Summer with the Single Dad, page 10
He shrugged. “You might find you prefer the RV.” He opened the truck door. “Or Bennett’s house.” He said that last part quieter as he jumped out. But she heard it. Boy, did she hear it.
Bennett didn’t greet her at the front door, but Clint let them into the house without knocking.
“We don’t lock our doors on the island. Everything is so safe. Took some getting used to, but we love how secure we are here now. How safe all the children are. They come and go as they please. Little free-range chickens who hardly ever wear shoes.” His smile was full of fatherly pride and contentment. “We’re here,” he called out upstairs.
“Not ready yet,” Bennett replied, sounding mildly flustered.
“Let’s unload your stuff while we wait for housekeeping,” Clint said, heading back out to Justine’s SUV.
She followed him and popped the hatch. They worked quickly, unpacking her temporary life into Bennett’s cozy, modern but cabin-y, living room.
“Every house has the same layout,” Clint said, plunking down the last of her totes. “I’m next door on the end. Wyatt is on the other side of Bennett. Then Dom, and Jagger is at the end. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms, up. Living room, kitchen, dining room, study, and two-piece bathroom, down. Functional, but modest.”
“Seems like the perfect size for a family to me.”
“I’ve gotta get back to work. You’ll be okay here?”
She nodded, aware that when Clint left, it would just be her and Bennett in his functional, modest, cozy house. All alone.
“Brooke is next door if you need anything. She knows you’re moving in so she might pop over for a visit. I’m not sure what her plans were today. She had a few interviews—you know, radio and television and stuff—and then she was reading over a new script. But I think that was it.”
Script?
Interviews?
Who was Clint’s girlfriend, exactly?
But it felt rude to ask, so she merely nodded and thanked him for his help.
“No problem. I hope you settle in easily. Come down and visit us at the pub.”
“I will. Thank you.” She saw Clint to the door and just as she closed it and turned around, Bennett came bounding down the stairs, all handsome and slightly out of breath. He certainly took her breath away when he smiled at her like he was at that moment.
“All ready for you,” he said, taking the last step and reaching for her suitcase. “If you’ll follow me.”
With a belly loaded with butterflies, she grabbed a tote and followed him up the stairs. It was impossible not to stare at his butt. It was a great butt in those jeans—and probably out of them as well—and it was right at eye level. How could she not?
Heat rushed into her cheeks and she glanced away as best she could, only to fall victim to her stupid libido and zero in once again on the back pockets and how perfectly rounded they were.
He probably didn’t even have to work to get a butt like that. It was probably just good genes, and good jeans. Meanwhile, women had to bust their ass—literally—at the gym with squats, lunges, deadlifts, donkey kicks, and glute bridges to get peach halves like Bennett had.
She was glaring at his butt by the time they reached the upstairs.
It wasn’t fair.
“Something wrong?” Bennett asked. “You’ve got a really pissed off look on your face.”
Crap.
She dropped her scowl and looked up at him. He was on the top stair and she was three below that, so she really had to look up to reach his eyes. Otherwise, now she’d be face-to-face with his crotch, which was also fairly impressive, even in jeans. As a doctor, she could just tell. She could.
“Uh … uh, no. Just thinking about something entirely unrelated to anything.”
“Entirely unrelated to anything, huh? Well, I’m curious to know what that is. If it’s unrelated to anything.” His smirk was sixteen different kinds of sexy and it made her pulse pound through her carotid. Could he see it throbbing like a frog’s vocal sac in her neck? Was it that obvious? It felt like it was obvious. Like they could hear it down at the pub over the bass of the music.
He stepped back so she could reach the top of the stairs too. “Just thinking about how I was looking forward to relaxing on the beach today, only to get there and find it covered with naked bodies.”
He snorted. “You went to Little Bay? I could have told you that. You go there at your own risk.”
“Well, I didn’t know I was going to go there until I got there. And when I got there, I was very distracted and unable to relax.”
