Chapter Fourteen
You better watch your back … watch your back … two-dimensional ditz…
Daisy was crying, her wisps of baby hair sticking to Charlie’s lips as she curled her body around the toddler. The doorbell chimed. Kept chiming. His friends coming over? The cops? They never helped. They took him away for a night, but he was always back the next day.
“You gotta stop drinking, Jason,” she pleaded, waiting for the first strike. She didn’t like to see them coming. “I’ll tell your bandmates I’m out … I just … need to get to class…” She liked him far better sober.
When he drank, she paid for it. When he was sober, he took off for days on end, leaving them in peace.
“You and that scholarship! Thinkin’ you’re better just ’cause you got a shot at Nashville like some consolation prize, tryin’ to trap me…”
The doorbell kept chiming. Since when did this dingy apartment have a doorbell?
“Just try me!” Veins popped wildly in his neck as their fishtank smashed.
Charlie flinched at the shattering. Daisy screamed harder. She curled her arms around little Daisy to cover her ears, her grubby toddler hands still clenching her piece of banana smooshing through her fingers.
The doorbell kept chiming … chiming…
Chiming … Her cell phone. Chimed again. Incoming call…
Charlie bolted awake, her cell phone chiming and glowing on the bedstand.
Pulse racing, hair clinging to her neck, lungs pumping. The neck of her tank was drenched and a clammy chill settled on her skin.
Jason.
She scrambled awake, foraging blindly across her bedstand as she threw the covers off and jumped to her feet, silencing the phone to vibrate.
Snatched up her daddy’s old Louisville Slugger and the cell, tucking it into the pocket of her sleep shorts, opening her door and easing down the hallway and steps as the approach of an engine vibrated in the distance.
Light from the family room glowed, the TV volume on low.
Daisy was up, watching TV softly instead of doing her summer school reading, sitting on the floor with her chick in one hand and a handful of feed in her other.
Artex curiously sniffed it. Light through the curtains was still dim.
Her phone stopped pulsing in her pocket.
She eased down the hallway to avoid the old creaks, as the vehicle rumbled closer. Sweat broke out on her brow. She snuck past Daisy and her cartoons, in her nightgown covered in unicorns, none the wiser to the impending threat.
Pressed to the door, Charlie dared not push up on her toes to look out the panes across the top, and instead, gripped the bat and shrank into the corner, hand on the knob to ease it back.
The engine killed. Her phone started vibrating against her thigh.
A door opened and closed. Boots started plodding across the gravel, onto the front walk, when Artex bounced up from somewhere near Daisy, paws click-clacking to the window, then started to whine with excitement. The porch creaked beneath the thud of weight, and a moment later…
Rap.
Rap.
Rap.
Knuckles tapped the screen door. Her brow creased at the gentle sound. Jason was never gentle. He pounded like a SWAT team. Her phone stopped vibrating. Started vibrating again. When Daisy padded barefoot across the floor.
“T. Rex! Hi!” Her daughter squealed through the window. “Momma! T. Rex is here!”
Charlie whipped out her phone, glancing down at the illuminating screen in the predawn dimness, and…
Trouble rolled across the screen. Trouble.
Thaddeus!
She exhaled hard, a weight lifting off her lungs, and a relieved smile curled her lips. Fingers furled tightly around her bat, loosened, until it slipped free into the corner with a thud, propped there.
Jason had been arrested last night.
That was right.
She’d been dreaming.
He was in jail until at least tomorrow when bail courts opened on Monday.
Daisy rounded into the hallway, spotting her. “Let him in, Momma!”
She unlocked the door and pulled it open, as the phone stopped vibrating.
There he stood, facing outward toward the opposite side of the road and the fallow pastures that lay there. Light was just cracking a shard over the eastern hills. She glanced at her phone and the stack of missed calls. All from him, none from Jason.
7:20?
Early. He’d meant it when he’d said first thing.
“Hey.”
He turned around to face the door, taking off his Stetson and holding it at his belly, last night’s plaid shirt hanging loose on his frame, over his grease-stained tee caught on the lip of his belt buckle. His grin lifted the apples of his cheeks, that divot hinting at boyish mischief.
“Hey, Flower Girl, you … sound out of breath,” he said as he took off his sunglasses. “Are you okay?”
Her smile grew. For the moment, yeah, she was. The problem of Jason could wait at least another day while trouble landed in her lap.
“I’m fine now. I was sleeping when you called. Bad dream.” She pushed open the screen door.
He fell silent for a beat as he slipped inside, chest to chest with her as they both turned sideways to make room. His eyes fell to the bat. Brow furrowed.
He pushed her wisps behind her ear. “You have those often?”
She exhaled. “What do I owe you?”
He shook his head, considering her deflection. “Nothin’.”
“I need to pay you,” she argued.
“Parts weren’t much. Don’t worry about it.” His chest reverberated against hers, sideways in the doorway as they were.
