Chapter 5 #2
“I’ll be back over in a couple of hours to help you cut wood,” he promised before heading for home.
She closed the door as soon as she saw him get into his car, but already the thought of him coming back was enough to make her heart pound and her tummy twist. How in the hell had he known?
Nobody but Jim had ever sort of/kind of known.
Even so, he hadn’t ever spanked her, or threatened to spank her.
What he had done was buy her coloring books for when she got anxious.
He’d bought her stuffed toys too, because she liked their softness.
He’d held her hand whenever they went into stores, because she often forgot what they’d come shopping for and would instead wander in search of glitter and holiday decorations, especially when blinking lights were involved.
She’d never once called Jim “Daddy.” She’d only ever called him Jim.
He used to be her rock when she’d had a rough day, always quick with a hug or a kiss; and sometimes when he wasn’t happy with her, he would make her sit in a certain chair and think about whatever it was that she had done to make him frown instead of smile.
Still, she hadn’t called him Daddy. She hadn’t realized she wanted to. Not until the word had come out of the mouth of her brand-new sexy as hell, ginormous lumberjack of a neighbor.
She watched him drive next door, then ducked out of the window so he wouldn’t see her as he climbed his own porch and finally went inside.
She shivered in the coldness of her house and told herself it was silly for a grown woman to want to call anyone other than her father, “Daddy.”
Just... just absolutely silly. Instead of standing here, dwelling on the silliness of it all, she needed to start unpacking and settling in.
As soon as the power was up and running, they’d have all the warmth they needed.
But until then, she needed to take care of her and Lily’s needs before “Daddy” Brock came marching back over to take care of them for her.
***
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Brock asked his father, looking over the page of notes Pops had made during each of his interviews. “What are you doing?”
“I’m checking to make sure they were a good fit for me and this job,” Pops said stubbornly.
Spreading his napkin out on his lap, he picked up the cheese sandwich he’d made for himself and took a bite.
“See? There are a few things I can still do on my own. And finding out that none of the ladies you’re trying to hire are qualified—”
“They’re plenty qualified, dad,” Brock said, frowning. “Miss Brown—”
“Doesn’t like pie,” Pops told him. “Can you imagine? I love pie. Anyone you hire has to make a mean apple pie if she’s going to stay employed here.”
“Pops, dammit.” Brock caught himself. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he flipped the page. “Okay, so what about Miss Willis? She’s doesn’t have formal training as a care-provider, but she took care of both her father and her husband before he passed.”
“You realize she is vegan, right?”
“What does that—”
“How,” Pops said sarcastically, “am I supposed to ask a vegan to make me a hamburger? Cause I can promise you right now, I am not eating tofu, regardless of how close to real meat it looks. Or tastes. Yeah, I had that conversation with her too. She says it’s delicious.
Tofu is delicious. You’re seriously going to leave me in the so-called ‘capable’ hands of someone crazy enough to think tofu is edible? ”
“Pops.” Stifling a groan, Brock sat down next to him and slapped the notepad on the table between them. “You said you were in agreement.”
“I am!” the old man hoarsely insisted.
“You said you weren’t going to fight me on this.”
“I’m not,” he insisted again. “I’m making sure you’re not the only one who gets what he wants out of this situation, that’s all.”
“We’re not hiring a maid or a housekeeper.”
“Light housekeeping was part of the damn advertisement you put out,” Pops reminded him.
“I need someone who can help lift you off the damn floor without taking out her damn back.”
“When’s the last time I fell?” his father demanded. “Tell me. When’s the last time?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Aw,” he scoffed, slapping the air as if he could knock Brock’s reasoning aside. “I fell into my dresser. It’s not like I went all the way to the floor.”
“One fall and you could break your hip,” he argued anyway.
“I ain’t broke my hip yet,” Pops sniffed.
“It only takes one time, and if I’m gone all damn day tending cattle or taking care of...”
