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tightly. Sometimes she swore an old woman lived inside her daughter and at other times she thought Gabby was digressing back into the terrible twos.
    Satisfied with her daughter’s answers she left Gabby to play in the bedroom and reluctantly joined Billy, who was waiting in the kitchen. He was pouring himself a mug of coffee from a dusty coffee maker that hadn’t been used since O’Malley’s death two months ago.
    “I made you some tea,” he said, plopping his big body into a rickety chair, Billy motioned to a chipped mug across from him.
    Angel frowned at him as she sat down.
    “So you lost me?” He eyed her steadily as he rubbed his thumb back and forth along the handle of his coffee mug.
    Ignoring the tea and the fact that he remembered her preference she answered, “I didn’t say lost. That’s just how Gabby interpreted it. And what was I supposed to say? That you were dead? I wasn’t about to tell her that her father preferred to pretend she didn’t exist.”
    “I didn’t know she existed.”
    “So you say now.”
    Early on she swore she would never tell Gabby the truth. Never. There was a time when she had asked about her father but it stopped eventually. Not unlike how Angel stopped asking about her own mother. O’Malley never talked about it and she learned not to question him for it only brought sadness to his eyes. Is that why Gabby had stopped asking too? Did she see the same haunted look in her mother’s eyes when she asked about her daddy? And all this time Angel thought Gabby had forgotten when in reality she’d been hoping for her father to show up.
    Truthfully, she’d been betting on a negative reaction from her daughter as an excuse to decline. As they exchanged phone numbers she made one last ditch effort. “The cat is not going to be a problem, is it?” Better he escape now before Gabby became attached.
    “No, I’ll look into allergy shots.” After taking a large gulp of coffee, he asked, “Who names their cat Lucifer?”
    “He’s a bit of a hellion.” Maybe that would get him to rethink his impulsive proposal.
    “Ah, a true O’Malley.”
    “Hey!” Angel instinctively punched him in the arm, like they’d seen each other just yesterday instead of six years ago. They both laughed and for a moment she felt like that teen girl who once fell in love, perhaps because she still was.
    No, you’re in love with the boy you once knew, the one who won you a pink elephant at a fair. But Billy was no longer that boy. And Angel was definitely no longer that girl. At only twenty-three he had a sexual past that an eighty-year-old man would be proud to remember on his deathbed. Remember that before you’re the one who becomes attached .
    An awkward silence followed the laughter. Then he reached for his wallet and all of the muscles in her body tensed. “No thanks,” she said as he tried to hand over a wad of cash.
    He opened her clenched fist. “It’s just to hold you over until we can settle the legal details and make a permanent arrangement.” Placing the money in her palm, he closed her fingers around it. Keeping his hand around hers, he said, “You really don’t know the meaning of child support, do you?”
    She didn’t want his money. Well, she did want a check in the mail every month to help support Gabby. A check didn’t send tingles of excitement running from the tips of her fingers, up her arm to surround her heart, or wet her lips down below. His touch, however, did all those things. “I’m not in this to bleed you dry, you know. Once I pass the licensing exam and find a nursing job we’ll be fine.”
    “I hope that we includes me, Angel.”
    He squeezed her hand, but it was her heart that felt the force of the gesture. She didn’t know how to respond because she didn’t know exactly what he meant by it. Angel couldn’t let the whispered words seduce her into thinking she could be anything more than his baby mama. She winced at the term but in his world that’s