“Aren’t you a doctor? Shouldn’t the naked human body be boring to you by now?”
She followed him down the hall toward the last door on the right. “I’m a human first. And as a doctor, usually when I see a person, they’re in a dressing gown, or draped for surgery. So I only see the part of them I have to cut open. I see more of people’s insides than their outsides. And a lot of those outsides today were—”
“Very wrinkly and hairy?”
“The human body is beautiful in all its forms.”
He opened the bedroom door with a snicker. “Sure, it is. Then why didn’t you stay?”
She glared at him as he rolled her suitcase into a big bedroom with a peaked, vaulted ceiling, a king-sized bed, and a huge window with a gorgeous view of the sound.
“I decided I didn’t want to lie on the beach. So, I went and did a wine tasting instead.”
“I emptied the dresser. So feel free to put your clothes in there. Same with the nightstands. There are towels in the bathroom along with shampoo and body wash you’re welcome to use. The sheets are fresh and clean.”
“Thank you. Your … your bedroom is lovely.”
His full, distracting lips pursed, like he was doing his very best to hide a smug smile. Then he nodded. “Who’d you meet at the winery?”
His abrupt pivot back to the first topic jarred her. “Uh, Naomi? She seemed nice. I got a private tasting with her.” Then the guilt of her abrupt departure slammed back into her brain and a sad, sinking feeling formed in her belly.
“Whoa, what just happened? You were happy a second ago, smiling and joking about wrinkly, naked old people. Then your face dropped into the biggest frown I’ve ever seen—except for when I tell Aya she can’t have any more ice cream.”
Justine shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m going to go grab another tote.”
She left his room and made haste down to the living room. She knew he was behind her even though his footsteps didn’t thunder down the stairs and he never said a word. She didn’t acknowledge him when she picked up another tote and passed him in the living room on her way to the stairs. He followed her and they reconvened back in his bedroom.
“Did something happen at the winery?” he asked, setting the tote from his arms down on the floor against the wall. “Did Gabrielle say something? Did Raina?”
“I don’t know who either of those people are. And no. I only met Naomi, and she was lovely. Nothing happened. I just—” She glanced out the window at the glittering ocean, caught perfectly in the afternoon rays of sunshine. “I left quite suddenly and I feel bad about that now. Naomi was so kind to me.”
“Why’d you leave so abruptly?”
She shook her head and averted her gaze, studying the room and its muted colors. Camel-beige on the walls, a brown and blue duvet cover and pillow shams, and two funky reclaimed wood nightstands to match the king-sized bed frame. The mattress was quite high, higher than average she would say, and a stunning blown-up gray-scale photograph of a blue heron hunting in glass-calm water on a foggy day hung on the wall behind the bed.
He stepped closer to her, then his finger was beneath her chin and he was gently, but forcefully, making her turn to look at him again.
He was too close now.
His heat, his scent. Just his presence left her light-headed.
“Justine, why’d you leave? What happened?”
She shook free of his touch and took a step back, or at least tried to, but her calves hit the end of the bed. She was trapped.
He took her attempt to move away from him for what it was and took a step back himself, his expression full of confusion and hurt.
“I don’t deserve joy,” she said, meeting his blue gaze for just a split second.
“What? Why would you say or think that?”
“Because I killed someone. Now he, nor his family, will ever experience joy again. So why should I? I feel guilty any time I enjoy myself or am happy, because the man I killed is dead. I made a mistake, and he paid the price.”
“And so you’re punishing yourself by not allowing yourself to experience joy ever again?”
It sounded so stupid when said out loud. And when Bennett said it, she wanted to curl up in a ball or escape to an ashram in Tibet.
So to save the little bit of face she had left, she said nothing. She just let his words hang in the air. Silence was her answer. Silence was her confirmation.
