house and he set the bag on the counter while Dillion went to get Gianna.

---