Chapter 12 Evan
Waking up to being mooned by a rabbit in my own bed wasn’t on the bingo cards for this year, but here we are. I’m face-to-cheek with rabbit butt.
Cheese spins on my chest, facing me and pressing her wet nose to my cheek, which makes me huff and shuffle up against my headboard until I’m sitting.
“How did you get in here?" I pull the covers back and slip out of the bed, right when she decides to christen it with yet another few brown pellets, which she smushes into the sheets using her tiny feet. Scraping my hand down my face, I murmur, “You have got to be kidding me.”
My son is quick to respond to me calling his name, and rushes into my bedroom with blazing cheeks and wide eyes. I know that face. It’s the face of a kid who’s just been caught doing something they shouldn’t.
“Leo,” I say in warning, and he immediately scoops Cheese up and places her on the ground. Peeking out my window, I can see movement inside the cabin. Frantic movement. Which means Flo has only just woken up, and probably realised Cheese isn’t where she was when she went to bed.
“She didn’t mean to.”
“I’m not mad about the poop, kid. I’m mad about why Cheese is in the house and Flo isn’t. How did she get in here?”
That’s when Flo shoves the cabin door open with her hip and pads in the direction of the main house barefoot, still dressed in her silky pyjamas that leave little to the imagination.
The slinky cropped top holds her tits up perfectly, and the frilly shorts are low enough to show off her pierced navel, the delicate emerald bouncing off her tanned skin as she walks.
“Where’s the rabbit?!” comes her concerned voice once she’s inside the house, and I take one look at Leo, using my best stern daddy look to tell him that I know what he did.
“Sneaking into the cabin before anyone is up isn’t okay, Leo.
” I crouch down to his level just as Flo appears in the doorway of my bedroom, her body relaxing once her eyes land on the fluffy snowball rolling around on my floor.
“I know you were excited and wanted to play with her, but you can’t leave the house without me knowing about it. What if something happened to you?”
Leo’s head drops, and he mumbles, “Yes, Daddy.”
“You scared me half to death, Leo,” Flo chimes in, voice completely serious, something I’ve never heard her use.
“Please don’t do that again. If you want to come and see Cheese when she’s in the cabin, you need to make sure you ask your dad first, okay?
I thought we’d lost her to a coyote or something.
Adults need to know where you are at all times, okay? ”
“Sorry,” Leo mutters, walking into my open arms and resting his head on my shoulder, which I kiss.
“You’re all good, my little lion. We just want to keep you safe,” I tell him, squeezing him tightly. God, if something were to happen to him..
“You must secretly be a ninja, though, because I was sound asleep. Didn’t hear you at all.”
That makes Leo giggle into the crook of my neck, and I’m glad Flo’s lightening the mood after telling Leo what he needed to hear, because my mind was taking a depressing detour.
“But next time, let’s test your ninja skills out when Daddy knows about it?”
“Okay.”
My nanny smiles at me, silently checking that her adding to the discipline was okay, and I give her a grateful nod to let her know I appreciate it, but then my eyes travel without my permission. Starting at her painted toes, up her legs, to her waist, breasts, and then…
“Flo… what happened to your hair?”
Her eyes immediately blow out. “What do you mean?” She rushes past us to peek at herself in my full-length mirror at the bottom of my bed, and her jaw slacks.
A storm of emotions sweeps across her face.
Shock. Dislike. And then sharp, comical anger as her eyes land on Cheese, who’s now sitting on the foot of my bed, munching on my knitted throw.
“You,” she mumbles huskily, waggling a finger while a hint of a smile curls her lips. “Hair is not food.”
I stand and move a little closer, inspecting the short parts framing her face, as well as the jagged edges at the bottom that have been bitten by Cheese, making it look uneven and messy.
“Hmm, I think that’s called karma,” I say, which gains me a slap on the chest from Flo, who’s trying not to cackle.
“Yep, and you’re going to help me fix it because going to a hair salon will cost a fortune. I’ll get my scissors.”
“Me? Why am I getting roped into this?”
One stern look from Flo has me shutting my mouth.
Ten minutes later, and Flo’s sitting on a chair with three cushions underneath her, so I’m eye level with the back of her head, with an old towel wrapped around her neck and a pair of scissors in my hand like I’m running some secret pop-up hair salon from the comfort of my own home.
The only issue, minus the fact that I don’t have insurance, is that I know absolutely nothing about cutting women’s hair.
“Come on, Flo, can’t you just get it fixed professionally? I don’t have a clue what I’m doing.”
