Soon enough, Darren was pulling into Laredo’s driveway with Bella, who was now smiling. Apparently, as long as they substituted any notion of dancing with a visit to a barn, Bella was willing to be in a fine mood. Go figure. Laredo would probably say that Darren had just irrevocably corrupted his daughter. Darren just didn’t particularly care.

Darren parked the car and got out. Bella hopped out with a sunny grin on her face as though nothing had happened and as if she hadn’t just performed a neat mutiny on him. Could you call it a mutiny when there was only one tiny person involved?

His niece was looking up at him with an all-too-knowing smile on her face. Darren swept the kid up into his arms and ignored the protest in his lower back and his knee at the sudden bend and twist. He carried her toward Laredo’s front door, glad as hell that his brother wasn’t home from work just yet.

“So, you got your way. No dance class. What’s with the big grin? You can’t possibly be that happy that you got to come straight home,” Darren growled as he flung Bella over his shoulder. “You might as well tell me what you’re really thinking.”

“I’m thinking that you like Ms. Brown,” Bella sang out in a voice muffled by her face bouncing against his back. She was giggling hard enough that you’d have thought he was tickling her. “I like Ms. Brown too! Maybe you can marry her! Then I’ll come live with you!”

Whoa. That was a little bit more than Darren had expected. He flipped the little girl over his shoulder sack-of-potatoes style and set her on the ground. He had to fumble a bit to get the front door open. By the time he looked back down, he made sure to have his serious face on. “Bella, why would you ever want to live with anyone but your dad? He loves you, and you practically live like a princess in a palace. Look at this place!” Darren pushed Laredo’s front door open and stepped into the palatial Denver mansion.

Bella blew out a long gust of air that sounded a bit like a horse sneezing. “Daddy is too busy for me. He doesn’t listen when I tell him I hate dance class and gymnastics. He doesn’t listen when I tell him I want to ride horses. He doesn’t listen! You and Ms. Brown listen to me.”

Darren could not vouch for that with himself, actually. He was listening to her right now, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could actually do about Laredo’s fatherhood issues. The guy sounded worse than Joe Hernandez when it came to parenting skills. But Avery had mothered the Hernandez clan to death, so things had balanced out. Poor Bella didn’t have a mom to do that for her. Her mother had left her high and dry.

Darren heaved a big sigh. This was so not his thing. Darren Hernandez was not sensitive. He wasn’t a touchy-feely kind of kid-friendly man. He was a sports-playing womanizer who had fatherhood problems all his own. No. He wasn’t going to think about that right now. Carly had been texting and calling his phone nonstop since he’d set foot in town. It was far better to focus on this thing with Bella and Laredo and Ms. Brown and the school bully boys. That was much less uncomfortable to deal with.

Bella pranced through the foyer and headed straight for the kitchen. “I want a snack.”

“Fine. But chocolate bars are not a snack.” Darren had been nine once upon a time. He knew how their brains worked. “I’m sure your dad will be home to cook—er—give you something for dinner soon enough.”

“Whatever.” Bella sounded grouchy. She pulled open the pantry door and pulled a box of graham crackers off the shelf. Then she sat at the table and proceeded to stuff her cute little face.

“You want some milk with those?” Darren asked, not even bothering to hide his sarcasm.

“Sure.” She sprayed graham cracker crumbs all over the table. “Thank you!”

Darren grumbled as he poured a glass of milk after managing to find the glasses in the cavernous kitchen. The place was huge. He could not for the life of him imagine why Laredo thought he needed such a huge place for a family of two.

After setting the milk down in front of Bella and ignoring the fact that she immediately dipped a cracker in the stuff and slung it all across the table, Darren texted Laredo. He carefully left out the part about them skipping dance class. There would be time enough to deal with that later on. Instead, he focused on having had a conference with the guidance counselor, who had asked him to substitute teach the gym classes. Darren reworded his text about five times before sending it. He wanted to make sure that his brother didn’t think that Darren was asking permission, but he also tried to make it sound like he was doing Bella, Bella’s school, and Laredo a favor.

Darren’s text got almost an immediate response. Fine. Whatever. That was all Laredo had to say on the topic. Nice. Darren wandered around the first floor of Laredo’s house and wondered when brother dearest was going to get home.

Suddenly, another text appeared on the screen of Darren’s phone. Darren read it out loud, feeling irritated as hell. “Won’t be home until late. You need to feed Bella.”

Great. Now he had to feed this kid. He didn’t know what she ate. He didn’t know what there was around Laredo’s expensive neighborhood. He just didn’t know. Ugh. What an ass.

