Chapter 10
Arms folded across his chest, Brock searched his memory, trying to figure out when exactly he had set up an interview with Adrianne Moss, of all people.
She seemed nice enough, but the woman drove him crazy, and not in a fun way.
She was always smiling, always talking, and always right on his last nerve.
Her voice had always hit him like nails scraping down a chalkboard.
He’d have recognized her from the moment she said hello, even on a phone.
But try though he did, he couldn’t remember setting up an interview with her.
Yes, he wanted someone competent to watch out for his dad when he couldn’t be home, but while Adrianne had never struck him as incompetent, he honestly didn’t want to spend any more time with her than he absolutely had to. He for sure wasn’t going to hire her.
“How fortuitous is this?” she exclaimed for the third time. “I need a job and here you are, offering one.”
“I thought you had a job,” Brock said for the second time.
“It’s winter,” she said with a smile and a shrug. “Buster let half the staff go and lucky me, I made the cut.”
Brock folded his arms tighter, rolling his shoulders, growing more and more certain by the second that she was here because she’d invited herself to be, not because he’d set up an appointment with her by mistake.
“That’s too bad,” he politely said. “Just remember, this is for my dad. I’ve got five other people that have interviewed…”
She raised her hands. “Say no more. We’ve been friends for a long time—”
He wouldn’t have called them friends. More like very distant acquaintances.
“—but you know me, I’m not here to hurt anyone’s feelings. Besides, it’s not my place. I’ll keep my mouth shut and let you make all the decisions you need to.”
How kind of her.
“Thank you,” he said dryly.
She didn’t notice. Getting up off the couch, she meandered closer to him.
He felt the itch to move back, except now she had her finger on his chest and the itch to push her hand away nearly overwhelmed his manners.
He wasn’t interested. After all these years, she should have got the hint by now.
Adrianne was high maintenance on a good day, and a high-horse bitch when she didn’t get her way.
He’d seen how she treated her boyfriends in high school.
How she treated them now wasn’t much better, and in a lot of ways was a whole lot worse.
Yeah, he had more self-respect than to put himself through that, especially when the only thing she triggered in him was irritation.
His hand didn’t even itch when she coyly blinked her eyes up at him and sidled in to mock whisper, “Why don’t we go out somewhere?
You know, do the interview right. You can find out all about me. ”
He wasn’t tempted. “Sorry, but I’ve got other plans tonight.”
She play pouted, her fingers walking themselves right up his chest to the top button of his red and black flannel shirt. “Another time?”
Catching her hand before she could start unbuttoning him, he gave it back to her and in a voice that could not be misinterpreted, said, “I’m sorry, Adrianne. I don’t want to mislead you, but to be honest, I’m going to ask someone out tonight and it’s not you.”
Her play pout faded into a stony stare. Her thoughts, like the slamming of a door, closed against him, but there was no mistaking her displeasure.
“I see,” she said flatly. Slapping on a fake smile for the sake of her misplaced pride, she flipped her hair over her shoulder again, this time in dismissal.
“Well, the offer stands. You know, should whoever not work out.”
He got the door for her, holding it while she frowned and finally just left. Jogging down the steps, she headed for her car and he shut, then locked the door between them. Shaking his head, he called toward the kitchen, “She’s gone, Stace.”
Down the hallway he went, knocking at his father’s closed door.
“She leave?” Pops sourly called out.
“Yes, thank God,” he muttered. “You can come out now.”
The door swung open unexpectedly fast. Pops held it, glaring at him. “I wasn’t talking about that bitch, which if you dare hire her...”
“You know I’m not,” Brock tried to appease, but his dad wasn’t having it.
“I will leave,” he finished his threat.
Propping his shoulder against the jamb, Brock decided against reminding him that he had, literally, nowhere else to go and not enough in his social security to make it comfortably on his own.
Not even if he increased the monthly payout from what little he had left in his retirement.
“She’s gone,” he said again. “And I’m not going to hire her.