His fingers braced hers, taking over holding the door. Dirty calluses snagged on her skin. Memories of what they’d felt like holding her as they worshiped her body, her breasts, so reverently—
She slipped her hand away and stepped over the threshold, as memories of them crashing inside flashed, lips devouring lips, hands yanking at clothing, his hands palming her rear as he lifted her legs around him as if she weighed no more than a feather, bumbling up the stairs as he gruffed for directions but not willing to disentangle his tongue long enough to look for it—
“T. Rex!” Daisy careened into him.
“Hey, girlie!” His baritone reverberated through the walls.
Charlie held her breath at how easily he wrapped an arm around Daisy’s shoulder as she hugged his hips, as if the most natural thing in the world.
“Did you fix Momma’s SUV? Wanna see Pumpkin?”
“Pumpkin?” He chuckled, sliding his shades onto his collar, his neck torquing as he stretched his chin out of the way.
Pumpkin? Oh no. Daisy had already named the chick. It would be that much harder to give it up.
Daisy took his hand and his hat and pulled him forward. He lumbered inside and into Charlie’s world again, smelling mostly like a mechanic’s shop and exertion this time instead of his spicy soap.
“I won him last night.” Daisy had found a loophole in the no livestock rule Charlie had been forced to implement, was what she meant. “The university rules say we can’t keep him.” She pouted. “But for now, he’s okay inside with us…”
Charlie hurried to the kitchen and grabbed the coffeepot, flipping on the sink to fill it. Hating that they couldn’t keep it and that it would break Daisy’s heart.
Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the text.
An automated message from the school district. “Don’t forget. Get dolled up for the annual Daddy-Daughter Dance this Wednesday night. Formal invites for our young ladies arriving by tomorrow.”
Ugh. As if she needed the reminder.
“Now ain’t that a fine-looking bird,” he was saying in the distance, as Artex’s collar jingled, as water leaked out of the faucet handle while the pot filled, bubbling down the base. “Hey, big fella.”
Ugh. The O-ring seal was wearing out again. She turned the water off.
“Coffee?” she called, sopping up the water with the hand towel, pouring the liquid in the pot.
“Sure.”
She scooped grounds into the filter and pressed brew. “And, Daisy, put Pumpkin down and wash up, then get your book out.”
Daisy groaned. Charlie withdrew her tool bag from the pantry floor, opening it on the counter, and laid out the package of little rubber rings, plucked out her university-issued plumber’s wrench, and dropped to her hands and knees, digging into the back of the cupboard to twist closed the water valve—
“Barefoot in the kitchen.”
She whirled around with wrench raised, knocking her head on the cupboard frame and landing on her rear to see him leaned on the doorframe like the tall drink of water he was, a shit kicker slung across his other ankle and arms folded so that his muscles bulged.
“Ow.”
He threw his palms up and shoved off the doorframe, eyeing her faucet, eyeing the wrench. “Easy, Charlie. Just a joke. You’re hurt.”
She exhaled, shaking her head, as he squatted, sifting his fingers into her hair and inspecting the place where she’d bumped it.
“I’m fine,” she murmured, embarrassed, and yet … relishing his tender touch. “You surprised me.”
He chuckled a rich, languid sound. “Not as surprised as me seein’ you on your hands and knees in these sleep shorts, baby.”
Her face burned as she pulled away—
“Sit still,” he murmured, splaying his knees on either side of her, caging her in, finishing his inspection, letting him dote on her about a tiny bump when she’d survived so much worse.
He was … right here, filling her space. “Atta girl.”
Atta girl? “What am I, a puppy?” she whispered.
He chuckled and stood. “Beg for me, real nice, and I’ll give you a treat. Want some ice, Charlie?”
Charlie. Her name, instead of his nickname for her, sounded intimate. Personal.
“I’m fine.” She took his hand as he hoisted her up, sliding up his front, helping her.
Her skin tingled. Her blood rushed in her ears, at his nearness, and she flipped on the water and drained the line into the sink as he reached around her and plucked up an O-ring, spinning it like a six-shooter around his finger.
“Need help?” he said beside her ear, as hands slipped over hers from behind, arms sliding alongside hers.
She laughed. “You just fixed my radiator hose. I’m not about to ask you to fix my sink.”
“Who’s waitin’ to be asked? Ain’t me.” He chuckled, so close, his chest reverberated against her back.
She glanced back at him, hovering behind her, and his baby blues twinkled as his gaze roved over her messy hair.
“I got it,” she breathed. “Just a leaky ring and old faucet. And, Daisy?”
The girl groaned from the other room. “What, Momma?”
“TV off. Get book. I’ll come read with you in a minute.”
Charlie cranked the wrench, T.R.’s arms around her, as he nudged her fingers away to take over. She fumbled for control. He batted her hands this time, his chest jolting against her back, until he’d mastered control of the wrench, and just when she was about to protest again…
Lips pressed to the bump on her head. Kissing it better.
She closed her eyes, so foreign to feel this kind of care.
Muscled arms tensed and brushed against hers with each torque of the wrench, shock waves rushing through her with each press of his body, each inhale of his scent, and soft huff of his breath beside her ear as he craned around her to see.
Was he pressing into her a little more? Was she relaxing back on his chest?
“So, why the Louisville Slugger?”