The little girl smiled. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Ma’am? Harper cringed inside. God, she was going backward.
Nick dropped a quick kiss on the top of his daughter’s head. “You can call her Harper.”
“Okay,” Ellie said, but she didn’t repeat the name.
Once again Harper cast around for something to talk about and then noticed a little fluffy toy wedged on the bench seat between Ellie and her dad. It seemed to be an animal.
“Who’s that?” she asked, pointing at the toy.
Ellie pulled it out and tucked it up under her chin. “Annabel.”
Now that Harper could see it better, she made out that it was a stuffed dog. Harper practically sighed in relief—finally a topic she knew something about.
“I love dogs,” she said brightly.
Clearly having experience with insincere adults, Ellie looked skeptical, so Harper explained more. “I always had a dog growing up. There was Marshall the Great Dane, and Darcy the Labrador. Do you know what type of dog Annabel is?”
“A beagle,” Ellie said, her expression a little less suspicious now.
“Oh, I love beagles, but I’ve never met one before. Will you introduce me to Annabel?”
Ellie looked down at her little dog then whispered in its ear. She waited, as if listening, then looked back up at Harper.
“Annabel, this is Daddy’s friend Harper. Harper, this is my Annabel.” She held the toy across the table, but her grip said she wasn’t letting go.
Harper reached out and shook one of the little paws. “Lovely to meet you, Annabel. I hope we can become friends, too.”
Ellie put the dog up to her ear and nodded during the imaginary conversation, then turned back to Harper. “Annabel says okay. You can be friends.”
Harper’s heart lifted. It might only have been a small step—one with a stuffed toy, at that—but it was a step, and she’d take all she could get.
“Thank you, Annabel. I’d like that a lot.”
The waitress returned, bringing their food, and the conversation returned to center on the banter between father and daughter, but Harper didn’t mind. That small step of Ellie letting her toy dog be friends with her was enough to make her day.
As Nick bit into a bunch of fries, he met Harper’s gaze and grinned broadly. The shared moment of triumph was almost like a window into the future—where they might end up as they jointly parented the twins, and further, as their babies grew into children.
And it felt good.
* * *
That night, they grabbed some Chinese takeout on the way home and ate it while watching a movie. Nick was feeling pretty good about life. He’d spent the day with his little girl, and now he was on the sofa with Harper.
She’d tried so hard today to form a relationship with Ellie—and it had been more than just for appearances’ sake, he felt that deep in his bones. She’d wanted to create a bond with his daughter. His heart had swelled as he’d watched them talking at the diner. But he was feeling something completel
y different now when he looked at Harper...
The TV was on, playing a show he normally watched, but he couldn’t follow the storyline. Not with Harper’s body mere inches away. The occasional brush of her leg against his as she leaned forward to pick up her drink from the coffee table set every nerve on edge; the smell of her floral shampoo curled through his senses.
But she’d made it clear she didn’t want the complications that would arise from taking their intimacy any further, so he really needed to distract himself.
“Do you want dessert?”
“I’m not normally a big dessert eater, but maybe I could tonight.” She placed a hand on her stomach. “These babies must be hungry.”
“I’m not surprised they’re hungry. We Tates have big appetites.”