Neither one of us needs that headache, and I fully expect she’ll do to you what she does to everyone she feels isn’t worth her time. ”
“Fuck her,” Pops abruptly snapped. “It ain’t her I’m worried about. Where’s Stace?”
Brock blinked at him. “She’s in the kitchen.”
“Oh, you’re a genius, you are,” his father muttered. “I was watchin’ my little Lily-pie for her while she was in the kitchen.” Turning sideways, Pops gestured to the wrinkles on his empty bed. “You see a baby in here?”
“Lily-pie?”
Staring at the empty bed, Brock looked at his father next, but his ears were fixed on the absence of sound coming from the rest of his house. He hadn’t seen her leave, but if she was still here, then she was making absolutely no sound.
“Hey, Stace!” Heading back down the hallway, he paused to peek into the kitchen via the side entrance. It was empty. He immediately headed for the stairs. “Stace!”
There was no sound from the bedroom attached to the top of the landing.
Taking the steps two at a time, he knocked, but heard not a single footstep or a creak of the weathered floorboards.
He threw open the door, staring once around the empty interior—she’d made the bed neatly, removing all trace that she’d ever been there—and immediately charged down into the living room again.
“What, did she go out the back door?” Her overnight box was still on the couch, where he’d dropped it after bringing her back over here just this morning. After she’d promised him that she was staying until her utilities were on and her house was ready for occupation.
She’d lied to him, that was his first thought and when he stepped into his laundry room and saw the back door was unlocked, anger burst through him.
Shrugging out of his coat, he tossed it onto the washing machine and tore out the back door, following her footsteps in the snow to her front door.
He didn’t bother knocking. Grabbing the handle, he just walked in.
The hearth was cold, although she must have attempted a fire, since she’d stacked twice as much kindling as she needed and four big logs in the fire grate.
That didn’t make him angry so much as it filled him with purpose.
And there was Stace, sitting on her sleeping bag bed with Lily in her lap and a clutter of alphabet blocks and an assortment of multicolored plastic shapes spread out around them.
Lily froze midchew on the yellow star she was tasting when he came in.
Stace stopped too, her hand frozen in the act of taking the star out of the baby’s mouth.
Her eyes wide, Stace stammered, “I-I was going to come back before nightfall.”
“What are you doing here now?” he asked, the hot wave of anger that had propelled him with every step between his back door and her front door, already dissipating.
She didn’t look hurt or angry, or uncertain—well okay, she looked plenty uncertain now that he’d burst in on her, but there was more worry in the way she looked at him now and nothing of the emotion he thought he’d find.
“I wanted to give you privacy?” Her voice lilted, turning that statement into a question for his approval. “I was going to come back, I swear!”
Coming in the rest of the way, he shut the open door so as not to let in more of the rapidly chilling air. Approaching her, he hunkered down to bring himself eye-level with her and fixed her with a stern look. “Did you leave a note so I’d know where you went?”
She blinked. “Was I supposed to? I... I’m a grown up, Brock. I’m not a little kid and I don’t feel like I should have to ask.”
Her voice trailed off, but she was right and he knew it. Still, it grated inside him. For one brief moment in time, he hadn’t known where she was and being separated—they weren’t even together—that had hit him like a hammer. A very uncomfortable hammer, the impact of which still left him shaken.
He had no business being this proprietary over someone he wasn’t dating. Never in his life would he have thought he had this big of an overprotective bone, but here it was, keyed up inside him, happy that she was safely back in his care...
What was wrong with him?
She made his Daddy Dom half go crazy, he realized.
Because the way she looked at him right now was not the way a grown-up adult looked at someone when she was telling him she could take care of herself.
It was uncertain, apprehensive. It was the look of a little girl asking her Daddy if she was grownup enough to take care of herself.
And damn if he didn’t want to tell her no.
“Yes, you are,” he confirmed for them both, although it made his throat tight to have to say it.
He almost couldn’t get it out without choking.
“You don’t need to ask permission to come over to your own home, or.
..” He cracked his neck, trying to ease the tension locking up the muscles of his shoulders. “Or to leave mine. I’m sorry. I just—”