His eyes turned sad. “Oh, Justine, that’s … that’s not fair. Not to you, or the … patient? It was a patient, right? You didn’t, like, off a guy on the street for his watch or something? I haven’t brought a murderous mugger into my house with my children, have I?”
It was impossible not to laugh at that. “No. It was a patient.”
“You can’t beat yourself up. It happens. It’s terrible, but it happens.”
Her throat grew tight and the back of her eyes burned. She shook her head. “Not to me.”
“So, you realized you enjoyed yourself at the wine tasting, felt guilty, and left?”
Filled to the absolute brim with embarrassment, she nodded.
“Okay. Well, I hope that the reason you’re here on the island is to not only find that clarity but also to forgive yourself. Because accidents happen. Even to genius surgeons. Crappy things happen, good people die, and it fucking sucks. Also, I’m guessing you’ve saved a lot more people on your OR table than have died.”
A hot tear slid down the crease of her nose.
She didn’t nod, but rather, just glanced away, unable to look him in the eye because she knew she’d see pity. He didn’t get it. He wanted to, and he was trying to, but he just didn’t get it.
“If you ever want to talk …”
She swallowed, still staring at the floor. Another tear slid down her nose and onto the hardwood. “Thank you.”
“I’ll leave you to unpack. Seems like you need some time to yourself. I’ll be down at the office if you need anything. My home is your home. So put your food in the fridge, there should be space. And make yourself at home. The kids will be home just after three. So I’ll make sure I come back for that so they don’t bombard you with questions.”
“Thank you,” she choked out.
She sucked in a sharp breath when he stepped close again and she lifted her head, more on instinct than anything else. “You deserve joy, Justine. Don’t destroy your life because of one mistake. Grief and guilt are powerful, and they are important, but so is happiness. So is forgiveness. Forgive yourself.”
He blinked. She blinked.
His smile was small, and it came and went like a zephyr. Then he walked out of the bedroom, leaving her alone with her pain and her tears … and for the first time in a very long time, with hope.
CHAPTER NINE
At least one of them always tried to meet the kids at the bus stop and walk them back up to the houses. This time, Bennett made a point of being the after-school greeter.
The kids were usually exhausted, until they got a snack in their bellies. Then that second wave of energy turned them into little wildlings. He was thankful every day for their acreage and how safe it was. Now that Emme was nine going on fifteen and super responsible, she was able to look after her sister and cousins for a few hours after school, until Bennett and his brothers finished work. When the weather was nice the kids could roam the hillside behind the houses for hours and burn off steam. They picked wildflowers, caught grasshoppers, came up with games, and sometimes just lay in the grass, and watched the clouds float by. And almost all of this was done without shoes on, and in some cases—depending on the heat—shirts too.
“Hi, Daddy,” Aya greeted him as she stepped off the bus, appearing to be in a much better mood than she’d had been that morning.
“Hey, Little Bug. Good day?” He held her hand while the rest of the children, including Emme, walked and chatted behind him.
She shrugged her boney shoulder, hitching up her enormous backpack. He’d tried to talk her out of such a massive thing, but she refused to hear reason. It was not a hill he was interested in dying on. “Not bad. Carnation pushed me off the play structure at recess.”
“Give me that thing,” he said, taking her backpack from her and slinging it over one shoulder. “Tell me more about Carnation and the pushing.”
Carnation was a girl in Aya’s class and she was known to be a bit of a bully. He and the girls had numerous discussions about how to handle Carnation, and how to avoid Carnation.
Aya shrugged again. “Yeah. I mean, I’m tough. So it didn’t hurt when I fell. Just made my knee a bit red. Then I told her that was unkind and I asked her why she was being unfriendly. Like you’ve told me to. She said it was because she wasn’t friendly. That she doesn’t want to be my friend, so she’s not going to be friendly to me. She’s going to push me.”
“Oh, wow. Then what happened?”
“I told her she’s going to have a hard life if she keeps treating people like that. And if I become a doctor and she comes to my hospital, maybe I’ll chop off her leg when she’s sleeping as payback.”
