19. Joe
Icarried Ada into one of the hallway bathrooms and put her down on the bathroom counter before ripping my ruined shirt over my head. I fought the urge to throw up myself and grabbed a few towels. One of them I shoved over Ada’s face. The idea of smothering her barely even crossed my mind. “Do not look at your fucking leg again.”
She tipped her head back and held the towel over her face like it was a lifeline. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to throw up on you. I can’t handle bl0-”
I growled as she gagged at even saying the word. “Don’t you dare, Ada. Don’t even say the word. Just sit there and think about what job you’re going to get after I fire your ass.”
My threat didn’t seem to faze her. “This is your fault, a little bit, Joe.”
I froze as my fingers brushed over the first-aid kit tucked away under the sink. “Are you serious?”
“You said that stuff about the cameras and I panicked. I wouldn’t have dropped the glass if you hadn’t said that.” She sighed. “So, yeah, it’s your fault.”
I slammed open the kit and grabbed a handful of alcohol wipes. Ripping several of them open, I dragged them up her leg and over her cut, only softening my pressure when I got to the cut. She hissed and jerked away from me, but it only resulted in her smacking me across the face with the hand not holding the towel over her face. I growled and gripped her wrist, but she’d already gone still.
“I just hit you, didn’t I?”
“Yep.”
The towel didn’t cover her mouth and I watched as her lips turned down and stuck out in a pout. “Oopsie.”
I took a deep breath and counted to ten. “Do me a favor, Ada.”
“Yeah?”
“Sit still and don’t talk. I’m going to put a bandaid on this for you and then I’m going to get as far away from you as I can. Got it?” I waited a second for her answer and saw that pout turn up at the edges. She was laughing at me. “What?”
“You said don’t talk and then you asked me a question. Make up your mind.” She let out a little laugh and then smiled at me with the towel still over her face. “Sorry. I got it.”
I didn’t understand how she was the same woman who’d just vomited multiple times. Her smile was pure happiness. It made no sense. I’d been married to Kendall’s mother for almost fifteen years before we divorced and I’d never seen her smile like Ada was after the shitshow in the kitchen.
I didn’t like things I couldn’t make sense of. For the thousandth time since she’d shown up, I told myself that we needed to fire her. She was a loose cannon. She had messed with my closet and she’d already rubbed off on Kendall. I’d been shocked to see my daughter sneaking around the kitchen while David stepped away for not even thirty seconds. She was messing with us, too. Ada was a bad influence and a nuisance.
Kneeling in front of her, I used a cotton swab to cover her cut with antibiotic cream before covering it with a Band-Aid. The fact that I’d had to make myself reach for the plain Band-Aids instead of the colorful ones Sara stocked for the kids annoyed me even more than Ada did. She wasn’t special. She didn’t need special Band-Aids.
“Go easy on Kendall.” Ada’s voice was oddly quiet. “If you do see anything on your creepy potty cams, I mean.”
I looked up at her and saw that she’d dropped the towel and was staring down at me. As close as we were, I could see that her eyes were more gray than blue and a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks. I was still holding her calf, my thumbs pressing the edges of the Band-Aid down.
Mistaking my silence for refusal, Ada frowned at me. “I mean it. Kendall was just playing around. If you punish her, I’ll quit.”
I barked out an unexpected laugh and then shook my head. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.”
Smile back in place, Ada gently eased her leg from my hands and stood up. I had no choice but to rise with her and when I did, I realized I was too close to her. I could smell the sweetness of her hair or body, whatever it was that was scented of honey and vanilla. I felt a wave of arousal as I glanced down at her full mouth.
Ada looked like a deer in headlights for a moment as her eyes flicked to my mouth and back up to my eyes. Then, she pasted one of her go to smiles on her face and reached up to tap the end of my nose with the tip of her finger. “Boop.”
I brushed her hand away and scowled. “What is wrong with you?”
She slipped out of the bathroom and was gone, like a strangely neurotic ghost that made my dick hard and my brain ache.
Collin showed up in the bathroom doorway a few moments later, a deeply unhappy look on his face. It was such a juxtaposition of Ada’s smile that it took me a beat to readjust. She was fucking with our normal and I didn’t like it.
“Jud has decided to return to the land of the living.” He looked around and crossed his arms over his chest. “Looks like the nanny might have a crush on our little brother. She got weird when he showed up.”
Ignoring information that I didn’t need rattling around in my brain, I shrugged. “She’s always weird.”
“When Jud fucks her and leaves her heartbroken, what are we going to do for a nanny?” He sounded harsher than normal and it was clear something was eating away at him. He shook his head and threw up his hands. “What am I saying? We’ll get a nanny who isn’t insane. Problem solved.”
I was in the shower, washing Ada’s vomit off my skin not even ten minutes later, when Collin’s weirdness finally broke through the haze Ada had me in. It wasn’t like Collin to be so harsh about Jud. Yeah, Jud had issues, but we all did. We usually just ignored each other’s shit.
Unable to stop thinking about it, I finally sat down at my computer once I was back in my office and pulled up the security footage. I figured something would show me what Collin’s deal was and I wasn’t wrong. Ten minutes into flying through the footage I nearly broke my finger slamming the button to stop the recording. As soon as I clarified I was seeing what I thought I was seeing I deleted the file and leaned back in my chair as unwanted feelings assaulted my brain.
Annoyance and frustration at Collin for touching Ada and then being so careless as to leave the fucking evidence where someone could find it and use it to hurt our family. Anger at him for breaking our routine for Ada. I’d also seen him going to the lake with her. There was also jealousy. The few seconds I’d seen of Ada’s bare body had sent guilt smothered desire raging through my veins. I shouldn’t have seen it, but I did and I didn’t think there was any forgetting it.
I thought about finding Collin and asking him if he wanted to spar in the gym but I knew it was a bad idea. I stared at my computer screen that had gone dark and stood up. Bad idea or not, I was doing it.