I smile warmly and waggle my brows. “Where will we find this magical woman?”
“I’m going to ask my uncle Luke tonight,” Everly answers like she’s been working on this plan for a while. “He’s taking me out tonight, and he’s had lots of girlfriends. Dad can maybe have one of his old ones?”
Oh, this sounds like a Mercedes Lee Loveletter original in the making.
Me: Can you possibly come up to the house for a moment? If you’re not busy?
Cassandra: Sure! Be right there.
Me: Come into my bedroom.
I wince as soon as I send that last text and my hands shake violently as I quickly try to fix my error.
Me: Everly is in here with me.
“Dad, just watch the video one more time,” Everly whines from her seat on my bathroom countertop. Her sundress is bunched up around her lap, and her bare feet are curled inside the sink as she holds the iPad up above her head for me to see.
The tiny red rubber band snaps on my fingers. “Dammit,” I mutter under my breath. “This little thing hurts!”
“You’re stretching them too much.”
“My fingers are too big for this, Everly,” I growl, my temper at a breaking point as I make eye contact with my kid in the mirror. “Why can’t we just leave your hair down?”
“Because Uncle Luke is taking me to dinner and a movie, and I want to have cool hair.”
I curse a million different words under my breath because what was supposed to be a night off every week has now turned into more work for me.
My brothers decided to start a weekly rotation of taking Everly out for an evening. The group text said something about teaching her how she should expect to be treated by men.
Like an eleven-year-old needs to know that already.
In truth, I think my brothers are just trying to get in some extra time with her while she’s with me all summer. She’s the only child in our family and spoiled rotten by all three of them and my parents. The best part, though, is that any one of them would drop everything they’re doing for Everly. Spoiled or not, it’s pretty great.
Except for the fact that now I’m being forced to teach myself how to do bubble braids. Who came up with this fucking hairstyle? It looks like it belongs in a sci-fi film.
A faint knock on the door has Everly and me calling out in unison, “Come in.”
Cassandra appears in the doorway of my master bath. She’s dressed in a pair of thin cotton shorts, a tank top, and a jean jacket that couldn’t even begin to button over her definitely more than a handful of breasts.
Breasts I really shouldn’t be looking at right now.
“Daddy can’t do bubble braids, Cozy. Can you help?” Everly wastes no time throwing me under the bus. “He’s really bad at this.”
I let go of Everly’s hair and toss the tiny rubber band onto the counter that’s littered with ones I’ve already broken. “These damn rubber bands suck.”
The corner of Cassandra’s mouth curls up as she holds my gaze. “I’m impressed you were even trying.”
“Believe me, I tried to talk her out of it.” I roll my eyes and shake my head. “I’m not bad with a curling iron as long as I wear that little glove it came with. But she could not be convinced.”
“I want bubble braids,” Everly repeats for the fourth time in the thirty minutes I’ve been attempting this hellish activity.
“I got this,” Cassandra says, rushing over and assaulting me with that heavenly tropical scent of hers.
I step away from the bathroom counter to give her room to work. Leaning against the glass shower door, I note Cassandra’s hands making quick work of the mess I left behind. She begins to talk to Everly about how to do this hairstyle on her own, and I can’t help but be impressed. As Everly is an only child, I just do a lot of things for her. It gets done properly that way, and since I only have one kid, it doesn’t really take that much time. Hell, she still wasn’t even tying her own shoes in third grade. I remember her teachers telling us at her conferences that she should have been doing that in kindergarten. I guess both Jess and I spoil Everly a bit too much. It’s bizarre that Cassandra is the one who makes me realize there are so many things I don’t even consider showing Everly how to do for herself. I should give her more credit. And Cassandra.
I reach back to rub a stress knot in my neck, and my gaze inadvertently travels down Cassandra’s backside, lingering on her ass. It’s impossible not to look at. She has…a great ass. It’s big and round, making her waist look small by comparison. Her ass is certainly something I’d have to work hard at to possess with any measure of authority. That realization has my cock thickening in my jeans.