“Aunt Wendy, she’s your mommy, and um, well,” Angelina giddily explained, “she showed me how to make coffee.”
Sticking out her tongue, she crinkled her nose and said, “Blech! Yuck!”
Parker grinned at the adorable face she made and watched her play-act hostess for an impromptu tea party he’d been sucked into. Ordinarily, he’d want to murder Alex for being late, but this time at least he had a charming angel to keep him company while he waited for the stupid shit to get home.
“Um, okay. Here goes.” She got up from her seat across from him at the little table and chair set in her bedroom and came to his side.
The bedroom suited the baby angel of the Marquez family. Sometimes, like right now, he marveled at how much pink, frilly shit there was in the world, but the precocious five-year-old with her overactive imagination wouldn’t have it any other way.
For now.
Angie was the type of kid who was so into every little thing that he wouldn’t blink if tomorrow her room resembled a space station simulation.
She leaned against his left side and rambled through a kindergarten explanation of a teapot versus a coffee pot. Then she made pretend coffee for him because he was a boy and that’s what boys liked, but she wanted tea so boom! She made an imaginary pot of tea as well.
Bending his head as he listened to her talk, one of the blingy barrettes she put in his hair fell off. Tossing the end of the purple feather boa he’d been forced to wear out of the way and over his shoulder, he snatched up the clip and awkwardly stuck it back in his hair.
Laying her head on his shoulder, Angie sighed. “I wish we could have real cookies, but Sophie would tell.”
He snickered. Damn right, she’d tell. Sophie lived to start shit with him and Alex, and if Angie got caught in the crossfire, Sophie made it up to her little sister somehow. But no food in the bedrooms was a strict rule his Uncle Cris was a dick about, and Angie would just have to suck it up like the rest of them did.
He jostled her with a gentle elbow, and she cocked her head to meet his gaze. Sometimes when she looked at him with her crazy sapphire colored eyes, he felt like the coolest guy on the planet. No reason for the feeling. None that made sense. But that’s how he felt.
“Yeah, but I like your pretend cookies. They’re yummy,” he told her with a short laugh.
She beamed at the compliment and straightened to clap her hands with glee. “Extra chocat chips,” she proclaimed.
“Choc-o-late,” he corrected with a gentle prompt.
Switching lanes without warning or a turn signal, her mouth curved down and a dramatic pout spread across her face.
“You think I’m a baby.”
“No, I don’t.” His vehement denial was the genuine article. He was ten years older than her and had a shitload of other things he could and probably should be doing but where Angelina Marquez was concerned, his life followed a simple truth. He liked being around her, and now that she was older and acted more like a small adult than most of the sniveling brats she went to school with, he was more than happy to hang out with her. For a lot of reasons. She was fucking hilarious, crazy smart and had more imaginative mischief in her five-year-old arsenal than half the grown-ups he knew.
Angie was most definitely going to bust some poor guy’s balls some day.
He tapped her nose and made a growly face so she’d laugh. “I only corrected you because I know how much it pisses you off to make mistakes.”
Her giggle was one of Parker’s favorite sounds.
“Daddy says you use bad words.”
Parker laughed because his father and Uncle Cris had balls calling him and Alex out for their language. I mean, come on! Where the fuck did they think we learned that shit?
“Awexander says bad words too.”
“Oh, I bet,” he told her with mock seriousness.
She cupped her little hand up to his ear and leaned in, so he bent a little. Whispering dramatically she said, “Awex told Sophie to fuck off.”
He drew back and gasped with appropriate outrage. “Oh, no he didn’t!”
Her pretty blue eyes grew big and round as she bobbed her head with theatrical flair. “Uh-huh! And then Soph kicked him. Hard!”
Envisioning the whole scene took entirely no effort at all. He and his honorary siblings had an interesting dynamic. He was an only child, but Alex as the oldest of the Marquez kids was something of a terror. He loved messing with Sophia and encouraged her ballsy comebacks.
Angelina’s appearance five years ago gave him, Alex and Sophie something else to focus on rather than endlessly getting one over on each other.
They adored her, each in his or her way. And Angie, the little troublemaker, managed them all with incredible skill.
She had a little bit of everything going on. Leader, co-conspirator, victim, rabble-rouser, boo-hoo artist, accomplice, princess, dictator, spy, therapist, and champion baby girl.
He egged her on with a conspiratorial murmur. “Did he cry? Alex? When Sophie kicked him, did he cry?”
“No,” she said in all seriousness, “But he did say he was gonna piss in her corn flakes.”
He was barely holding on to the howling laughter trying to break free when she wiped out any chance of that with one more perfect Angie sentence.
“I don’t eat breakfast with them anymore.”
Parker lost it and grabbed her in a bear hug as he laughed his ass off. She clung to him with her small hands on his neck and giggled along.
“I like when you laugh.”
“Ah, Angie, baby,” he replied with an amused chuckle. “I like when you laugh too.”
Another bright, happy smile spread on her cute little face.
Clapping her hands, she giggled once more and said, “Time for tea!”
Copyright Suzanne Halliday 2017