But she didn’t look at all like him right now. You could see it in her shoulders and the way she tilted her head. Her expressions, too, especially when she frowned and tipped her eyes up, lips pursed. The looks was so quintessentially a Stanwyck trademark that he’d taken pictures whenever he could and sent them to his mom and dad.
They’d responded with scanned pictures of him at that age with the same exact look. Laura and Mike had gawked, and something about the look they gave him, Jillian, and then each other had made his throat tighten, too.
Home was a sanctuary. He didn’t have to worry about what people thought (not that he did…much). Mike and Laura and he had a pact to raise the baby together as one unit, and they hadn’t given him even a hint that Jillian’s paternity meant one tiny damn. Whether he was her biological father or not, she was his heart child. Embedded forever and holding a piece of him, it was like she was his soul, raw and naked, crawling through the world.
And right now she was sitting up in her toy room, her hand clutching something she munched happily on.
Wait.
He hadn’t fed her a snack.
On well-practiced feet, he moved like a lion across the room, sleek and graceful, not wanting to scare her.
A crumb-filled grin was his reward, five teeth poking out in odd syncopation. Those five teeth had cost him, Mike, and Laura plenty of sleep.
“Whatcha got there, Jelly Belly?” he asked, cooing.
“Aga da!” she pronounced, holding the fist high like a victor’s.
A well-gummed teething biscuit and a long insect’s wing poked out between chubby, dimpled knuckles. Oh, gross.
Eh. Wouldn’t be the worst thing she’d eaten, he surmised. But after peeling her fingers back, he took the day-old (at least) biscuit out of her hand, murmuring condolences as she wailed.
“I know, I know. The teething biscuit is better after a couple of days. It’s aged to a fine tone, isn’t it? Like wine.” He ran to the kitchen and zipped back in seconds with the box of new biscuits, handing her one.
She threw it into the ball pit.
“Wah!” she shouted, like a ninja throwing a star.
“Jillian for the Olympic softball team in 2032!” Laura said, clapping. “That was quite a throw.”
The baby heard Laura and stopped, mouth open, eyes wide and rimmed with the beginnings of tears. She scowled.
“It’s Dylan’s twin!” Mike said, holding two cups of coffee, extending one to Dylan.
Yesterday they’d been in the bedroom or skiing, Dylan on kidwatch, and this morning had been no different. It was not that he didn’t enjoy it, but looking at Laura’s v-neck sweater, so like the one she’d worn for their first date, he began to feel decidedly less Daddy and more Hey, hot mama, come to daddy…
The doorbell rang. Mike startled, spilling some coffee on his hand and yelping in reaction.
The sound made the baby giggle uncontrollably.
“All you have to do is burn yourself to drag her out of a bad mood!” Dylan declared as Laura answered the door. He did a mental check. They’d all showered. Mike had given more control to Shelly (and about time…). Jillian could manage without breast milk for six hours or so.
Time to put himself at the center of this relationship again. To put all three in the same circle, really.
One side of his mouth crooked up in a smile. But he’d happily take all the credit.
He was an Evil Fucking Genius.
“Josie!” Laura cried out from the other room, the door shutting and the thump of rapid footsteps filling the hall. Mike batted at the coffee stains on his jeans and sucked the webbing of his thumb where the coffee had burned.
“Hey!” Mike said, giving Josie a ginger hug as she approached the playroom. “To what do we owe the privilege?”
“Zombies.”
“Huh?”
“It would take a zombie apocalypse for me to do what I’m about to do for you.”
“For…me?”
“All of you.” Josie winked at Dylan and he groaned. She lifted one eyebrow and stared at him.
Mike and Laura turned and imitated her. Six eyes asked a lot of questions.
Dylan fished in his pocket and pulled out a set of keys, dangling them.
Jillian started to bounce on her ass and shouted, “Aga hbbbbb mama da!”
“These are not for you,” he chided, wagging a finger toward her.
She gave him a raspberry.
“Oh, for God’s sake. He’s taking you to your sex cabin. I’m here to make sure your baby doesn’t get taken away by wolves or eat a spider or throw the Hope Diamond in your garbage disposal.”
“She is capable of any and all of those things,” Mike deadpanned.
“Sex cabin?” Laura whipped her head to stare at Dylan. “You planned this?”
Josie bent down and rubbed Jillian’s head. The baby looked up and reached out with a grubby finger to snag the hem of her sweater.
“Six hours! I have to get home to…”
“To what?”
“To help Alex move in.”
They all froze. Great, thought Dylan. Trumped by the damn best friend. Wanting the spotlight for a moment was asking too much, it seemed. Laura’s eager look a second ago faded fast as Josie dropped her bomb.
“Alex is moving in?” Laura squealed.
“Practically! He’s leaving a toothbrush and a spare set of clothes at my place.” Josie took a deep breath, one that seemed never to end, and let it out slowly. Dylan looked at her like she was crazy, which was accurate.
She really was.
“That’s not ‘moving in,’ Josie,” Mike said. Captain Obvious always knew exactly what to say.
“It’s close!”
“Have a child with him and tell me about—”
“Shut your whore mouth, Mike!”
His booming laugh filled the room. “That is the first time I’ve ever been called a whore.”
“You continue to joke about my uterus being used for anything other than blood storage and I’ll call you worse.”
Mike just lifted his eyebrows as he walked away. “Thanks for watching Jelly Belly!”
Laura closed the space between her and Dylan and took his face in her hands. “You arranged this? You went behind my back and called my best friend to come over here to watch the baby for six hours so we could go somewhere and fuck?”
When she put it that way, his plan started to feel tawdry. Cheap. Unseemly.
“Hell yes!” he said with gusto, because hey—he was a guy, after all.