Chapter Fifteen
Charlie whirled around through T.R.’s arms and stared up at him, chest to chest, her rear bracing the counter, her pretty eyes wide.
Bingo. He’d just called out the elephant in the room. She’d had it propped in her room two weeks ago. She’d had a nightmare then too.
His eyes bounced back and forth between hers as he kept twisting the wrench, her caged into his arms, until he’d loosened the faucet and removed it. She’d been prepared to meet someone else on her doorstep, white-faced and fearful.
Just like when she’d kicked him out.
She’d said her ex had frightened her last night, and though he wasn’t sure how, that also seemed just like the morning two weeks ago.
That baseball bat.
The key wedged in her fingers last night.
The wrench raised when she was startled…
That flinch on stage, when he’d snagged her arm.
The begging that he hold her as if he wanted to keep her … she’d only known a husband’s anger in some way. Not a lover’s worshiping.
Was it Jason? Goddamn. He’d always known the guy was a prick, but to think he might be a wife beater on top of it was a new kind of fury, like a match flickering beside a powder keg, resurrecting memories of his worst mistake. His record.
She swiveled back around again, her rear teasing his lap as she did so. He swallowed hard. Because as bad as the timing was, his poor soldier down south had been deprived, missing her.
So, she wasn’t going to answer his question about the bat. An answer in itself.
“Why you fixin’ this sink instead of calling a plumber?”
“It’s one of my duties as the caretaker here. Part of my rental agreement with the university now that I sold the land to their agribusiness, and since pageant queen didn’t exactly prepare me for trade work, hello, YouTube.”
He noticed her phone out, video paused, as the coffee percolated though the filter, filling the kitchen with the rich aroma.
He took the O-ring from her, twirling it around his finger again, then slipping it over the base. She tightened her grip on the counter edge as his lap jostled more against her rear and arms brushed hers, as he reassembled the faucet.
“They paid well for the land, so thankfully, I’ve paid off a debt and Daisy has a college fund now, since Daisy’s daddy never pays child support.”
So, she had used the sale to pay back the scholarship? It must have been humiliating. Divorcing an abusive man should never have been cause for punishment.
“The rest paid for grad school. The caretaker gig keeps my rent affordable. My salary isn’t stellar, but it at least covers Daisy’s basic needs, a retirement account, and my legal fees against my—”
She cut herself off. But damn. Humiliating or not, she’d found a way to squeeze water from every penny. He digested her words, considering her, as he finished replacing the ring and cinching the faucet back on.
*
And then his heat was gone as he pulled away, leaving Charlie cold as she regained her balance from where she’d been leaning, disappointment plummeting when …
he dropped down to his knees beside her, braced her thigh with his grip as he leaned under the sink, twisting the valve, and heat exploded up her body.
Her breath hitched as her gaze flashed down to him, and he flashed a fiery smolder up at her, blue eyes riveted to hers as his grip on her thigh burned and he took a deep breath as if breathing in her aura.
“Turn the faucet on.” His smolder darkening as his fingers tightened on her thigh. “See if it leaks outta the slit or not.”
She swallowed hard, rubbing her legs together as his grip on her thigh held firm and a satisfied chuckle escaped him, but ran the water, sputtering to life again, nothing leaking.
He pushed to standing. Slid back up her side, and her cheeks were aflame and hands white knuckling the counter.
He smiled, then rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. “All better.”
It wasn’t, but it felt nice having someone here, having him here. She reached up in her cupboard for a coffee cup, pulling down her pink one with rhinestones studded in the shape of a guitar, and words in pretty cursive, saying, Don’t Fret.
She turned back to him with the coffee. “How do you take it?” she asked, pulling the sugar canister closer, taking off the lid.
“Hot and sweet,” he murmured.
Then licked his finger, pressed it into the sugar canister, and brought it up to her mouth, painting a dusting of white crystals across her lips, before bringing it back to his mouth to suck free.
Her pulse pounded as she flicked her tongue out to lick them clean, and his eyes bored into the tiny action, tracking her tongue as she fumbled to scoop a teaspoon of sugar out of the dish and stir it into his mug.
She took out the spoon, and he captured her wrist in the circle of his thumb and finger, bringing the spoon to his mouth, sucking it clean of droplets, taking the mug from her fingers as their touch mingled.
He lifted the mug to his lips and sipped, sloshing it as he wrested something from his pocket and placed the jagged things into her hand. “Hits the spot.”
