Free Gentlemen Prefer Curves: A Perfect Fit Novel by Sugar Jamison

excited. And she’d rather spend a couple hours tonight with this coldly beautiful man than in her tiny apartment alone.
    “Thank you, Belinda.” He took her hand and squeezed softly. “I’ll see you at eight.”
    They were married four weeks later.
    “Why are you sitting on the floor hugging shoes?” she heard a quiet voice ask, and she snapped out of the past and opened her eyes.
    A wild-haired little girl stood in front of her, her chubby face scrunched with curiosity.
    Shit.
    She got caught being crazy.
    “Because I am trying them on,” she lied.
    The kid frowned at her. “You don’t look like you’re trying them on. You don’t even have your shoes off.”
    She was right. Belinda couldn’t argue with logic.
    “Fine. You caught me. I have fallen so in love with these shoes that I had to hug them. I hug everything I really love. I once held a Michael Kors coat for an hour and a half.”
    “Oh.” The child didn’t seem to know what to say to that. Belinda hoped she would scamper off back to her mother, but she didn’t—she stepped closer. “Can I see your shoes?”
    “I guess.” She opened the box and held them up for the little girl to see.
    She stroked one of the straps, her eyes wide in wonder. “I like them very much.”
    “I do too, kid.”
    “I’m here to buy new shoes, too.” She lifted her tiny chubby leg to show her a red patent-leather ballet flat. “These are too small. My daddy doesn’t know that he’s supposed to buy me new shoes. I have to tell him everything.”
    Belinda nodded, trying to ignore how cute the kid was and that annoying little pull she felt in her chest looking at her tiny feet. She didn’t even like kids, she kept telling herself. They were always dirty and sticky, like they had maple syrup for blood or something. And they always needed something. Like shoes. She wanted no part of them. But this one was really frigging cute. “Daddies can be really kind of dumb sometimes.”
    The little girl nodded, and Belinda noticed the large angry-looking scar that covered the upper half of her arm.
    “You’re looking at my burn.”
    “I am. I’m sorry for staring but it looks like it hurt a lot.” Belinda didn’t know what made her do it but she lifted her hand and ran her fingers across the little girl’s arm. But then she realized that she must seem like a crazy lady and that she shouldn’t be touching or talking to other people’s kids.
    “Maybe you should go find your mommy now. Or do you need help finding her? I can help you.”
    “It don’t hurt no more.”
    “What?”
    “My scar. I got in an accident when I was a baby so it don’t hurt no more.”
    “Oh, I’m glad to hear that.” She started to rise to her feet. “Let’s go find your mommy.”
    “I don’t got a mommy,” the little girl said softly. “She died.”
    “Oh.” That stopped her in her tracks. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, kid.”
    Nothing was going right for Belinda today. First her fight with Ellis, then spotting the husband she wished would go away, and now she was faced with a cute lost kid with a dead mother. She should have stayed in bed.
    “It’s okay. I don’t remember her. She died when I was a baby.” She shrugged. “You’re not supposed to say the S word. You got to put money in the cuss jar if you do.”
    “You take credit cards?”
    “Nope.” She grinned again, showing off those damn cute missing teeth.
    “Ruby! Ruby!” a man’s voice called.
    “I’m over here, Daddy.”
    Carter appeared.
    Shit. Shit. Shit. The little girl couldn’t be his. But she was. Belinda could tell by the way he looked at her. Relief and love and anger. It fascinated her to see Carter like that. That one look contained more emotion than she had seen from him their entire short marriage.
    She was so wrapped up in staring at him that she didn’t notice that he didn’t notice her sitting on the floor. He was too focused on his daughter, and for a split second she wondered if she could