Chapter 3 #2
“Do you smell that?” I immediately ask Megan.
Megan’s brows bunch for a beat, but then she sniffs the air. “Hmm, yes. It’s a little musty in here. Slightly sour.” She turns to Forest. “You don’t smell that?”
Forest’s jaw drops open with a flush to his cheeks, and he takes a subtle sniff of his armpits.
“I’ll pick up one of those plug-in air fresheners on my lunch break.” Megan smiles at Forest, then at me when she asks, “You’re still available to babysit on the fourteenth, right?”
“Sure am. See you at six,” I say brightly, waving when she leaves.
“You said you only babysit for family,” Forest says with an accusatory tone, pointing his finger at me.
“Megan is my cousin.” A second one, twice removed, or something like that, but with the same platinum blonde hair that should have clued him in. The gene runs strong in my family. “You couldn’t tell?”
Forest drops down in his chair with his elbows on his desk, and he shoves the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Of course she is.” His face has fallen when he looks up, appearing as bedraggled as he did last night. “I don’t actually stink, do I?”
Having some mercy, I rise, cross the short distance to his side of the office, and sniff the air around him.
“No, you don’t.” I don’t tell him that he, in fact, smells amazing—like sea spray and sage.
What cologne does he wear? “Must be something else that stinks, though I don’t know what it could be. ”
He leans back in his chair, swiveling to face me, straightening his long legs out in front of him with his ankles crossed. Boring socks peek above his expensive brogues. “So you’re just messing with me?”
I blink fast and put a hand to my chest, as if wounded that he would think so little of me. “No, sir. I would never do something so unprofessional.”
Forest lets loose a harsh exhale, his eyes drifting to my chest, his jaw slack.
I was right. This is fun.
“Get back to work, Ms. Fischer,” Forest says quietly.
“Yes, sir.” I don’t even have to look back to know he’s watching me as I cross the office. I’m aware of how good I look, and I’m not afraid to admit it.
By the end of the workday, the office is nauseatingly scented by artificial cinnamon and brown sugar. I’m almost out the door, needing fresh air, when Forest stands and clears his throat. He rolls the cuffs of his sleeves up his surprisingly corded forearms.
“For the record, I am a damn good father,” he says, his brows creasing briefly. “Or at least, I try to be, and I raised Josephine on my own, since her mother gave up her rights.”
My stomach drops when I think of the way Josephine ducked her head when I asked if her mommy was at the grocery store. She grew up without hers, and my heart aches for the sweet girl. It pains me to imagine growing up without my mom.
“Josephine’s little brothers—they aren’t mine. They’re my ex’s. I took the boys in when she and her husband died.”
“Oh…That’s…kind of you.” A wildly inadequate understatement. “How did they pass?”
“Helicopter crash,” he says quietly. “They were celebrating their anniversary with an aerial tour of the Ozarks.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I tell him genuinely. Those poor kids.
Forest clicks his tongue and shoves his large hands in his pockets. “Do you have kids?”
Shaking off the heavy atmosphere, I snort. “Definitely not, and I don’t plan to for at least another five to ten years.”
“That’s what I thought,” he says with his slow approach.
“So, until you become a single parent and have to take custody of two more kids you didn’t even know existed last month, all in the middle of uprooting your whole life to move to a new city where you don’t know a single person, you can take your holier-than-thou attitude about my parenting and shove it where the sun don’t shine. ”
He said it softly enough, but it knocks the air out of me all the same—rightly so, after the way I tore into him last night.
Shayla and James were both single parents when they met.
I saw how hard it was on them. I have a million questions for Forest after that bombshell revelation, but Dad knocks once on the door, pushing it open wider.
Forest and I snap our heads to the side, jumping back as if Dad caught us tearing each other’s clothes off.
Dad shrugs his jacket on over his waistcoat. “How was your first day? I trust everything went smoothly, yes?” he asks Forest, the skin around his eyes tightening.
I face Forest, holding my breath. Yes, I might go a little too far sometimes with my teasing, but I am serious about my job, and I don’t want to give Dad any reason to be disappointed in me or my performance.
I wince at the thought of him having run into Megan and what she might have told him.
Did Forest really lodge a complaint against me?
“It was great,” Forest lies, avoiding looking at me. “Ms. Fischer was just telling me how happy she would be to babysit the kids for a few hours this Friday while I get some more things unpacked. A little ‘welcome to the firm’ gift.”
Dad misses Forest’s smirk because he’s too busy clocking my scowl instead. “She did?”
“Mmhmm. Really thoughtful gesture,” Forest says, lifting his jacket from the coat hanger, pressing his lips together to suppress his glee when Dad returns his attention. “You have a real angel on your hands, sir.”
My mouth falls open.
“An angel, huh? Strange,” Dad says, narrowing his eyes further.
It’s only because I still feel a wee bit sorry for the way I’ve repeatedly insulted Forest that I don’t contradict him. Oh, but I do give him the kind of look that says he’s going to pay for that. I just have to figure out how.
At home, having moved back in with my parents after graduation, I stop just short of slamming my bedroom door, irritation building.
I kick off my heels and flop on my recently upgraded queen-sized bed.