“Oh shit,” Bennett murmured, dragging his hand down his face. “Okay.”
“She laughed and said I can’t be a doctor because I’m not smart enough.”
“Mhmm.”
“I told her I am smart enough, but if being a doctor means I have to go to more school, then maybe I’ll become something else, like a police officer, and I’ll arrest her. Or a firefighter. Then I won’t put out her house if it catches fire.”
“Mhmm.”
“She told me she didn’t care. I told her I hope her arms fall off and she has to wipe her butt with her feet. Then the bell rang, and we ran back to class.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t seem worse for wear. So although Bennett was still processing everything he heard, he pushed it to the back of his mind, nodded at Emme to come join them and took both his daughters’ hands.
“So, I have something to tell you both.”
They blinked at him, waiting.
“Cabin five, which is where Justine is staying, had a big flood today.”
“Oh no! Did Justine drown?” Aya asked, exaggerated fear in her soft-brown eyes.
Emme snorted. “Probably not.”
“No, she didn’t drown. But she can’t stay there until we fix the damage.”
“She can come stay with us!” Aya announced. “I can sleep on the couch and she can have my room. I’ll clean my room real good, Daddy. I promise. Pick up all my stuffed animals off the floor and put them in their hammock. And I’ll throw all my boogie tissues in the garbage.”
“Well, you should do that anyway. But believe it or not, she actually is going to stay with us until the RV I’ve rented arrives on Saturday. She’ll be in my room, and I will sleep in the study and use your bathroom. It’s only right that we give the guest her own room and bathroom.”
Emme’s eyes glowed and Aya started to jump up and down.
“Oh my gosh! It’s like we have our own Brooke, now.” Aya turned around to Talia, who still wore a hot pink cast on her left arm after she was struck by an SUV in their pub parking lot a few weeks ago. “We have our own Brooke now!”
Talia wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Huh?”
Bennett cleared his throat, feeling the need to correct his youngest child. “Justine is temporary. She will move out at the end of the week.”
“We thought Brooke was temporary too. Now she lives with Uncle Clint and Talia. It could happen with Justine too,” Aya practically yelled. “Justine could become forever.”
Inappropriate sparks of desire for that to be true flickered in Bennett’s gut and he did his best to ignore them. “I just wanted to give you guys a head’s up because she might be at the house when we get there and I didn’t want to surprise you.”
“But I love surprises,” Aya said. “And Justine moving into our house is a great surprise.”
They hadn’t even gotten home yet, and already his daughter was dangerously attached to Justine living there.
This had bad idea written all over it.
And yet, the idea of her staying anywhere else sat so uncomfortably in his craw he couldn’t bear to think of her living at Dom’s or Wyatt’s. Or even worse, at Jagger’s. Even though he had the most amount of space, he was also the biggest playboy and flirt. And just thinking of Jagger flirting with Justine made Bennett want to punch his little brother in the face.
They reached the gate that separated the commercial part of the property from the private. The kids liked taking turns punching in the code on the keypad that unlocked the man door on the side.
This time, it was Silas’s turn.
“Remember to say the wrong numbers out loud as you punch in the right numbers so anybody listening in the woods gets it wrong when they try it,” Jake, Wyatt’s oldest son, said.
Silas nodded, bunched his brows and concentrated. “Three.” He hit “five”. “Seven.” He hit “two”. “Nine.” He hit “eight”. “One.” He hit “two” again. “Six.” He hit “zero”. Then beamed when the door clicked open.
Emme patted him on the back. “Good job. First time you got it right on the first try. Well done, Si.”
Silas puffed up his little, six-year-old chest and put a bit of a cocky saunter into his stride as he walked through the now open door.
“Brooke said we can all come to my house after school. She baked cookies,” Talia announced, hustling forward to lead the pack.
