Chapter Sixteen #2
She marched to it, plucked it up, and frowned at him.
He threw his hands up. “Whoa, baby, you can’t buy my love. I ain’t for sale.”
“But you can buy a do-over with free labor?” She couldn’t stifle her eye roll this time. “Trouble, just take it—”
“Keep your money.”
“I’m not taking free labor. You can’t buy my love,” she imitated him, and his mouth sprang into a gorgeous smile.
“Don’t matter. I ain’t taking three hundred bucks outta a little girl’s mouth so we’re at an impasse,” he retorted, but that contemplative softness remained.
“You’re stubborn,” she said.
“Nothin’ but trouble, right?” He smirked.
She shoved the folded money into his jeans pocket instead. Ignored the natural bulge right there. So close, she looked up to see that smile hitched up wickedly.
“Well now, is that three hundred bucks in my pocket or am I just happy to see you?” He stepped closer to her again.
Mechanic grease. Body heat. Him.
Her laugh caught her off guard despite her irritation mounting, and she turned back around to finish the tomatoes, as Daisy’s distant chatter to Artex in the backyard filtered in through the screen, when the sound of something softly padding the table made her turn.
His eyes locked on hers, the wad of cash tossed onto the surface. And on his face, that cocky grin—
A bang crashed out back.
“Daisy.” The knife clattered down and she bolted for the back door, but Thaddeus was already shoving through it, blazing into the yard and jogging to a ladder.
Daisy stood upon it!
“What in the world are you doing?” Charlie demanded as she hurried over the grass, as Thaddeus steadied it with one hand and held up a hand to spot her with the other.
Daisy beamed down at them and shrugged. “Building a chicken coop for Pumpkin.”
Bright, pattered leggings, mismatched sundress, Converse, and wisps of blond falling out of her twin buns.
Beneath her lay a plank of old wood she must have dragged from the wood pile behind the tool shed.
Around her waist was Charlie’s leather toolbelt looped around three extra times.
In her hand was a hammer as long as her arm.
“Come down from there,” Charlie said.
“A coop?” Thaddeus said.
“Momma said the university doesn’t have the-the structure or something, to put a chicken in, so I thought I could build one and then I could keep him. Then we can go back to the carnival next weekend and I could win another and call him Pie.”
Thaddeus was grinning, so nonchalant, even if his palm remained up, ready to catch her should she fall backward. The box with the chick in it sat nearby, open to the sunshine.
“Wait, another chick? Daisy Maisy, I told you, it’s not that the university doesn’t have the structure for it, it’s that I’m not allowed to build any new structures without their agreement and they’ve already told me, no livestock.
We have to find a home for Pumpkin. It’s why I haven’t gotten them before—”
“But even you want to keep him,” Daisy implored with those wide baby blues, playing Charlie’s heartstrings, the little imp. “’R else why would you have bought him all that stuff today at the farm market?”
Charlie glanced to the small roost she’d bought along with the chicken wire hutch. The bag of treated feed. The hutch was small enough to keep hidden for the time being, she’d told herself. But chickens would get messy, and bigger, and would smell. They couldn’t hide Pumpkin forever.
“I risk our lease, baby, if they caught wind of me keeping livestock here. I don’t own this house anymore. I have to follow their rules. I’m so sorry.”
“But he’d miss me.” Daisy pouted. “And I wanna have fresh eggs.”
“Pumpkin’s a he?” Amusement twisted Thaddeus’s mouth, and Charlie backhanded his forearm lightly as he chuckled. “Things have changed ’bout the chicken and the egg since my day raising hens, seems like.”
Daisy perched a hand on her hip and raised her eyes to heaven. “I know it’s a she, but sometimes my words mix up when I just think and talk at different fastnesses.”
Charlie smiled at her made-up word.
“And you raised chickens?” she gushed as if Thaddeus had just confessed he was a prince who knew how to raise unicorns.
“Darn straight. One of my family’s side hustles along with horse ranchin’.”
A smile sprang to Charlie’s face because he’d just said horses, and in three, two, one…
“I love horses!” Daisy gushed.
“Horses?” Thaddeus snorted, then poked the unicorn on her dress, and winked. “Unicorns.”
Daisy giggled. “They’re not real, T. Rex. Even if they’re my favorite animal.”
“Says who?” His mouth curled into that tight-lipped smirk, the one that looked like he was planning mischief and popped the dimple in his right cheek.
“Grown-ups. Scientists.”
“Well now. Your momma here’s a scientist. Y’all discovered every animal that’s ever existed yet?”
Charlie laughed, these laughs getting so easy around him, her heart warming and aching all the same. He was so easy with Daisy, and her little girl was eating it up, eyes wide with hunger for his attention.
She shook her head. “Nope.”
T.R. continued. “See, they hide their horns is all, else everyone would want to steal ’em, but my sissy named one of them Unicorn. Her favorite for barrel racing before she retired him to riding lessons.”
He might as well have plucked down a star from heaven and handed it to Daisy on a gilded platter considering the gobsmacked light in her eyes.
“I’d do anything for riding lessons.” She moaned as if a seasoned teenager and not a girl of nine, with a dramatic sigh to boot. “But my momma says they’re too expensive right now.”
“Daisy,” Charlie cautioned.
“All right, lil missy. You wanna keep Pumpkin? What d’you say we build a coop?”
“Yes!” She pumped the air.
Charlie frowned. “Wait, what—”
“We gotta do it right though so the birds don’t hurt themselves.” Birds? Plural? Thaddeus’s face fell to mock seriousness and Daisy nodded as if a solemn vow. “We gotta protect them from coyotes and foxes and stuff. Keep ’em somewhere safe.”
“Do you know how to do it?”
“Been building things since I was a little boy.”
“Can he, Momma? Please?”
She frowned at him. Trouble indeed.
“I’ll get evicted, Thad. I need to keep a radius of uncontaminated soil around the greenhouse per my study protocol, too.”
“Why don’t I—we, wing girl.” He eyed Daisy. “Build it out at the farm?”
“You’ve got a job. When will you possibly have time?” Charlie argued.
He’d just overhauled her Rover and fixed her sink. Now he wanted to build her daughter a chicken coop?