No more sharing a room with my sisters, each of us sleeping on the tiniest of single beds after Brady was born.
With the house only having three bedrooms, he got a room to himself since none of us wanted to share with a newborn, waking up to him screaming his head off at all hours.
Been there, done that, and we didn’t want to do it again after Shayla had her daughter, Lainey, when she was seventeen.
I pull my phone from my purse to call my best friend. She owes me a good, long ranting session after all the times I listened to her obsess about one boy—well, a man—for so many years.
“What’s up?” Bailey asks when she answers the phone.
“My new boss is a giant jackass who, by the way, just moved in across the street, which is just my rotten luck,” I gripe.
“Oh no. What did he do?”
“He told Dad that I offered to babysit for him!”
“Oh wow, the nerve of that guy,” she says.
“Right?! He’s the worst.”
“Yeah, no, he sounds just awful,” Bailey says sarcastically. “Is he hot?”
I pull my phone away from my ear and give it a withering look that Bailey, unfortunately, can’t see. “No!”
“The fuck?” her newlywed husband, Isaiah, asks in the background. “Who are you talking to?”
“Autumn. I think she needs my scheming expertise to get back at her hot boss,” Bailey tells him.
“No, I don’t! He’s not hot,” I shout into the phone, but I doubt she’s even listening at this point—what with her husband always stealing her attention.
“God help whoever it is you two are targeting,” Isaiah grumbles, dropping his already deep baritone voice.
Bailey laughs, her voice turning sultry, which I absolutely do not need or want to hear. “I thought you secretly loved my scheming. It’s how I landed you.”
Lord, did she ever. She has been in love with Isaiah since she was thirteen years old.
Having just turned twenty-two and only recently gotten married, that’s a long time to pine for someone who didn’t want her—actively avoided her and even moved away at one point!
—before he finally gave in. I’m so happy for them, even if they are obnoxious in all their ooey, gooey PDA.
Isaiah growls, Bailey shrieks, and then all I hear is a bunch of sloppy, wet noises as they probably start making out. It’s exactly how she ended up pregnant with triplets, which I so do not want to think about.
“Ugh, call me back when you’re done jumping each other’s bones.” I end the call and toss my phone aside, knowing well enough not to expect a call back for, at minimum, two hours.
“I thought, surely, your Dad was joking when he said you offered to babysit for Forest,” Mom says while I help make dinner that night.
Dad cocks his ear as he takes the roasted onion, squash, and zucchini out of the oven.
If he weren’t here, I’d tell Mom the truth.
But since I’m granted the perfect opportunity to tease Dad, I say, “Nope. I really want to make up for accusing him of being a stalker, you know? So I was thinking of baking something to take with me to welcome him to the neighborhood. Cookies or cupcakes or—oooh, maybe a pie? Cherry would be good.”
Mom and Dad freeze, cutting their eyes to each other, having a silent conversation before they look away. “Maybe cookies would be a better idea,” Mom says. “Everyone loves cookies.”
“I don’t know. You have the best cherry pie recipe, and everyone knows it’s Dad’s favorite.
” I suck back a cackle, though my stomach is rolling at how gross it is to discuss this.
Mom and Dad are real freaks when it comes to dessert.
“And what better way to apologize to my boss than by bringing him a made-from-scratch cherry pie with homemade whipped cream?”
“Do not give her your recipe,” Dad says to Mom.
“Why not?” I ask, taking the ceramic dish of pork chops to the kitchen table where Brady is setting out plates and utensils.
On the cusp of turning ten years old, the top of Brady’s shaggy hair already reaches my ear.
He’s going to be tall, like Dad, and I’ll end up being the shortest out of everyone in our family.
“He has three kids,” Dad says simply.
“So?” I take a seat and set a cloth napkin over my lap, then suddenly grip the table and widen my eyes. “Wait, you don’t think I’m trying to S-E-D-U-C-E—”
“I know how to spell,” Brady says, then sticks his tongue out at me.
“—my boss, like Mom did you with her pie scheme, do you?” I finish saying as if I hadn’t been interrupted.
Bailey definitely took after our Mom, a natural-born schemer.
“I would never, ever, do something like that. It’s so unprofessional.
And besides, I already told you, I’m spending the next few years sowing my wild oats before I even think about settling down.
” I mentally pat myself on the back for maintaining my innocent demeanor.
Mom tuts and brings her fingertips to her lips, likely concerned about Dad’s rising blood pressure as his face reddens.
“My pills,” Dad says to Mom, bringing his hand to his heart. “I forgot to take my pills.”
Mom hustles out of the kitchen to get Dad’s blood pressure medication.
“Sorry, Daddy,” I say with a twinge in my stomach. I took it too far again.
He dry swallows a pill when Mom comes back, and drops heavily onto a chair while she rubs his broad back. “One of these days, one of you girls really will give me a heart attack. We’ll see how sorry you are then.”
“Fine. I won’t bake him a cherry pie,” I say, helping myself to an extra heaping of apple sauce for my pork chop.
“Thank you,” Dad says, blowing out a long, relieved sigh.
“I’ll bake him a blueberry one instead.”
Mom squeezes Dad’s hand. Despite her worry, her eyes water with laughter.