Chapter 7
It took three trips for him to get Stace and Lily moved from the cold of her unheated living room into his.
After dumping his armload of kindling into her wood-bin, he walked into her living room to find her sitting on her makeshift bed on the floor her sleeping bag wrapped around her.
The house was dark, lit only by what dwindling daylight eked in around the partially open window curtains and half pulled shades.
The baby was fast asleep in her crib, and although he saw a lot of empty and half-empty boxes scattered along the walls, what he didn’t see was any hint of the overnight bag he’d sent her in to pack.
Oh, his Daddy side was striving hard for patience, but the Dom in him was growing annoyed.
This was not optional. He wasn’t inviting her over because he wanted to, but because no one, especially not a baby of, what—he guesstimated Lily to be about a year old—should have to survive the kind of cold that he knew would fill this cabin once the sun set.
In fact, only two years ago a squatter froze to death in another cabin on the other side of town, just off the lake that brought fishers, boaters, and nature gurus vacationing here all the rest of the year long.
Two years was not anywhere near long enough to not jump straight to the forefront of Brock’s mind as he watched her shrink into her sleeping bag when she saw him.
He crossed the room, slowly lowering himself onto his haunches so they were almost eye level.
“I’m very sorry I called myself your Daddy,” he said. “That was out of line. We haven’t known each other anywhere near long enough for me to have earned that title, much less to have usurped it like I did. But, you are being very stubborn for some very stupid reasons.”
“I’m not a gold digger,” she shot back, which made an angry kind of sense considering what he knew about her and her move.
“I’m not asking you to marry me, Stace. I’m asking you to come over to my house so neither you nor Lily freeze to death tonight.
You can’t stay in this cabin without heat, or lights, or running water.
And you for sure can’t do it on a night when it’s going to be less than twenty degrees and possibly in the single digits by dawn.
You don’t deserve that,” he said, pointing a stern finger at her.
“For sure, neither does Lily. Come on. More than anything right now, don’t you want to sleep in a soft, comfortable bed, in a nice warm room, maybe even after a hot supper and a bath? ”
“I don’t use people to help me get what I need.”
That comment didn’t make a lot of sense to him, not at first. And once his creeping suspicions began to fill in the missing pieces, he deliberately forced himself to stop thinking about it.
If he didn’t, he doubted he’d be able to control the anger already burning back to life in the pit of his belly.
“You’re not using me. You’re letting me help and I can tell you right now, doing as I ask is going to be the best thing for us both. But if you want to fight me on this, I have no problem treating you like the very naughty little girl you’re behaving as.”
Her face fell, her eyes turning wounded. “I’m not behaving like that.”
“What do you call it?”
“Being self-sufficient?”
“Stace,” he said flatly, “you need to take another look at this situation. This is that moment in romance novels where the heroine gets accused of being too stupid to live.”
Her jaw fell, her eyes even more wounded than before.
“If our situations were reversed, would you leave me in this house to stick out the night, knowing that two years ago a guy actually died in this very situation? Are you saying you’d do nothing to help?”
Her brow furrowed. “I’d bring you coffee and blankets,” she hedged.
“You’d leave me?” he asked again, already knowing she wouldn’t, regardless of her attempts to convince him otherwise.
The uncertainty in her expression showed exactly how uncomfortable she was with the direction he was taking this conversation.
“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Come on. Get up.
Go get your pajamas and a change of clothes.
” He clapped his hands. “Hop to it, little girl.”
Was that a trick of his imagination and the shadows that blanketed them both, or did she really just shiver again?
So what if she did, his conscience whispered. That shiver was by far more likely due to the cold temperature than it was from anything he’d said. Although that was twice now that she seemed to react to his calling her a little girl.
A naughty girl, no less.
Maybe even his naughty girl, if such could be implied.
He was torturing himself.
“Come on,” he said again, unwrapping the sleeping bag from around her, and pulling her up to her feet. “Scoot.”
He only just stopped himself from swatting her, but she still walked away from him, rubbing her bottom with one rueful hand and stealing peeks at him back over her shoulder.
