Chapter 4 #2
It wasn’t his place to make anything better.
He wasn’t her Daddy. She wasn’t his Little girl.
In fact, the odds of having a true Little move in next door to him would have to be astronomical.
Although every moment that he’d been with her, everything she had done had screamed Little at him.
From the way she’d wiped her face with the backs of her hands, to the way she’d stubbornly insisted she could do it herself.
She hadn’t stomped her foot, but he’d seen the desire as she’d stood up for herself in that cold, empty cabin of hers.
She didn’t even have a bed.
Hell, she didn’t even have a coat.
And what little he knew about how she’d come to move here, at this time of the year, with literally nothing to help her survive the winter, was enough to piss him off every time he thought about it.
“Is that Maggie Malone’s niece?” Miss Brown asked.
Brock’s pulse jumped. He glanced through the window behind his father just in time to see Stace wheeling her baby stroller out of her driveway and back down the road toward town.
The thought she might be taking a walk around the block was discarded as quickly as it appeared in his head.
It was too cold, too wet with the scent of fresh snow too heavy in the air for anyone to want to walk their baby outside.
No, judging by the direction she was headed, Stace was walking back to town. Probably to get the power turned back on, since every light in the cabin was still off. No steam rose from the chimney, meaning the furnace probably wasn’t turned on yet, either.
“She’s not walking to town, is she?” Brown noticed, startled. “In this weather?”
Of course she was. She didn’t have a car.
“Excuse me.” Setting her interview aside, he got up from the table, heading for the porch.
He called after her, but she didn’t stop.
She might not have heard him, but something in his gut said she had.
He knew how easily a voice carried in the quiet of these old woods.
He also knew how well his voice in particular carried, especially when he put his lungs into it, like he had just now.
She’d deliberately ignored him.
I can do it myself, came her stubborn voice in the back of his head.
His palm itched.
He looked at the sky, as if every breath of the coming snow had a set timetable written in the overcast gray above him. There wasn’t, but he didn’t for a second think she’d be home again before it started snowing.
“I’m very sorry,” he said when he came back inside. “Miss Brown, can we finish this interview over the phone later tonight, or reschedule it...”
“I’ve got it,” Pops spoke up, before the woman could do more than open her mouth to reply. “She’s supposed to be my companion anyway, right?”
Like his dad hadn’t spent all the days since Brock had decided hiring help was necessary trying to talk him out of it.
Brock frowned at him, but Pops waved his hand. Half a shooing motion, and half ‘oh, leave me alone’.
“Someone’s gonna get hired,” the old man wheezed at him.
“I know it. You’ve insisted on it. She needs help,” he said pointing over his shoulder.
“So, go. Help her. You’d help the world if given half the chance, you’ve always been like that.
Besides, if it’s Miss Brown you’re thinkin’ of bringing into our little family, then it’s only right she and I get to know one another.
We’re the ones that have to work with one another. ”
Studying his father with suspicious eyes, Brock glanced once to Miss Brown, who sat so unprepared for the kind of man he knew his father could be, nodding.
“That sounds like a good plan to me,” she said with an unsuspecting smile. “He’s right, too. If we’re going to work together, then what’s the harm in seeing how well we get together?”
Brock glanced out the window again, watching as Stace’s distant figure reached the stop sign at the corner of the road, looked right and left before crossing the street and continuing on towards town.
He did not want to leave his father to run the interviews alone.
He didn’t care what the man said. Pops had never been the sort to ask for help, much less gracefully accept that he was going to need it from now until the rest of his life.
“You be nice,” he told his dad, adding a stern ‘behave yourself’ point of his finger for emphasis he had no doubt would be ignored the moment he walked out of the house.
Nodding to Miss Brown—they had other interviewees, thank God—Brock jumped up to grab his coat, wallet and keys, and then he was out of the house, jogging down the wet steps to his black jeep.
He caught up to her before she’d gone more than 100 yards from the corner.
In another half of a mile, the dirty road became nothing but a muddy bog for about fifty feet.
People who didn’t know to expect it often got stuck.
Those who knew where it was safe to aim the tires, drove partway off the road to let the grass strengthen their traction.
To his knowledge, no one had ever gone through it wheeling a baby stroller; if he could help it, today was not going to be the day he discovered differently.
He slowed down as he pulled up alongside her. He wasn’t particularly surprised when she only glanced at him once and then refused to look at him again.
“Need a lift?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she replied, her tone cheerful although her expression wasn’t.
No means no, right? Society was going overboard these days trying to drum that into the heads of men who couldn’t take a hint.
But really, did no really mean no when it involved babies, inclement weather, an impending snow fall that wasn’t supposed to turn into a storm but definitely wouldn’t be pleasant to walk three miles in?
He wasn’t her Daddy...
Clearing his throat, Brock tried again anyway. “I can have you there and back again, with all your errands run, before you can walk there on your own.”
