Page 58 of The One
“You’re in all the trouble. You’re going to bubblegum jail.”
She laughed as though that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “Uncle ’Ett, I want you to have a baby.”
My head snapped back, and my eyebrows went so fucking high that they hurt. “A baby?”
“I want you to have one like Auntie Rowan and Uncle Cooper so I can play with it and dress it up and do its hair in cute little bows if it’s a girl.”
I couldn’t believe this kid.
Sure, I was the only one in the family who didn’t have a child now that my sister was with Cooper Spade and they’d had their daughter, Rayner.
But being the single one out meant nothing.
I wanted children. I wanted them more than anything.
But there was only one person I wanted them with.
And that woman wasn’t mine.
“You have a better chance of convincing your father to give you a sibling than for me to give you a cousin.”
Given that Ridge was as unattached as me, that was going to be almost impossible.
“I asked Daddy for a sister or a brother before you came to pick me up, and you know what he said?”
“What?”
“That I should ask you for a baby.”
I reached across the small space between our chairs and held her chin. “Tell your father he needs to stop encouraging me to have a baby.”
“Why, Uncle ’Ett?”
“Because people like me don’t have kids.”
Her tiny eyebrows pushed together. “Why would you say something silly like that? You’re the best uncle ever, and that means you’d make the best daddy ever.”
There was nothing I worked at harder in my life than being good to this girl. And once Rayner was a little bit older and able to hang like Daisy, I’d do the same with her.
But hearing this come from my Daisy, shit, my fucking heart was melting.
“Uncle ’Ett?”
“Yes, baby?”
“Promise me something?”
“All right, I’ll make you a promise.”
“One day, you’ll give me a little cousin to play with, even if it’s a hundred years from now?”
“A hundred? I don’t think I’ll be alive to have any kids in a hundred years.”
“Okaaay, then fifty.”
“Fifty years is a stretch too, Daisy.”
She gave me the widest smile, followed by the sweetest giggle. “Whenever it happens and if it’s a girl—and I really, really hope it is—then she’d better make you take her for pedis and have you paint your toes pink.”
