Page 15 of Written with Regret (The Regret Duet 1)
Her glare turned into a full-on scowl, and I had to bite my lip not to laugh.
When I got settled across from her, I made another attempt at a muffin, and this time, she let me have it. I jerked my chin toward the full platter. “I thought you said you were hungry?”
“I know you were working.”
I slapped a hand to my chest. “Who, me? Working? Today? It’s a Saturday. That would be strictly against the rules.”
“It’s not just Saturday,” she huffed. “It’s Rosie-Posie day.” Her eyes narrowed into a powerful glare a four-year-old should not know how to possess. “I heard you on the phone.”
I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “You mean just now in the hall? Pssh. That wasn’t work.”
“Now, you’re going to make up a story,” she said before leaning back in her chair and linking her fingers like she was sitting in a boardroom rather than a breakfast nook. “Go ahead. Let’s hear it.”
Clearly this was not the first time she’d caught me working. She knew the drill.
And so did I. “See, when I took the trash out earlier, there was a baby seal in the middle of the road with a bunch of plastic straws stuck to his flipper.” I leaned toward her. “See why we have to recycle?”
“We don’t live near the water.”
“Right? Which was why I was so surprised to find him there.”
Her scowl became more scowly, but I’d committed, so I had to see it through.
“I was only late today because I stopped traffic, carried him to safety, and removed all the fishing net.”
“You said straws.”
“Yeah, but when I got closer to him, it was a bunch of straws, a fishing net, and a boot. Don’t get me started on why there was a random boot, but in my experiences rescuing seals, there is always an old boot involved.”
She pursed her lips, but it was only to hide a smile. With my Rosalee, that was halfway to being out of the doghouse.
“Anyway, that was the seal’s dad on the phone, calling to thank me. I told him that I was in a rush for my girl’s birthday breakfast, but he just wouldn’t stop going on and on about sending us two hundred million fish as his way to say thanks. Apparently, that’s the seal equivalent of a muffin basket. I tried to tell him that we didn’t need that much fish for just the two of us, but he wasn’t having it. So then we started arguing. I know it’s rude not to accept a gift, but where would we even keep two hundred million fish?” I paused to tap my chin. “We could probably fit at least a million of them in your room.”
“Ewwww!” she cried, adorably crinkling her freckled nose.
“Maybe another million if we cleaned out from under your bed first.”
Her eyes flashed wide and she shook her head so fast that it was all I could do not to laugh. But she was smiling and not giving me the death glare anymore, so I continued to ramble faster with each sentence.
“But that would still leave us with two hundred forty-eight million. I tried to tell him that we’d take twenty five percent, but that’s still, like, fifty million, and I don’t think your playroom could hold more than a hundred fish max with all the junk you have in there, so the rest would fill our whole house.” I popped a chocolate chip off the top of the muffin into my mouth and shrugged. “I’m not sure about you, but I don’t want to smell like a salmon for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, Mr. Seal would not back down.” I paused dramatically, lifting a finger in the air. “But then I got an idea.”
“What?” she asked, damn near giddy, all her frustration with my punctuality forgotten.
I made a show of looking around the empty space before curling my finger to signal her closer. When she got as far across the table as her torso would allow, I whispered, “I gave him Uncle Ian’s address.”
She burst into a fit of laughter, the crown on the top of her head shaking with her shoulders as she giggled.
Smiling, I listened intently, like it was the first and not closer to the billionth time I’d heard the masterpiece that was her laugh. It was moments like that that filled my chest with more happiness than I’d known was possible four years earlier.
How had it already been four years?
In some ways, it seemed like it was just yesterday that I’d held that tiny, squishy baby on my chest in the hospital. But, in other ways, it seemed like an eternity ago. I honestly couldn’t remember my life without her.
Technically, I didn’t remember much of the first four months of my life with her, either. Bringing her home from the hospital had been a culture shock. My life of coming and going as I pleased had been over. Even going to the gym had become a scheduling nightmare, and that was assuming I’d had the energy to do anything more than climb out of bed, fix a bottle, and get right back in bed to feed it to her. Sleep deprivation was no joke.
