Sparking the Fire by Kate Meader

stares.
    â€œDaddy?” he heard Luke say behind him. Wyatt didn’t dare look back, knowing his sibs were seeing exactly what he did every time he looked at her.
    Roni was the spitting image of her father.
    â€œWhat are you doing here, sweetheart?” He looked over her shoulder, waiting for the punch line. All he saw was her backpack. “Is your mom with you?”
    â€œNo, she’s still in Seattle. Grams dropped me off. Sick of me, she said.” She drew in a shaky breath and blew it out to ruffle the dark, curly hair that curtained half her face.
    Shit, this was not how it was supposed to happen. He had wanted to prepare the rest of them, but Roni’s mother had pinned him between a rock of secrecy and a hard place of lies.
    â€œWyatt,” Luke said, closer now, his tone foreboding. “Somethin’ you’d like to tell us?”
    â€œYeah.” He scrubbed his mouth, snatched a breath, and instantly sought out Molly. Not sure why, but there it was. Those big eyes watched him keenly. He saw calm there and took strength from it. “This is Roni.”
    Luke hadn’t looked at her, maybe couldn’t look at her. “Your kid?”
    â€œNo.” God, he wished. It would have been a damn sight easier if she was. “Logan’s daughter. She’s my niece. Our niece.” He placed an arm around her shoulder because she had to be feeling so exposed right now. Her body stiffened at his touch, but he held on. He’d been trying to hold on for a year.
    â€œShe lives a couple of hours away in Bloomington with her mom and grandmother. At least, she usually does.” He turned to her. “I’m gonna take a stab here and guess your mom doesn’t know where you are.” Jen had left a few days ago for an eight-week course in Seattle, getting an advanced certificate in nursing. Wyatt had tried to persuade her that now would be a good time to break the news and let Roni visit. She had refused.
    She always refused.
    Roni snorted. “Mom’s none the wiser.”
    â€œDid you say your gran dropped you off? You mean, outside, just now?”
    What the hell? That she’d been abandoned by her grandmother released a rush of rage in Wyatt’s chest.
    â€œShe said I’m out of control. She can’t cope with me, so now that Mom’s out of town you should be the one to take me on while she’s gone.” An eyebrow raise accompanied that challenge, and in that moment, she looked so like Logan that Wyatt’s heart cracked in half. Was it possible she had engineered this to force her grandmother’s hand?
    She eyed the crew warily before turning back to Wyatt. “I know you don’t want me here.”
    â€œThat’s not true.” God, how could he explain that his niece here with his people was the culmination of his heart’s desire? Try that without making her mother into the villain. “Sweetheart, everyone wants to meet you. But first, I need to talk to them all and let them know where you’ve been all this time.”
    â€œHoly shit,” Roni said.
    Okay, not the expected reaction, but then he got it. Molly stood in front of them looking so damn fine he was practically bowled over by her beauty. Holy shit was right.
    â€œHey, Roni, I’m Molly. So are you a Coke or a Sprite girl?”
    Eyes wide, Roni dropped her jaw at the sight of one of the most famous women in the world standing in a humble, albeit very nicely landscaped, backyard on the North Side of Chicago.
    â€œAre you—?”
    â€œSure am,” Molly said with a wink. “Just another day at chez Dempsey, kid.”
    She smiled at Wyatt, which was incredibly classy of her considering he’d done nothing but alternately scowl and ignore her all afternoon. Right now, she was the only other adult he was brave enough to look at, her outsider status the branch he clung to.
    â€œYou go with Molly for a moment while I talk to your