“I’m fine,” she said again, a tick of stubbornness tugging the flat line of her mouth into a frown. “Really. I’m okay.”
“I don’t feel comfortable...” he said, trying a different direction.
“I don’t get into cars with strangers,” she said.
“I’m not a stranger. I’m your neighbor. How about if I promise not to offer you any candy, would you get in then?”
She stopped, mid-step, staring down the length of the long muddy road that would continue like this for another two and a half miles before turning onto half a mile of pavement leading to main street.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but I really am okay.
You don’t need to worry about me. You for sure don’t need to drop what you’re doing to drive me around.
I knew it was going to be hard here. Starting over usually is.
I’ll be fine.” Finally, she looked at him. “I promise. Okay?”
Only a stubborn asshole would listen to that, completely disregard her wishes and continue to push his own.
Brock rubbed his mouth, fighting his instincts hard to keep from becoming that kind of person.
But when his only alternative was to drive away from her and let her discover on her own just how miserable this walk to town could be, especially if it started snowing before she got there, the need to protest overwhelmed him.
“I don’t mean to be rude, either,” he countered, “but if it’s not snowing before you get there, it will definitely be snowing before you get home.
That hoodie isn’t going to keep you warm.
You’ve got a giant hole in the side of your sneaker.
I can see how wet your sock is, and frostbite is still a thing.
If your only reason not to get in my car is because you’re embarrassed that I know you’re going through a rough patch, then suck it up, buttercup.
You’ve got a baby. You don’t get to be stubborn about anything right now. ”
She glared at him, though he could tell her frustration was aimed more toward herself. Looking down at her shoes, she then stared down the road. Her shoulders sagged. “Okay,” she reluctantly agreed.
Making sure he couldn’t see any other cars either before or behind him, he shifted into park and got out. “Does that stroller convert into a car seat, or do you want to go back to the house to get one?”
“It’s a car seat,” she said, and bent to show him how it came apart.
Three minutes later, Lily was buckled safely into the backseat and Stace was in the front, pretending not to notice when he adjusted the car’s heater to blow on her feet as well as her middle.
Yeah, she was a prickly one for doing things on her own, but it was hard to feel badly about strong-arming her to accept a little help.
Especially when, no sooner had he started the engine up, than did he start seeing a smattering of light snowflakes drifting down around them.
She sighed.
He kept his “I told you so” to himself. “Where you heading to?”
“The electric company.”
“You’ll probably want to turn the water and gas back on too,” he surmised. He barely caught the glimpse of tension that tugged her frown deeper right before she looked out the window.
“Right,” she said, her shoulders sinking even more.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t going to appreciate his prying, no matter how well intentioned it might be.
The Daddy in him took exactly half a second to disregard that.
Feelings did not outweigh the physical probability of her and her child freezing throughout the course of the night, especially when temperatures for the last week had been dropping into the teens.
“I’ll pop over later tonight”—once he was done with the interviews—”and chop some wood for you. This is hot hearth weather—”
“No,” she said, and he’d be damned if that lilt in her voice wasn’t that of a Little pulling her stubbornness in tight around her.
Brock checked the rearview mirror before pulling partway over onto the grass, making room for the dark car he already knew had to be Miss Brown’s coming up the road behind him. Parking, he turned in his seat, one twitching palm coming to rest on his own thigh as he gave her a stern look.
“Yes,” he corrected her firmly. “Not because I don’t think you can’t cut your own wood, but because I don’t know if you’ve ever handled an axe before.
And because I’m not comfortable standing by while you juggle what to do with your daughter while you’re swinging an axe capable of cutting your leg off.
Now, you’ve been pretty clear that you want to be self-sufficient to the point of martyrdom, but if you tell me no again when it’s yours and your daughter’s safety in the balance, I swear, I will put you over my knee and bust your little backside. Now, am I clear?”
Her eyes were huge. She sat frozen in her seat, her hands caught motionless mid-wring, and a touch of pink filling up the apples of her too pale cheeks. Her jaw dropped, but she didn’t answer.
“I said,” he repeated. She’d had a hard day—from the sounds of it, a hard life here lately—so he was willing to be patient, but she was right on the edge of provoking him into pulling her out into the open where he had all the swinging room his arm needed to paint her backside a very sorry shade of red, “am I clear?”
She closed her mouth. Her eyes were still huge and her cheeks a slightly darker shade of pink when she nodded in tiny jerks of her head.
He caught himself before correcting her again, this time with a sternly worded, “When you’re in trouble, little girl, you say Yes, Sir, or No, Sir. Got it?”
She nodded again. “Y-yes, Sir.”
“Good.” Because he wasn’t her Daddy, and they weren’t in a relationship.
That was fine, he told himself. As soon as he was dating again, he was going to find himself a Little who needed him every bit as much as he did her, and maybe he’d find a way to apologize to Stace.
He just needed to wait until she wasn’t triggering his inner Daddy Dom with every word she said and every uncertain blink of her way too green eyes.