“And fork out a fortune for a ten-minute haircut?”
“I can pay—”
She’s already waving her hand to stop me from talking. “Don’t even go there. If you won’t do it, give them to me. I’ll try.” Flo attempts to reach back to take the scissors from my grasp, but I edge away.
“No, you won’t be able to see the back, and you’ll probably cut yourself. I’ll do it.” Taking a deep breath, listening out for Leo’s laughter from his room, I let out a curse word.
“Don’t take too much off. Keep what you can.”
“So… a Rapunzel brown bob kind of thing? Got it.”
Flo quickly turns to narrow her blues at me. “You know about that, but not Squidward? You’re a strange man, West.”
“Hold still, or I’ll accidentally slice your vocal cords.”
“Yeah, sure, accidentally,” she mumbles under her breath as I use the comb she gave me to brush her hair out, snipping at the ends.
With one hand on her shoulder to balance myself, I wield the scissors carefully.
I should be focusing on her hair, but all I’m able to zero in on is how her rounded shoulder feels underneath my palms. Flo’s skin is smooth and hot.
The rhythm of her heartbeat shifts, the quiet thumping calming me.
It’s a simple touch, a way to make sure I don’t fuck up her hair, but my pulse reacts as if it’s something more.
Electricity surges through my digits.
“Evan?”
“Yes?” My voice is ragged.
“You haven’t cut for like thirty seconds… is it okay?”
Oh, shit.
Focus, Evan. Get back to it.
“Yeah, I was just making sure it was even.”
Releasing her shoulder, I come to the conclusion that if I’m touching this woman, I can’t pay attention to anything else, so my hand needs to remain by my side.
The ends are a little blunt once I’m done with the back, but I do my best with the tools I’m given.
Luckily, Flo doesn’t have any layers—I believe that’s what Gracie calls them—so it makes it easier for me to cut off the jaggedness created by the fluffball upstairs with my son.
There’s no need to take it too short. It now sits just below her breasts, which, in my opinion, is still far too much hair to be able to handle every day.
Although it’s still long enough to wrap around my hands when—
“Okay, what do you think? Cut a fringe?” Flo says as she stands, pulling the shorter, wispier parts out from behind her ears. The shorter length of them actually looks intentional, and frames her face pretty well.
“You want my opinion? A man?” I tilt my head at her.
Smirking, Flo pries the scissors from my fingers and laughs, beginning to snip at the slightly uneven ends of the front pieces she’s holding. “Okay, no fringe. Thank you.”
A huff of amusement leaves me, and I head for my bedroom after telling her, “You’re welcome.”
“At least now you know that if you ever get bored in retirement, you have the skills to become a hairdresser to people whose hair gets chewed off by their pets in their sleep.”
Chuckles sound from both of us.
Note to self: Lock my bedroom door at night when Cheese is around.
My butt hurts from training. It makes sitting on the bench at the children’s play park painful—a quieter one since it can be a little busy near the city centre—and I pull my cap further down on my head, the bill shielding my face so no one recognises me. I stand, stretching my legs.
It’s one of my two days off from training camp, and Flo needed to pick up some more materials for the clothes she’s been working on, so she caught a ride with Leo and me.
She stands at the bottom of the slide, arms open wide, the cheesiest grin spreading her lips as she gazes up at my son, who stands at the top, eyebrows furrowed with anxiety.
Her shopping bags sit by my feet as I watch them from the side, recording on my phone just like Leo instructed me to. However, now that he’s at the top of the slide and has seen what it looks like from his current height, he’s unsure.
“I can’t,” he calls down.
“You can! Just close your eyes and imagine yourself at the bottom in my arms,” Flo encourages him.
“You got it, bud! I’m still recording for you. We can show Cheese when we get home!” I wave at him, but my son hovers, chubby little fingers twirling together as he thinks this through. I shuffle closer to Flo. “Did I forget to tell you he’s afraid of heights?”
She deadpans me. “Yeah, I gathered that. You could’ve told me that before I got my heart set on seeing him zipline.”
Releasing a soft chuckle, I shoot Leo a thumbs-up, which he uses to fuel his desire to do this, but just as he’s about to sit and push himself down, a young girl about three or four years older barges him out of the way and takes his spot, shooting him a frustrated look.
“Get out of the way. Babies don’t belong on the slide,” the young girl says as she laughs, and my eyes flicker with dislike. If there’s one thing my son hates, it’s being called a baby.