Page 164 of Small Town Firsts
“No! My bubbles. I want bubbles.”
I looked over my shoulder. “Does she mean like blowing bubbles?”
Seth tipped his head back. So much throat and chest on display. His chest was mostly smooth save for a sprinkle of dark hair between his pecs. I’d seen him without a shirt a million times, but now just seemed so much worse.God, stop looking.
“Honey, we play with those outside.”
“No!” Laurie screeched.
My eyebrows shot up. “Tell me you have bubbles.”
His dark brows knitted, then cleared. “Yes. I have to go get them.” He started to stride down the hall then stopped. “Are you okay?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re asking this now?”
His gaze dropped to my chest and his eyes heated briefly. “Your shirt says maybe not.”
I glanced down at the words on my chest and cursed my headlights coming out to play. Timing was wrong as always, but this time there was a weight to it I didn’t want to examine. At all. “Yeah, well, adulting comes around whether you want it to or not.” I opened the door and slid inside before he could say another word.
The little girl in the tub obliterated any other issue I had with daddy dearest. I put my hands on my hips. “I hear you’re giving your dad some trouble.”
Laurie grinned up at me, her freakishly long eyelashes starred from the water. She was sitting in about six inches of water that was mostly foam. She also had an array of plastic ducks, fish, whales, dolphins, and yes, Care Bears in the tub with her. She held a bright pink netted puff in her hand as she painstakingly washed her blue Care Bear.
Fittingly, it was a plastic version of Grumpy Bear.
Just like me.
Well, until this little girl was in my space. I couldn’t be grumpy around her, even if I wanted to strangle her sometimes. Cuteness always won out.
She smiled up at me with a dimple winking. “This is a girls’ party.”
I kneeled beside her and brushed her damp bangs out of her face. “Is that so?”
She nodded and bit her lower lip in concentration as she washed under Grumpy’s armpit.
“Grumpy is a boy.”
She looked up at me with a knitted brow so much like her father’s. A blond version, but all the rest was the same. “Grumpy is a bear,” she said as if that made all the difference.
I supposed for an almost four-year-old, it really did. I shrugged. “All righty then.”
I turned on the taps to add to the water to bubbles ratio. From the looks of the bottle on the side of the tub, Laurie had been using a heavy hand.
When she lifted the bottle and started to pour more on the puff, I made a grab for it.
She stuck out her lower lip. “I need that.”
I swooped up a froth of bubbles and settled it on top of her puff. “There you go.” When she still frowned, I took another dollop and settled it on her nose.
She giggled.
Now we were in business. By the time Seth came back, I had her hair washed and was chaperoning her hygiene rituals. I’d already made the mistake of trying to help there.
I’d been an independent kid too, but I didn’t remember a lot about my childhood. Just moving a lot. And I’d learned to shower far earlier than a lot of my friends. Sitting in bathtubs in some of the places we’d lived wasn’t the best idea.
Seth knocked on the door.
“No! No boys.”
