9. Kira
9
KIRA
“ W ow, you guys sure did some damage, huh?” Sierra grabs a couple of bags from the open trunk as Dom and Galen wander around the side of the house.
Galen has his arm around Dom’s shoulder and they have their heads bent together, talking too quietly to be overheard.
“Kira?”
My head snaps back to Sierra. “Uh, sorry.” I grab a couple more bags. “Dom seemed determined to buy Rose outfits for her birthday.”
Sierra’s expression freezes. “Really?”
I watch her, curious. “Uh, yeah.”
“Dom mentioned it before.” A new female voice comes from the porch. I struggle to remember the beautiful blonde’s name. Chloe, I think. She stuffs her cell phone into her pocket and jogs down the porch steps. “He said we’re hiding it in your room, so Rose won’t see.”
“ My room?” Wait. When did it become my room when they must know that it’s Dom’s?
I still haven’t confronted him about that, and I need to. Also, I need to find out where he’s sleeping and if he has more clothes stored somewhere else. He’s wearing new clothes each day, and he isn’t coming into my—or his—room to get it.
Chloe nods. “Rose is less likely to go searching for her presents in a bedroom than if we left the bags anywhere downstairs.”
Uh, I guess that makes sense.
I’m a little more relieved that there’s not more to it—and their relationship—than that. And I’m almost positive I was getting jealous at the thought of Dom being with someone not me.
I need to be careful that I don’t get attached to Dom or this pretty town when my stay here is temporary.
I’m leaning into the trunk to grab more bags when Chloe beats me to it, snagging the rest. “I’ve got it.”
Together, we carry them up the stairs and into what has now become my bedroom. The job search did not go as well as I’d hoped it would, mostly because I forgot all about it while shopping.
In fact, I spent more time sipping coffee and eating delicious cake than looking for a temporary job for me to pay for enough gas to get to Alaska.
Do I know what I would do in Alaska? No.
But it’s far away from Palmerston, so that’s where I’ve set my sights.
“How about lunch?” Chloe asks once we’ve put the bags down beside the dresser, creating a small mountain of paper bags.
After my big breakfast and the most incredible lemon cake that definitely deserves to be world-famous, I probably should say no. It’s more than enough food.
“Isn’t it a bit early for lunch?” I look around for a clock to gauge the time, but don’t find one.
Chloe shrugs and heads for the door. “It’s never too early for lunch. Nick is probably throwing something together already. Come on.”
“You guys go on. I have to call the bank.” Sierra makes a face at the foot of the staircase. “I don’t want to do it, but it needs to be done.”
“For your job?” I ask.
Sierra hesitates. “Uh, yeah, it’s kind of a management job.”
She flashes me a bright smile and disappears down the stairs before I can ask her what exactly she manages from a remote farmhouse.
Despite knowing I’ve eaten far too much food, I let Chloe talk me into an early lunch. “Who is Nick?”
I’ve met so many people these last couple of days, I’m still trying to get their names and faces straight in my head. But everyone, without exception, has been warm, welcoming, and kind.
Chloe peers over her shoulder as she leads the way down the hallway. “He’s kind of the official cook around here, mostly since he threatens to murder anyone who blunts his knives.”
I halt.
Fresh from a house where I was the fuck up, and Bryce found at least one thing every day I failed to do well, I’d rather not make any mistakes that lead to threats of violence here.
I’ve had enough of them.
She flashes me a reassuring smile. “I’m joking.” Then her blue eyes narrow. “Or maybe I’m not. He said blunt knives cause more accidents in the kitchen than anything else, so he’s probably saved us all from thousands of cuts over the years.”
I let myself breathe again.
“So he’s a chef?” I follow Chloe into the kitchen where, as she predicted, a tall, lean, dark-haired man in a blue T-shirt, baggy black shorts, and bare feet has an array of ingredients spread on the counter in front of him.
It looks like he’s on a Food Network show where contestants are given a pile of ingredients and have to figure out a fancy three course meal to impress the judges.
Nick lifts his head. “Hey! Not a chef, exactly. Call me an experienced amateur. Do you have any preference for lunch?”
I glance at Chloe as I join her at the dining table. “ Me !”
Nick abandons scrutinizing his ingredients to roll his eyes at me. “Yes, you. You’re a guest here, so you’re the one I have to impress with my cooking.” He nods at Chloe. “The rest of them will eat any old thing I make them.”
Chloe barks out a laugh. “Jeez, make it sound like we’re a bunch of stray dogs sniffing around the trash, why don’t you?”
I can’t help but smile. “Uh, I’m okay with anything, really. But I’m not really hungry. Dom took me to Lacey’s Lemon Bar, and I had cake.”
“ The lemon cake?” His eyes turn dreamy as he rests his hip on a kitchen counter.
“Is there any other kind of cake?” Chloe adds.
He shakes his head. “I keep trying to get the recipe out of her, but she’s like a clam with a pearl at the bottom of an ocean. One day.”
“I was hoping to work there,” I admit, briefly smiling at his comment, and hoping they might know of a way I could. When Chloe and Nick stare at me, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. “Just to earn a bit of money while I’m here, you know?”
All I have to my name is a jaw of BBQ sauce.
Just because I haven’t seen anyone here going to work doesn’t mean they don’t contribute in some meaningful way. All I’ve done so far is steal Dom’s bed and fail to find a job.
Nick darts a rapid glance at my left hand and refocuses on his ingredients. He has a good mix of veggies, pantry staples, and carbs to make almost anything. “Well, I hope it works out. I could throw together some BLTs with fries?”
Relieved no one is asking me what I’m doing here, though they must all be curious, I consider if I have room in my belly for BLTs.
