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Wren looked down at Sparrow, who had crawled over to my boot and was working at the lace. She shrugged. “What’s done is done. You should’ve deleted it, Seb. But Chard’s the one who stole it.”
Sparrow got the lace loose. Wren sat beside her and held out her hand to me. I took it.
Chapter 24
❧
— Wren —
Dutch came a day early without warning anyone.
I was at the boathouse with Sparrow in the afternoon, sitting on the end of the long bench while Seb finished something in the back, when Moff looked up at a monitor and said, “There’s a bike on the harbor road.”
Nobody moved.
About ten seconds later, he said, “It’s your president.”
Robin said, “Course it is,” and went out to wait for him.
The president of the club whose tech officer they’d kept from finding me for a year had turned up twenty-four hours early with no warning. Simon was out on a job. Dion carried on with an invoice, and Nick made a comment about the state of Dutch’s bike. Nobody in the boathouse looked rattled.
Seb came out of the back room, glanced at the monitor and said, “He’s testing you.”
“We know,” Moff said.
Dutch parked at the end of the pier and walked towards us with his hands in full view. Moff noticed. So did I.
He came inside and took one slow look around the boathouse then he saw me and smiled. “Hello, Wren.”
“You’re a day early.”
“I am.” He came over and kissed my cheek. “And there’s Sparrow. Hello, little girl.”
“She’s had a long day,” I warned him. My daughter was tired and making sure everybody knew it.
“May I?”
I nodded.
Dutch took her carefully and settled her in his arms.
She stopped crying.
“There we go. That’s better, isn’t it?” His voice went up about an octave.
Sparrow grabbed his face.
Nick’s mouth fell open. Dion stopped halfway through a sentence. Moff looked as if he’d just seen a filing cabinet get up and walk.
They knew Dutch only as the six-foot-four president of the Venom Riders. They weren’t prepared for him with a baby tucked against his chest.
“He’s got two,” I told them.
“Maya’s nearly four,” Dutch said, without looking up. “Rohan’s within a week or two of this one. Maya’s a daddy’s girl, and Rohan reaches for me before I’ve got my boots off. Indira pretends not to notice.”
Then he got his phone out one-handed and started flicking through photos of Maya and Rohan.
He stayed for five hours.