“I want to go see Justine first,” Aya said, glancing up with hope at Bennett. “Can we, Daddy?”
Bennett didn’t greet her at the front door, but Clint let them into the house without knocking.
“We don’t lock our doors on the island. Everything is so safe. Took some getting used to, but we love how secure we are here now. How safe all the children are. They come and go as they please. Little free-range chickens who hardly ever wear shoes.” His smile was full of fatherly pride and contentment. “We’re here,” he called out upstairs.
“Not ready yet,” Bennett replied, sounding mildly flustered.
“Let’s unload your stuff while we wait for housekeeping,” Clint said, heading back out to Justine’s SUV.
She followed him and popped the hatch. They worked quickly, unpacking her temporary life into Bennett’s cozy, modern but cabin-y, living room.
“Every house has the same layout,” Clint said, plunking down the last of her totes. “I’m next door on the end. Wyatt is on the other side of Bennett. Then Dom, and Jagger is at the end. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms, up. Living room, kitchen, dining room, study, and two-piece bathroom, down. Functional, but modest.”
“Seems like the perfect size for a family to me.”
“I’ve gotta get back to work. You’ll be okay here?”
She nodded, aware that when Clint left, it would just be her and Bennett in his functional, modest, cozy house. All alone.
“Brooke is next door if you need anything. She knows you’re moving in so she might pop over for a visit. I’m not sure what her plans were today. She had a few interviews—you know, radio and television and stuff—and then she was reading over a new script. But I think that was it.”
Script?
Interviews?
Who was Clint’s girlfriend, exactly?
But it felt rude to ask, so she merely nodded and thanked him for his help.
“No problem. I hope you settle in easily. Come down and visit us at the pub.”
“I will. Thank you.” She saw Clint to the door and just as she closed it and turned around, Bennett came bounding down the stairs, all handsome and slightly out of breath. He certainly took her breath away when he smiled at her like he was at that moment.
“All ready for you,” he said, taking the last step and reaching for her suitcase. “If you’ll follow me.”
With a belly loaded with butterflies, she grabbed a tote and followed him up the stairs. It was impossible not to stare at his butt. It was a great butt in those jeans—and probably out of them as well—and it was right at eye level. How could she not?
Heat rushed into her cheeks and she glanced away as best she could, only to fall victim to her stupid libido and zero in once again on the back pockets and how perfectly rounded they were.
He probably didn’t even have to work to get a butt like that. It was probably just good genes, and good jeans. Meanwhile, women had to bust their ass—literally—at the gym with squats, lunges, deadlifts, donkey kicks, and glute bridges to get peach halves like Bennett had.
She was glaring at his butt by the time they reached the upstairs.
It wasn’t fair.
“Something wrong?” Bennett asked. “You’ve got a really pissed off look on your face.”
Crap.
She dropped her scowl and looked up at him. He was on the top stair and she was three below that, so she really had to look up to reach his eyes. Otherwise, now she’d be face-to-face with his crotch, which was also fairly impressive, even in jeans. As a doctor, she could just tell. She could.
“Uh … uh, no. Just thinking about something entirely unrelated to anything.”
“Entirely unrelated to anything, huh? Well, I’m curious to know what that is. If it’s unrelated to anything.” His smirk was sixteen different kinds of sexy and it made her pulse pound through her carotid. Could he see it throbbing like a frog’s vocal sac in her neck? Was it that obvious? It felt like it was obvious. Like they could hear it down at the pub over the bass of the music.
He stepped back so she could reach the top of the stairs too. “Just thinking about how I was looking forward to relaxing on the beach today, only to get there and find it covered with naked bodies.”
He snorted. “You went to Little Bay? I could have told you that. You go there at your own risk.”
“Well, I didn’t know I was going to go there until I got there. And when I got there, I was very distracted and unable to relax.”
“Aren’t you a doctor? Shouldn’t the naked human body be boring to you by now?”
