But still, they both broke contact as the victor.

“Tomorrow,” she repeated, pulled from his hold and walked away.

* * * * *

5:27 The Next Evening

“Don’t go Unka Nick!”

His five-year-old niece, Kasha, was yanking on his hand, her expression set to stubborn, her eyes—Knight’s eyes in a face shaped like Anya’s—irate and trained on him.

He swung her up in his arms and she tried to beat back the giggle but did not succeed.

“I gotta go, princess,” he told her.

She forgot she wasn’t getting what she wanted and she gleamed.

She loved being a princess.

Fuck, he had to stop thinking of Olivia Shade doing princess shit.

Kat and Kasha, his nieces, were his princesses.

Olivia Shade was nothing.

Except a fuck, a really good one…and a means to an end.

“You don’t gotta go. Daddy’s making steaks,” she reminded him.

He looked to Knight who was in the kitchen with his older girl, Kat.

But Knight’s attention was on his younger brother.

Nick looked back to Kasha. “I’ll have a steak next time around.”

She got irate again. “But I want you to have one now.”

“Geez,” Anya’s voice came out of nowhere. “She’s her father’s daughter,” she finished her mutter, moving out of the hallway into the living room. She stopped close, her attention on her girl. “Uncle Nick said he had to go.”

Kasha crossed her arms on her chest. “Unka Nick should stay.”

“Put her down, Nick,” Anya ordered and the instant she did, which was the second Nick moved to acquiesce to her demand, Kasha wrapped her arms tight around his neck.

He started quietly laughing.

“Unka Nick is staying!” Kasha declared.

“Yeah, he is,” Knight put in.

Nick looked to his brother.

So did Knight’s woman. “Not you too.”

“Me too,” Knight decreed then looked down at Kat. “Baby girl, can you help Daddy and put out another placemat for Uncle Nick?”

“Yeah, Daddy!” Kat, Knight and Anya’s first, almost eight-years-old, always daddy’s little helper, agreed immediately and jumped to do as asked.

“Knight, he has somewhere to be,” Anya called.

“He can be there a couple hours later. Now he’s having dinner with his family,” Knight returned.

“Maybe he wants to have dinner with his family next weekend,” Anya returned.

Knight’s eyes settled on his woman and his, “Baby,” was a warning.

Anya’s glare stayed glued to her man in a way Nick knew she was telling him he could shove his warning right up his ass.

He forged into the silent breach.

“I’ll stay.”

“Yay!” Kasha screeched.

“Yay!” Kat yelled.

Anya’s head whipped his way. “Don’t give in to him.”

He looked down at his smiling niece then at her mother. “Too late.”

Anya rolled her eyes.