“You’ve got five minutes,” he called, hoping to put a hop in her step, but it was more like seven minutes before she came back to the living room with a small armload of clothes both for her and the baby.
She dropped them into an empty box, followed by a partial bag of diapers.
While he opened all the shades and curtains to make better use of what little daylight remained, she gathered up a small handful of toys, and a few things from the kitchen, popping those into the box too.
“Is that it?” he asked, and she nodded.
“I think so.”
“If not, I’m only next door.” He squatted down to pick up the box, and only just avoided cracking foreheads with her when she tried to grab it ahead of him. “Stace,” he said firmly, then reminded her, “Which of us do you want to carry the box, and which of us ought to carry the baby?”
She abandoned the box to gather Lily up out of her crib.
The baby barely woke. Rubbing her fists across both her eyes and nose, she yawned, then dropped her head to her rattled mother’s shoulder.
She didn’t move again throughout the short walk between her cabin and his.
He knew, because he was walking behind Stace the whole way and his protective stare never left her back.
She climbed the porch steps into the halo of golden light pouring from his house, and for just a moment, the light set all the red highlights in her hair ablaze.
Pops popped his head into the living room window, glancing out at them, which made Stace jump. She almost backed right off the porch, and might even have fallen had Brock not braced his hand to the small of her back, steadying her.
“Whoa,” he said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“No need to apologize.” He prodded and she took another step up, but stopped again when Pops opened the front door.
“‘Bout time you came home,” his father wheezed. “Here I thought your wandering teen years were behind you. Then you go bringing home a baby.”
Climbing the steps behind her, Brock stopped with a huff.
“Look at that sleepy little face,” his father cooed, tickling in at the baby when Stace tentatively paused beside him. Glancing at him uncertainly, she turned her shoulder so Pops could better see Lily’s sleeping face. Smiling, the old man gestured her inside. “Come in, come in. Do you like pie?”
“I, um... sure,” she said, looked from him to Brock.
Closing the door behind him, he put Stace’s box down on the couch and took off his coat to hang it up on the rack behind the door.
“Pops...” he said, hoping his father would heed the warning, but he’d already pulled a chair out for Stace and seated himself at the head of the table. He opened his notebook.
“What’s your favorite kind of pie?” he asked, clicking his pen to write.
“Pecan,” she said, adjusting Lily against her shoulder and removing one of the two baby quilts that she’d kept wrapped around her as they’d exchanged houses for the night. “I guess.”
“How do you feel about apple?” Pops inquired.
Rolling his eyes, Brock headed into the kitchen. “Do you want something to eat, Stace?”
“No, thank you,” she called after him.
Pausing, Brock backed up through the open doorway until he could fix a stern glare on her. “Let me rephrase that. Have you eaten tonight? Anything at all?”
Her shoulders sank. “No,” she admitted.
“I’ll make you something.” Brock headed back into the kitchen, opening up the fridge and bending down to see what he had to work with.
He should have picked up a couple of things for himself while they’d been at the store earlier.
Shaking his head, he gathered a block of cheddar cheese and a partial loaf of bread and shut the fridge door again.
Pausing to look in the pantry closet, he found a bottle of homemade cinnamon applesauce that old Mrs O’Leery had given him a few months back when he’d helped her mend her yard gate.
That woman spent all year canning anything and everything she could get her hands on, and she was well known to using her canned goods as payment any time someone helped her.
Alone now with social security as her only income, she didn’t have a lot of money, but man, could she make applesauce.
“Dad, have you eaten?” he called.
“Not yet,” came the hoarse reply, followed by Stace softly asking, “Do you like apple and caramel together in your pies? I know how to make that.”
“Ho ho!” his father exclaimed. “My favorite combination. What’s your preference on crusts?”
“With apple pie or just crust in general?”
Shaking his head, Brock cut cheese for six grilled cheese sandwiches and buttered one side of half the slices while waiting for the pan to heat up.
Apparently where Stace was considered, his father had met his match when it came to pie-based conversation.
He popped the top on the jar of homemade applesauce, enjoying the cinnamon-y smell.
It wasn’t apple pie, but hopefully it would hit that sweet tooth the two of them were creating with all their bakery talk.