She followed him down the hall toward the last door on the right. “I’m a human first. And as a doctor, usually when I see a person, they’re in a dressing gown, or draped for surgery. So I only see the part of them I have to cut open. I see more of people’s insides than their outsides. And a lot of those outsides today were—”
“Very wrinkly and hairy?”
“The human body is beautiful in all its forms.”
He opened the bedroom door with a snicker. “Sure, it is. Then why didn’t you stay?”
She glared at him as he rolled her suitcase into a big bedroom with a peaked, vaulted ceiling, a king-sized bed, and a huge window with a gorgeous view of the sound.
“I decided I didn’t want to lie on the beach. So, I went and did a wine tasting instead.”
“I emptied the dresser. So feel free to put your clothes in there. Same with the nightstands. There are towels in the bathroom along with shampoo and body wash you’re welcome to use. The sheets are fresh and clean.”
“Thank you. Your … your bedroom is lovely.”
His full, distracting lips pursed, like he was doing his very best to hide a smug smile. Then he nodded. “Who’d you meet at the winery?”
His abrupt pivot back to the first topic jarred her. “Uh, Naomi? She seemed nice. I got a private tasting with her.” Then the guilt of her abrupt departure slammed back into her brain and a sad, sinking feeling formed in her belly.
“Whoa, what just happened? You were happy a second ago, smiling and joking about wrinkly, naked old people. Then your face dropped into the biggest frown I’ve ever seen—except for when I tell Aya she can’t have any more ice cream.”
Justine shook her head. “It’s nothing. I’m going to go grab another tote.”
She left his room and made haste down to the living room. She knew he was behind her even though his footsteps didn’t thunder down the stairs and he never said a word. She didn’t acknowledge him when she picked up another tote and passed him in the living room on her way to the stairs. He followed her and they reconvened back in his bedroom.
“Did something happen at the winery?” he asked, setting the tote from his arms down on the floor against the wall. “Did Gabrielle say something? Did Raina?”
“I don’t know who either of those people are. And no. I only met Naomi, and she was lovely. Nothing happened. I just—” She glanced out the window at the glittering ocean, caught perfectly in the afternoon rays of sunshine. “I left quite suddenly and I feel bad about that now. Naomi was so kind to me.”
“Why’d you leave so abruptly?”
She shook her head and averted her gaze, studying the room and its muted colors. Camel-beige on the walls, a brown and blue duvet cover and pillow shams, and two funky reclaimed wood nightstands to match the king-sized bed frame. The mattress was quite high, higher than average she would say, and a stunning blown-up gray-scale photograph of a blue heron hunting in glass-calm water on a foggy day hung on the wall behind the bed.
He stepped closer to her, then his finger was beneath her chin and he was gently, but forcefully, making her turn to look at him again.
He was too close now.
His heat, his scent. Just his presence left her light-headed.
“Justine, why’d you leave? What happened?”
She shook free of his touch and took a step back, or at least tried to, but her calves hit the end of the bed. She was trapped.
He took her attempt to move away from him for what it was and took a step back himself, his expression full of confusion and hurt.
“I don’t deserve joy,” she said, meeting his blue gaze for just a split second.
“What? Why would you say or think that?”
“Because I killed someone. Now he, nor his family, will ever experience joy again. So why should I? I feel guilty any time I enjoy myself or am happy, because the man I killed is dead. I made a mistake, and he paid the price.”
“And so you’re punishing yourself by not allowing yourself to experience joy ever again?”
It sounded so stupid when said out loud. And when Bennett said it, she wanted to curl up in a ball or escape to an ashram in Tibet.
So to save the little bit of face she had left, she said nothing. She just let his words hang in the air. Silence was her answer. Silence was her confirmation.
His eyes turned sad. “Oh, Justine, that’s … that’s not fair. Not to you, or the … patient? It was a patient, right? You didn’t, like, off a guy on the street for his watch or something? I haven’t brought a murderous mugger into my house with my children, have I?”
