Page 42 of Havoc's Fox
“But you know what? They all love you so much,” Analise said. “And now you’ve got twice the people.”
“That’s what Daddy said, too.”
“He’s right.”
“You’re lucky growing up here.”
“I am?” Analise asked.
“Yeah. I like it here. It’s lots of fun.”
“What do you like best?”
“I don’t know yet, but before we leave, Daddy’s taking me fishing. And Aunt Hellen said I can go with her into the woods and look for animals, and she’ll teach me how to look for different tracks and signs that wild animals have been there. Like, real live wild animals!” she said excitedly. “And Poppy said that in a couple of months if we come back and visit, he’ll catch a nutria so we can see if it sees its shadow or not so we’ll know if winter is over.”
Analise laughed. “Yes, your Poppy does indeed like to catch nutria to see if Winter’s over or not.”
“I thought it was a groundhog, but Poppy said the groundhog people don’t know what they’re talking about. He said that a nutria knows better.”
“They bite harder, too,” Analise said, laughing. “Ask him about that.” As her laughter faded, she looked at the little girl that had her life played out different might have been hers. “So, Harley, are there lots of girls that your daddy takes care of back home?”
Harley finished licking her fork and glanced over at Analise’s plate of still untouched desserts.
Analise slid it over toward her.
Harley shook her head. “No. He said that his heart is not open to anybody but me. I told Aunt Maia that he said that, and that we needed to find him a girlfriend so he could be happy and I could have a mommy, and Aunt Maia said he wouldn’t like that. I don’t really know why, but I heard them fighting later while I was supposed to sleeping, and Aunt Maia told him that it’s been long enough and he needs to get his head out of his ass and think about somebody besides himself because I need a mommy. And he said that there would never be anybody for him but his mate, and if he couldn’t have her, he wouldn’t have anybody.”
Analise sat beside Harley with her heart pounding and her mouth agape, watching the child repeat verbatim the argument she’d overheard between Havoc and Maia. “I’m sorry you had to hear that.”
“It’s okay. You want to know what else I heard?” Harley asked.
“Okay,” Analise said hesitantly, not sure if she really wanted to know or not.
“I heard Aunt Maia tell my daddy that if he’d figured that out before he learned to keep his pants up, he might still have his mate. But I’m not sure what that means, because I’ve known how to keep my pants up since I was really little and I’m still not sure why my daddy was a grownup and didn’t know how to hold his pants up.”
Analise slapped a hand over her mouth, trying to keep from laughing as her eyes widened at the child’s confession.
“Yeah, sometimes grownups say things that we just don’t understand,” she finally managed.
“You’re a grownup,” Harley said.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m just about your age,” Analise admitted.
Chapter 10
Havoc stepped into the kitchen and over to the kitchen island that held numerous bottles of bourbon and wine, and had an ice chest of beer, and another full of ice sitting on the floor beside it. He filled Analise’s glass with ice and took the tops off a couple of the bottles until he found the bourbon she’d been drinking — it had honey mixed into the bourbon and was a little sweeter than the others. He poured until the glass was about three quarters full before capping the bottle.
He was on his way out of the kitchen when he realized the bottom of the glass was sticky and went over to the sink to clean it off. While standing there cleaning the outside of the glass, one of the phones left on the kitchen counter began to ring. He glanced over at the phone, then realizing it was Analise’s phone, looked up toward the living room to be sure that no one was watching him, then he moved closer to look at it.
The name Beau and a picture of a very handsome male popped up on the screen.
Havoc shook his head, doing his best to control his emotions. He had no right to be angry, and he knew it.
The phone stopped ringing and Havoc breathed a sigh of relief.
No sooner had he decided to just ignore it, than it started ringing again. “Asshole,” Havoc gritted out, reaching out and flicking the phone off the top of the pile it lay upon, causing it to slide off the phones beneath it and land in the dishwater Everly had partially filled the sink with when she’d been washing some of the plates a little earlier.
“Oh, shit!” Havoc rushed out, quickly fishing the phone out of the water. He looked at the screen, then patted it on his jeans a couple of times, to dry it off and looked at it again. The screen was damp but seemed to still be functioning despite the bath it took, though it was still leaking water out of the case. “Crap! Maybe it won’t ring and he won’t be able to call her again,” he grumbled, putting it back on top of the stack of phones.