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her.
    Destiny blinked. Did he mean what she thought he meant? She had never uttered a word to anyone in this town. It was debatable that her parents would have said anything, that was the reason they sent her away in the first place; so there would be no pointed fingers or judgment. They sent her money and they came to visit, but she had never been back to this house until her dad’s death. “I-I don’t know what you mean,” she said finally.
    “Don’t make this worse by continuing it, I know ,” he said.
    “I don’t know what you think you’ve found out but you’re wrong. You know nothing , you’re just jumping to conclusions.” She couldn’t look at him, not directly. “I have to make Sophia’s dinner so I’d like it if you left. All these kinds of conversations are very unsettling for my little girl.”
    Justin took a deep breath and tried to calm himself. “I can understand if you don’t want to have this discussion around Sophia, so we’ll wait until she’s asleep. Mark my words though, Destiny, I am not just going to go away. You don’t have to feed me, I don’t even think I could swallow anything but I’ll just sit here quietly and wait until Sophia is asleep.”
    “Sit if you want to but it could take a while, I have to cook and then I don’t know what time Sophia will be asleep, she’s a bit of a night owl.” Destiny went to the kitchen and started to bang and bash some pots. She got chicken out of the fridge and slapped the container on the counter.
    “What time is Sophia’s bedtime?”
    Sophia had crept down the stairs again and she went in the kitchen to watch her mom cook. She glared at Justin and gave him a look that dared him to say something. “I don’t need a bedtime,” she said with sass. “Bedtimes are for babies. Mommy and me are a team. We go to bed when we’re tired.”
    “As we have a lot to talk about later, would it be all right if join you two for dinner after all?” Justin asked. His eyes followed Sophia as she walked across the room and hopped on a stool at the kitchen island.
    “I don’t suppose anything I said would stop you anyway, you may as well,” Destiny answered. She wanted to tell him to get out but she knew he wouldn’t go. If she were honest with herself it was more than a little interesting to see the two of them so close together; her old love and her everything now, sitting side by side. There were quite a few likenesses between the two but the thing that stood out the most was their hair. That tinge of auburn was unmistakable.
    “Thank you for the gracious invitation.” He narrowed his eyes at her to stem her snark in front of Sophia.
    The usual response when someone thanked you for something was to say ‘you’re welcome.’ Destiny refused to say that. He wasn’t welcome to worm his way into their lives. She wasn’t fooled by his sudden change of mood; she knew that it was purely because Sophia was in the room. He was watching the little girl like a hawk; he was either trying to catch her out on something, some flaw that he could then blame on her mothering skills or he simply wanted to get to know a little person that he believed to be his child. Even if he had found out about Sophia—too bad. This was her daughter, she had her on her own and she had raised her on her own. No man, not even this bossy man who had only gotten more handsome in the nearly ten years since she’d seen him last, was going to stick his nose in to their lives. “Here, you may as well make yourself useful,” she said, passing him a few potatoes and a peeler.
    “No problem,” he said. He picked up the kitchen tool and deftly stripped the potatoes of their skin. “What are we doing with these, mashed potatoes?”
    That’s what she was going to do. “I’m going to wrap them with foil and bake them,” she said. So it was a little childish but there wasn’t a person alive that would blame her for trying to wrestle back some control.
    “Won’t that take