It was impossible not to laugh at that. “No. It was a patient.”
“You can’t beat yourself up. It happens. It’s terrible, but it happens.”
Her throat grew tight and the back of her eyes burned. She shook her head. “Not to me.”
“So, you realized you enjoyed yourself at the wine tasting, felt guilty, and left?”
Filled to the absolute brim with embarrassment, she nodded.
“Okay. Well, I hope that the reason you’re here on the island is to not only find that clarity but also to forgive yourself. Because accidents happen. Even to genius surgeons. Crappy things happen, good people die, and it fucking sucks. Also, I’m guessing you’ve saved a lot more people on your OR table than have died.”
A hot tear slid down the crease of her nose.
She didn’t nod, but rather, just glanced away, unable to look him in the eye because she knew she’d see pity. He didn’t get it. He wanted to, and he was trying to, but he just didn’t get it.
“If you ever want to talk …”
She swallowed, still staring at the floor. Another tear slid down her nose and onto the hardwood. “Thank you.”
“I’ll leave you to unpack. Seems like you need some time to yourself. I’ll be down at the office if you need anything. My home is your home. So put your food in the fridge, there should be space. And make yourself at home. The kids will be home just after three. So I’ll make sure I come back for that so they don’t bombard you with questions.”
“Thank you,” she choked out.
She sucked in a sharp breath when he stepped close again and she lifted her head, more on instinct than anything else. “You deserve joy, Justine. Don’t destroy your life because of one mistake. Grief and guilt are powerful, and they are important, but so is happiness. So is forgiveness. Forgive yourself.”
He blinked. She blinked.
His smile was small, and it came and went like a zephyr. Then he walked out of the bedroom, leaving her alone with her pain and her tears … and for the first time in a very long time, with hope.
CHAPTER NINE
At least one of them always tried to meet the kids at the bus stop and walk them back up to the houses. This time, Bennett made a point of being the after-school greeter.
The kids were usually exhausted, until they got a snack in their bellies. Then that second wave of energy turned them into little wildlings. He was thankful every day for their acreage and how safe it was. Now that Emme was nine going on fifteen and super responsible, she was able to look after her sister and cousins for a few hours after school, until Bennett and his brothers finished work. When the weather was nice the kids could roam the hillside behind the houses for hours and burn off steam. They picked wildflowers, caught grasshoppers, came up with games, and sometimes just lay in the grass, and watched the clouds float by. And almost all of this was done without shoes on, and in some cases—depending on the heat—shirts too.
“Hi, Daddy,” Aya greeted him as she stepped off the bus, appearing to be in a much better mood than she’d had been that morning.
“Hey, Little Bug. Good day?” He held her hand while the rest of the children, including Emme, walked and chatted behind him.
She shrugged her boney shoulder, hitching up her enormous backpack. He’d tried to talk her out of such a massive thing, but she refused to hear reason. It was not a hill he was interested in dying on. “Not bad. Carnation pushed me off the play structure at recess.”
“Give me that thing,” he said, taking her backpack from her and slinging it over one shoulder. “Tell me more about Carnation and the pushing.”
Carnation was a girl in Aya’s class and she was known to be a bit of a bully. He and the girls had numerous discussions about how to handle Carnation, and how to avoid Carnation.
Aya shrugged again. “Yeah. I mean, I’m tough. So it didn’t hurt when I fell. Just made my knee a bit red. Then I told her that was unkind and I asked her why she was being unfriendly. Like you’ve told me to. She said it was because she wasn’t friendly. That she doesn’t want to be my friend, so she’s not going to be friendly to me. She’s going to push me.”
“Oh, wow. Then what happened?”
“I told her she’s going to have a hard life if she keeps treating people like that. And if I become a doctor and she comes to my hospital, maybe I’ll chop off her leg when she’s sleeping as payback.”