“Our cute young neighbor lady with the baby?” Pops slid him a side-long, knowing look.
Brock stopped, drawing another deep breath for patience. “I took her to town because she had no business walking all that way with a baby in a stroller. Pops, for crying out loud. Did you seriously think I’d make her walk all that way when I’ve got a car?”
Pops held up both hands in surrender. “That’s not what I said.”
“I don’t get it,” Brock said, shaking his head.
“It doesn’t look like Maggie did anything to help set up the rental for her niece.
Nothing’s on—the power, gas, or water. There’s barely wood enough to start a fire, much less to keep one going.
How’s a single mother with a kid that young supposed to chop wood?
That little girl doesn’t have a clue how to wield an axe, I’ll bet you a hundred bucks, she doesn’t. ”
His dad took another bite and then set down his sandwich. “I’ll go cut some for her.”
“The hell you will,” Brock said, giving him a hard look. “Don’t you dare. And I mean that, dad.”
“Or what?” his father asked dryly.
“Try me,” Brock replied. It was an empty threat. Brock had no idea how to get Pops to listen once he got it in his head to do something. “You chop your leg off and I’m leaving you to bleed out in the snow.”
That was an empty threat too, and they both knew it.
Pops smirked. “Someone’s got to do the neighborly thing by her and her wood bin.”
“Yeah,” Brock agreed. “That someone is me.”
Not because he enjoyed the workout that cutting wood would provide him, but because every instinct inside him was pushing him to do it.
To make sure the job was done right. To double check that she had everything she needed.
To see for himself before he went to bed tonight that she was warm, fed, and as safe as she could be, sleeping in that stupid sleeping bag on the floor because she’d been robbed of every creature comfort her in-laws could get away with.
That pissed him off, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it except to do his level best to make sure she was taken care of in all the other ways that he could. The ways that mattered.
The crunch of tires easing slowly up into his driveway signaled the arrival of the next interviewee.
A man this time, young, in his early twenties by the look of him as he stepped out of his car and shut the door.
He paused long enough to get his backpack out of the backseat and then made his way to the house.
He waved when he saw them peeking out at him.
“That’s not a girl,” Pops noticed right away. “I don’t want a guy. If I have to be picked up off the floor by someone, I want tits I can lean against.”
“You behave yourself,” Brock told him sternly, getting up to get the door. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m old,” Pops replied, but then stayed blessedly quiet, content to do nothing but listen as Brock interviewed the young man.
He had a few years’ experience working in a home for the elderly.
He had his own vehicle, although it was a clunker by the looks of the peeling paint on the hood and the duct tape around the front right headlight and bumper.
Still, he looked plenty strong enough to make sure Pops wasn’t left lying on the floor if he lost his balance, and when Brock asked if he knew how to lift a grown man up from a downed position, the young man answered correctly and even acted out how to do it without hurting himself.
Pops shook his hand and waved goodbye as Brock walked him to the porch after the interview was done. He had good feelings about the guy, but when he turned to his dad and asked, “What do you think?”
He wasn’t entirely disappointed when Pops answered, “You already know what I think. He isn’t suitable. I told you that before he ever came inside.”
“You really don’t want me to hire him because he’s a guy?”
“I don’t care if he’s a guy or not. I care that he doesn’t have tits!”
For God’s sake.
“You’re impossible,” Brock told his father.
Coming back to the table, he plopped down to look out the window.
Instead of watching the guy drive away, his attention immediately drifted next door.
Of all the days to get a new neighbor, he thought, but there was no point trying to blame her for his distraction.
This was entirely his own fault, brought on by one careless slip of his tongue and cemented forever in his gut by the wide-eyed, unprotesting look she had given him directly afterward.
That look in the depths of her startled gaze had told him she wasn’t protesting because she didn’t object.
She didn't protest because there was a Little hiding none too successfully inside of her.
That Little had responded to his tone, his words, and most of all, the authority he had no business wielding over her.
He’d have to watch that in future.