“Bella!” Darren called out.

The kid popped out from behind a wall with cracker crumbs all over her face as though she had been secretly following him. “Yeah?”

“Your dad is working late.”

“Cool. You can take me to Maxine’s.”

Darren raised his eyebrows. “Is there some secret about this place or something? Why did you pick it so fast?”

“It’s my favorite, but Daddy hates it. He only does fancy restaurants. He says Maxine’s is a burger joint.”

“Ah.” Darren sighed. “I see. Well, get your shoes back on and let’s go. Unless you filled up on crackers and now I don’t have to feed you at all.”

“No way!”

Bella scampered off to find her shoes just as Darren’s phone rang. He picked up without thinking, assuming it was Laredo. “Hey. She picked a restaurant. Some burger joint. It’ll be fine.”

“You fucking asshole!” a woman’s voice hissed on the other end of the line. “Who is she? Who are you talking about? I can’t believe you’ve been in town for days on end and you’ve never come to pick up your son!”

The venom in Carly’s tone of voice was excessive, but Darren couldn’t really fault her for her anger. He hadn’t been a great dad. He hadn’t even been a good dad. With a huge sigh, Darren dug in his brain for something that he could say that wouldn’t just make Carly angrier. There really wasn’t anything. Ever since the two of them had split up—before Jaeger was born—Carly could not stand to be in the same room as Darren, much less to have a civil conversation.

“Carly,” Darren began slowly. “I apologize for not getting back to you. I’ve been trying to get my job situation figured out.”

“Ha!” Carly actually snorted into the phone. “Job? Like you’ll ever get a job. You’d just better not stop sending those child support payments or I’ll haul your ass to court so fast your head will spin.”

“I’ve never missed a payment,” Darren reminded her for what felt like the millionth time. “Jaeger is five. How is he? Can I see him?”

“You don’t get visitation!” Carly crowed. “I just don’t want your ass hanging around Denver thinking that’s going to change!”

Darren sighed. “So, you’ve been calling me to make sure that the child support payments, which have never been altered or affected in any way, continue exactly the way they have been?”

“Hell yeah.” Carly seemed to run out of steam. At least a little bit. She stopped screeching. It did not make her any better to talk to however. “And you need to meet me so we can talk about where we’re sending Jaeger to school. It’s expensive and you’re going to pay for it.”

Darren resisted the urge to react. He knew from experience that it wouldn’t do any good. “Then, we can meet to talk. But I’m already paying you more money per month than I can afford, and you’ve managed to get me all but squeezed out of my son’s life. At this point, I think you’d be hard pressed to find a judge that would make me pay for his school as well.”

“Bullshit.” Carly was laughing now. The sound was cruel. “I’ll find one. You never live in one place long enough to have custody or visitation. That’s your fault.”

“Well, maybe things have changed.” What was he saying? Was he just reacting to Carly’s hard-nosed way of poking at his buttons? He should have known by now that making her angry would never do him any good! “I’m here in Denver for good. I’m trying to get a steady job, and I’m moving into my own place.” That was a mild sort of white lie, but he was considering moving into one of those apartments Laredo had told him about. “So, maybe when we meet in court, it won’t end the way you think it will. Maybe it’s time for a change. You’ve been making me pay for fatherhood. Maybe it’s time that I actually get to be a father.”

“Don’t you dare!” Carly shouted. There was another voice behind hers on the line. He heard a squishing noise as she covered the phone briefly to talk to the other person. Finally, she came back on the line. Of course, she was no calmer. “I’m telling you, Hernandez. You will never see your son! Do you understand me? You will pay and you will pay lots, but you will never see Jaeger. He’s my son!”

“Then maybe you’d better get a job so you can help support him,” Darren suggested coldly. “Otherwise I’m saying it’s time for a change.”

Carly shouted something else, but the words were lost in the clicking sound of her hanging up on him. The woman was volatile. In a very detached and almost dead fashion, Darren often wondered how much Jaeger had absorbed of his mother’s volatile moods. Was his son entitled and completely useless? Was he being raised to be a materialistic little shit who didn’t care about his things because he broke them as fast as he got them?

“I hope not,” Darren whispered.

“Uncle Darren?” Bella hung her head around the corner of the hallway. “Can we go now? I’m hungry.”

“Sure, Poodle. I just have to figure out where this place is.” Darren winked at Bella and then pulled up a search box on his phone. “But let’s go get in the car, hmm? That way we’re all ready to go as soon as I know where we’re going.”