“Oh shit,” Bennett murmured, dragging his hand down his face. “Okay.”
“She laughed and said I can’t be a doctor because I’m not smart enough.”
“Mhmm.”
“I told her I am smart enough, but if being a doctor means I have to go to more school, then maybe I’ll become something else, like a police officer, and I’ll arrest her. Or a firefighter. Then I won’t put out her house if it catches fire.”
“Mhmm.”
“She told me she didn’t care. I told her I hope her arms fall off and she has to wipe her butt with her feet. Then the bell rang, and we ran back to class.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t seem worse for wear. So although Bennett was still processing everything he heard, he pushed it to the back of his mind, nodded at Emme to come join them and took both his daughters’ hands.
“So, I have something to tell you both.”
They blinked at him, waiting.
“Cabin five, which is where Justine is staying, had a big flood today.”
“Oh no! Did Justine drown?” Aya asked, exaggerated fear in her soft-brown eyes.
Emme snorted. “Probably not.”
“No, she didn’t drown. But she can’t stay there until we fix the damage.”
“She can come stay with us!” Aya announced. “I can sleep on the couch and she can have my room. I’ll clean my room real good, Daddy. I promise. Pick up all my stuffed animals off the floor and put them in their hammock. And I’ll throw all my boogie tissues in the garbage.”
“Well, you should do that anyway. But believe it or not, she actually is going to stay with us until the RV I’ve rented arrives on Saturday. She’ll be in my room, and I will sleep in the study and use your bathroom. It’s only right that we give the guest her own room and bathroom.”
Emme’s eyes glowed and Aya started to jump up and down.
“Oh my gosh! It’s like we have our own Brooke, now.” Aya turned around to Talia, who still wore a hot pink cast on her left arm after she was struck by an SUV in their pub parking lot a few weeks ago. “We have our own Brooke now!”
Talia wrinkled her nose in confusion. “Huh?”
Bennett cleared his throat, feeling the need to correct his youngest child. “Justine is temporary. She will move out at the end of the week.”
“We thought Brooke was temporary too. Now she lives with Uncle Clint and Talia. It could happen with Justine too,” Aya practically yelled. “Justine could become forever.”
Inappropriate sparks of desire for that to be true flickered in Bennett’s gut and he did his best to ignore them. “I just wanted to give you guys a head’s up because she might be at the house when we get there and I didn’t want to surprise you.”
“But I love surprises,” Aya said. “And Justine moving into our house is a great surprise.”
They hadn’t even gotten home yet, and already his daughter was dangerously attached to Justine living there.
This had bad idea written all over it.
And yet, the idea of her staying anywhere else sat so uncomfortably in his craw he couldn’t bear to think of her living at Dom’s or Wyatt’s. Or even worse, at Jagger’s. Even though he had the most amount of space, he was also the biggest playboy and flirt. And just thinking of Jagger flirting with Justine made Bennett want to punch his little brother in the face.
They reached the gate that separated the commercial part of the property from the private. The kids liked taking turns punching in the code on the keypad that unlocked the man door on the side.
This time, it was Silas’s turn.
“Remember to say the wrong numbers out loud as you punch in the right numbers so anybody listening in the woods gets it wrong when they try it,” Jake, Wyatt’s oldest son, said.
Silas nodded, bunched his brows and concentrated. “Three.” He hit “five”. “Seven.” He hit “two”. “Nine.” He hit “eight”. “One.” He hit “two” again. “Six.” He hit “zero”. Then beamed when the door clicked open.
Emme patted him on the back. “Good job. First time you got it right on the first try. Well done, Si.”
Silas puffed up his little, six-year-old chest and put a bit of a cocky saunter into his stride as he walked through the now open door.
“Brooke said we can all come to my house after school. She baked cookies,” Talia announced, hustling forward to lead the pack.
“I want to go see Justine first,” Aya said, glancing up with hope at Bennett. “Can we, Daddy?”