Her keys? Right, her Rover keys, as their chests rose and fell against one another and he savored the coffee.
Then he held out his palm.
“Oh, yeah, your money. How much was it?” She reached around him and slung her purse off the back of a kitchen chair, when his palm slid onto her waist, stopping her, sending warmth skittering through her as he chuckled.
She stared up into his eyes.
“Naw, baby, my keys. It might be my day off, but I got a vitamin shipment to pick up and a grown-ass cousin to babysit since your bestie seems to have broken his heart.”
“Thaddeus, you have to let me pay you.”
“Don’t have to let you do anything.”
T.R. sipped. Glanced at her mug and smiled wistfully. Touched the rhinestones contemplatively.
The TV volume turned up an inch. “Daisy Maisy.” She invoked her nickname to soften the blow. “You gotta do your school reading before TV. You know the rules. I’ll be in in a second—”
“Maybe T. Rex could help me,” Daisy said from behind them.
Thaddeus’s face blanked at the suggestion, when a little hand reached to his, taking it in hers.
He looked down at Daisy in her jammies and messy hair, holding her Magic Treehouse book. “Oh, I don’t know if I’m, uh, if I’d be that helpful.”
“Sure you would. You got all those books on those old-fashioned disc things—”
“Old-fashioned?” His brows shot up. “What am I, a dinosaur or something?” Thaddeus teased but let Daisy lead him back into the living room to the couch.
“Yes.” Daisy giggled. “You’re T. Rex.”
Charlie grinned to herself. They were kind of old-fashioned.
“Okay.” He chuckled, muffled by the distance. “Whatcha doin’?”
“Chapter reading … teacher likes to torture us…”
She smiled at Thaddeus’s soft rumble of laughter, like the purring of an engine, as she dashed up the back stairs to throw on actual clothes for the day.
“Now let’s see,” his voice filtered upstairs, taking the book and flipping through the pages. “You like these pictures? Look at that, a unicorn? Why don’t you try readin’ this page to me.”
“I can’t.” Daisy moaned, inciting a deep chuckle, when she heard him launch into the story except…
Charlie knew this book frontways and back. He wasn’t reading anything she’d ever heard before.
“And the unicorn reared back its head, whinnying, and…”
He was making up a narrative? Daisy was giggling at his sound effects, his natural acting.
She threw on her clothes. Knotted up her hair. Could hear them talking, eventually could hear Daisy … sounding out words? Willingly?
She inched out her door. “The. Very. La … ast un—”
“Remember to keep each letter covered, girlie,” T.R. cautioned softly.
Charlie eased down the stairs as morning light cast bright shafts across the floor, careful to avoid the creaks.
“Un … i … corn. Unicorn, is now hi—hi-dden well,” Daisy continued.
Silence. Then an audiobook narration began to play: “By those who have put him under a spell.”
The narration stopped as she leaned around the doorframe.
He sat on her couch, his torso curved into the cushion, glasses on his face?
And her daughter, who desperately wanted a daddy who gave a shit was cuddled up to him, his arm around her, holding her Magic Treehouse book between them with her knees tucked up inside her nightgown.
“Now you try,” he said. “Cover each letter … there.”
His hand began to mindlessly brush back Daisy’s messy bedhead poking out in every direction.
God, to see this rough-around-the-edges man so …
gentle … when Charlie noticed, on his knee was his phone, an app open, and his finger hovering over it as Daisy muddled her way through the sentence, actually doing better than she normally did.
So sweet. This womanizing frontman and greased-up mechanic nothing more than a teddy bear, succeeding at something Charlie had wrestled with Daisy to do for years now. Attempt to read.
And when she finished a sentence, he tapped play again, listening to the narrator read the book aloud as Thad followed the sentence on the page for her, followed again by Daisy reading the same passage.
“You did great, girlie,” he said softly as Charlie eased back into the kitchen to start prepping breakfast, and yet, her ears were piqued toward the man with her daughter, and the easy way in which he helped her. “Does that help? Having the audiobook to hear?”
“Mm-hmm. The letters always look so … noisy.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I get it. It’s like that for me, too. Like this one, to me, looks backward—”
“Yeah, but when I cover the others, it flips back around.”
He nodded. And her thoughts stalled, considering him, bacon and produce hanging limply in her arms.
“So I’m not stupid,” Daisy muttered softly.
What? Daisy didn’t realize how bright she was?
“What’d you just say?” Thad growled.
Charlie whirled around at his terse reaction to see Daisy frozen, staring wide-eyed up at him.