God, I hoped someone kicked his ass again sooner than later. I was glad he’d lost his last fight. He’d deserved to lose.

I had barely closed the door when the work phone started ringing again.

“Maio House,” I answered, mentally preparing myself for the possibility it might be Noah again but being pretty sure it wasn’t. He wasn’t the kind of person who would call back after getting hung up on.

“Good morning, Lenny.”

Jonah. I wasn’t sure if it was slightly better than it being Noah or the same. ”Hi.”

There was a pause. “Is this a bad time?”

I blew out a breath and reached for my stress ball again. “No,” I told him, hearing the aggravation in my tone. I let out another breath, attempting to relax. I tried again. “Do you need something?”

There was another brief pause. “Oi. I can give you a ring at a better time.”

Oi.

I shouldn’t have started smiling at it, but I did because it was just that kind of day where he’d be the lesser shithead. I squeezed my stress ball and sighed. “No. Now is fine. Did you want to go see Mo? She’s at daycare right now. My grandpa dropped her off this morning.”

“She doesn’t have a nanny?”

I squeezed the ball in my hand tight, the smile he’d started to cause melting off. Did this bitch have any idea how much a nanny cost? “Grandpa Gus is her nanny. No one can or will take better care of her than he will,” I explained, choking the nonexistent life out of my small gift.

We hadn’t really talked much on the rest of the walk on Sunday. Plus, I hadn’t missed his comment about needing to call his manager or lawyer. I shouldn’t be surprised he hadn’t told anyone about Mo. Had he by now though, or was he still… waiting?

“Twice a week he drops her off at daycare for a few hours. Sometimes my friend’s father-in-law keeps her for part of the day too. She comes to the gym a couple times a week too. It changes. We wing it.”

“Oh.”

I blew out a breath away from the receiver before reaching up to pinch the bridge of my nose for a moment at the sudden sting there. “So did you want to go see her?”

“Yeh, but I was asking because I called about the paternity test. It isn’t much notice, but they can see us this afternoon if you can get away. Next available time they can fit us in is two weeks from now.”

“At what time?” I asked, even though I damn well knew I could leave whatever time I needed to.

“One.”

I let go of my nose. Now, or two weeks from now, or months from now? At least he wasn’t waiting. “Yeah, sure. I can get away. What’s the name of the place?”

*

I saw the big brown-haired man the second I pulled into the parking lot. Jonah was leaning against the wall beside the two glass doors, arms crossed over his chest, taking advantage of the shade from the building. He must have recognized my car from his visit to Grandpa’s house because he stood straight up just as I pulled into a spot.

By the time I was slamming the driver’s side door shut, he was only a few feet away.

He smiled at me.

I didn’t smile back.

And I wasn’t going to overthink what it said about him that my nonreaction didn’t do anything to his. “Glad you could come,” he said, sounding genuinely pleased.

In the time we had known each other, I hadn’t seen him in a bad mood. I wondered what got the job done. Maybe it was just injuries that made him lose his shit and turn into a dick.

Or maybe he had used his injury as an excuse for not coming back.

Okay, that was far-fetched, and I could admit it. I hated reasoning that out. He really had gone a year without posting anything on his social media accounts. From the moment he had been injured, he literally had wiped himself off the face of the planet like a missing person. There had been articles written about him just removing himself from any and every kind of spotlight, and if it hadn’t been for his agent claiming that he had heard from him, everyone might have thought he was dead. That article with his quote had hurt, but I hadn’t believed for a second after that first month that something bad had happened to him. He’d left of his own free will.

I’d stopped looking him up by the time he’d rejoined his team. I’d only known he had because of the article that had come up under news on my homepage. Like he’d been reborn out of the ashes or something.

“It’s one of the benefits of working for my grandpa,” I told him after a second, hearing my grumpiness, as I beat him to opening up the rear passenger door and ducked inside. Mo was wide awake as I unfastened all the little straps holding her in her car seat, giving her cheek and forehead a couple quick kisses in the process as she babbled away.

I smiled at her. “I don’t want to do this either, Mo Peep, but we kind of have to, okay?”

Based on what she replied with, I don’t think she believed me.

Thankfully, I managed not to bang my head as I backed out, holding her to me as I snagged her bag with my free hand. I was pretty much a fucking magician as I moved out of the way just enough to hip check the door and close it, holding a heavy baby in one arm, a backpack in another, and holding my keys in my hand at the same time.

Jonah was still smiling when I looked at him.

I still didn’t smile back.

He held out his hand. “I’ll take the bag.”

The baby was heavier, but I nodded and handed it over.

“Choice,” he noted as he slung one of the straps over his shoulder. “Keeps your arms and hands free, eh?”

Mo’s backpack had been a good idea. I had tried using a regular diaper bag for about a week before I’d gotten annoyed and shifted everything to a backpack. But I didn’t tell Jonah any of that. I just shrugged.

Jonah’s smile stayed in place as his eyes moved from the baby who was giving him wide identical eyes, to my face, and back to Mo.

Little Mo Peep reached a fist out toward him with a happy smile and a “Ba!”

He took it and gave it a shake. “Nice to see you again, wee one.”

I cleared my throat.

“Right then, I found the office,” he said as we walked beside each other following the handshake that had rattled me just a little. “They wouldn’t let me register until you arrived.”

Up ahead, one of the two glass doors that he’d been standing beside opened and a tall brunette came out, her phone held to her face. Jonah kept right on talking as he lunged forward to take the door just as the woman let go of it, her eyes locked on him.

“Shouldn’t take but a minute or two, I would think. It’s on the second floor,” the Still a Shithead kept talking, his eyes on me over the head of the woman who was basically staring at him with a dreamy expression on her face, still holding the phone up. “The lift is right here.”

Jonah wasn’t just one of the tallest men I had ever met, he was built as one of the biggest too. Muscles on top of muscles on top of muscles. And with that trimmed facial hair that became a beard halfway through the day and that perfectly shaped head…

Well, there was a reason this lady was probably pulling a muscle in her neck looking over her shoulder.

He was all fun and games to look at. But that was about it.

“Okay,” I told him as he let the door shut behind him, and we loaded into the elevator.

Once upstairs, one of those big hands gestured to the left of the hallway. We went that way before he pointed at the first door on the left. It was nondescript and the name of the business didn’t exactly scream DON’T KNOW YOUR DAD? DON’T KNOW YOUR MOM? WE CAN HELP! Thankfully.

It didn’t take Jonah long at all to go speak to the receptionist behind the desk and come back with a small stack of paperwork on a clipboard. “If you trust me to hold her while you fill it out, I’ll take her.”

I didn’t trust him to text me back, but hold Mo? I nodded, telling myself not to feel irritated and failing.

He didn’t say a word as we traded the clipboard for the baby. His hands were mostly steady as he lifted her up and brought her against his chest, fitting her there tightly as Mo still looked up at him with these eyes like she didn’t know what the hell to think of him… but she was trying to figure it out. And not exactly having a terrible time while she did from her wide-eyed expression and those grabby little hands clutching his shirt.

That was a good thing. I guess.

The paperwork only took a few minutes, and I turned it back into a receptionist with a smile and took the same seat, with Jonah still standing there, holding Mo and doing something that might have resembled the slightest bounce I’d ever seen. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. They were both looking at each other… but she had a hand on the tip of his nose, was mumbling who the hell knew what, and he was smiling at her from under her grip and asking, “Yeah? Is that what you think?”

That was what she thought because she kept on going.

Once Mo was done telling him her life story, I decided to be decent and try my best to be a good person.

Okay, at least a decent one.