I literally ate an hour ago. Before that, I cleared my plate of eggs, bacon, and pancakes. There is absolutely no need for me to eat so soon after all the eating I’ve already done. But try telling my rumbling belly that.
I could be like a bear in winter, eating more than I need to get through the lean season when I leave.
“BLT’s sound good,” Chloe says. “But you have to make the fries dirty. Now I’ve had dirty, I can’t go back to ordinary.”
“What are dirty fries?” I ask as Nick returns items to the refrigerator and cupboards.
“Fries loaded with cheese sauce, onions and peppers, jalapenos, fresh herbs and tomatoes.” Nick looks me right in the eye. “You will never taste anything better than my dirty fries.”
“He’s not the least bit modest about his cooking, in case you didn’t notice.” Chloe’s voice is dry.
“That sounds good.” The only fry I know is the humble salted and dunked in ketchup. The dirty fry sounds like it might be an experience.
Chloe tilts her head as she studies me. “I told myself not to pry, but about you and Dom. You don’t have to tell me if?—”
“He told you nothing about me and you want to know how we know each other?” I interrupt.
She nods.
I’m equally curious about him, and about her. About all of the people who live here, actually.
Dom hasn’t told me how he knows these people or why he chose to live in a remote farmhouse, or even if he knew them before he moved to Missouri. He must not have, because why would he have been in Missouri when he could have been here with his friends in this beautifully renovated farmhouse with not one nosey neighbor?
“Dom was my big brother’s next-door neighbor for a while in Palmerston,” I explain. “He rented the house next to my brother’s, and then he joined the Marines.”
Chloe and Nick stare at me.
“He just decided to join the Marines?” Nick echoes. “Do people just decide like that?”
I blush. “Uh, I’m doing a terrible job of explaining this. My brother was a Marine. That’s why he joined. They were friends, so we’d see each other occasionally.”
Chloe sits back in her seat, her wrinkled brow smoothing away as Nick breathes, “Oh, that makes more sense. I guess.”
And Dom couldn’t wait to get away from me when he saw me, but that’s another story. One I keep to myself.
“I couldn’t help but notice you said was,” Chloe says softly, her expression sympathetic.
I nod, looking down as I run the tip of a nail along the table's edge. “He died. Dom was there, and I think my brother asked him to keep an eye on me since it was only me and my brother. Dom got an honorable discharge from the Marines because he saved a lot of his platoon, and every year, he would send me a postcard.”
When no one speaks, I lift my head to find Nick has paused chopping potatoes to stare at me. Chloe is equally stunned.
“He was a hero ?” Nick breathes.
“Uh, yeah. Didn’t he say?” I bounce my gaze between them.
“No, he didn’t,” Chloe admits. “But, wait, I don’t understand the postcard thing.”
“Dom sends me one on the anniversary of Aaron’s death. He must have moved around a bit after the Marines because they came from a bunch of different places: Boston, Indiana, New York, and then here. Wylder.”
Nick nods firmly. “Yeah, that sounds about right. He was in all those places. But why?”
I blink at him. “Why what?”
“Why the postcard?”
“Because he wanted me to see pretty sights around the country?” That’s what I always thought. Sometimes I thought it was so he wouldn’t have to think of what to write in a letter. A postcard meant he wouldn’t have to fill a sheet of paper.
Nick gives me a thoughtful look that makes me wonder if maybe I’m wrong on both counts. He lowers his head and resumes chopping potatoes, which he dumps in a large white bowl that he pulls from a kitchen cupboard. “He’s a good guy, you know?”
“Who?” As if I don’t know who he’s talking about.
“Dom. Quiet, but there’s no one else I would want fighting my corner,” Nick explains. “I have a feeling your brother wouldn’t have had to ask Dom to keep an eye on you. It’s something Dom would just do himself. And I think there’s more to the postcards than you think.”
Since I arrived, I’ve started to wonder that myself.
“Me too. If you wanted to stick around beyond his party, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind,” Chloe adds.
“What makes you think I would stay?” I tuck my naked ring finger under the table. It’s a reminder of a very messy situation I have yet to resolve, and I need to. Soon.
“No reason.” Chloe pushes herself to her feet and wanders over to Nick. “But if you did, no one would have a problem with it.”
“Because you’re Dom’s family?” I ask.
Nick’s expression is thoughtful. None of them look like Dom. They all look unrelated to each other. “I guess you could say we were. Just… chosen family.”
I like the sound of that.
“Want a hand washing the chips?” Chloe asks.
“Sure.” Nick passes the bowl to her, and she takes it over to the sink.
I get up, wanting to be useful. “Can I help?”
Nick gives me a long look. “You ever toasted bread?”
“Only every morning since I was a kid,” I say.
It was the first thing I learned how to do to help my parents. Dad, who owned the electrical and DIY store in town, would move the toaster to the dining table and pass me the bread to toast.
Mom was a stay at home wife, but she helped out so much in town that she was just as busy as Dad, if not more so. They died coming home from a date at the local restaurant, missing a patch of black ice and spinning off to hit a tree.
I was thirteen. Aaron was a junior in high school. Both are lives changed so completely that day, I struggle to believe it was my life and not some other lucky girl.
He grins. “Then have it. I’ll get started on the toppings for the dirty fries and do the bacon.”
“We get the boring, unimportant jobs because he doesn’t trust us not to mess it up,” Chloe whispers loudly at me as she turns on the faucet.
I look at Nick for a confirmation or denial.
He doesn’t say a word, all but confirming it.
And that, strangely, has me smiling. I’ve never lived in a big house of friends, or chosen family like this before, but I think I like it.