Chapter 11
Eleven
CLOVER
Not all heroes wear capes…
Some wear stained, white sweatshirts— Why did I wear white on my first full day caring for two young children? Why?! I really should have seen that cranberry juice disaster at lunch coming—and jeans with mud soaked into the knees.
Cold mud.
Wet mud.
Ew, yuck, why is it so wet? All the snow melted days ago.
And why is it so cold under these bushes?
It’s a balmy forty-seven in the yard, but freezing down here.
I can barely feel my legs. Yet, sadly, I have retained enough sensation in my chilled nerve endings to be keenly aware that my knees are wet and slimy, and getting wetter and slimier by the minute.
But Bella managed to kick her favorite ball so deep into the hedge at the back of the yard that a hands-and-knees retrieval is the only option.
Like I said. Heroes. Capes.
“Hero, I’m a hero,” I mutter to keep my spirits up as I army crawl deeper into the heart of shrubby darkness.
“Are you okay, Clover?” Ava calls out from what sounds like a mile away.
I don’t know what kind of plant this is, but the leaves are dense as hell.
And weirdly shiny. And the tiny red berries feel…
menacing. I know I should be grateful that I’m not pushing deep into a holly bush, getting stabbed by tiny leaf daggers at every turn, but I can’t fight the creeping fear that I’m taking my life into my hands with this shrub.
“Fine! I’m fine, are you guys okay?” I call back.
“Yes!” Bella screams in reply, making me flinch then laugh.
“You don’t have to shout,” Ava says.
“Yeah, I do,” Bella shouts, indignantly. “Those bushes are magic, and they eat up all the sound. That’s why I’m scared of that place in there.”
“She’s right,” I call back, still grinning despite the soppy grossness of my knees and the ache building around my steel plate. “The sound is muffled back here. But I can still hear you if you speak in a normal voice, Bella, okay?”
“Okay!” Bella screeches, once more at top volume, making me laugh again.
Ava huffs. “She said you don’t have to shout, silly goose.”
“I know, but I like shouting!” Bella replies, before bursting into a fit of giggles.
“You’re such a goofy head,” Ava says, giggling along with her.
Well, at least they’re having a good time. I was afraid they would get cold once we stopped kicking the ball around, but apparently, watching their nanny crawl around in the bushes is exciting enough to ward off the chill.
I, however, am starting to shiver. I had to leave my coat with Ava—it was too puffy to make it through the foliage—and it’s at least five degrees colder down here. But the shrub just keeps going and going with no sign of Bella’s ball.
Where the fork is it?! It’s a bright blue ball with pink streaks, for Glob’s sake.
Surely, I should be able to—
“I see it!” I shout, relief surging through me as I shift around a thick clutch of growth to see the ball floating in a puddle against the fence.
“Yay!” Bella calls out. “Good job, Clover. You’re being strong and brave.”
“Thank you, Bella,” I say, grinning as I make a shuffling beeline toward the ball.
These two…
They really are the sweetest little goofballs.
Aside from getting soaked in cranberry juice when Ava made Bella laugh mid-drink, and the unexpected ball rescue mission, my first day has been a breeze.
I’ve had so much fun with the girls and eaten healthy, regular meals for the first time in ages.
I even had a full ninety minutes to myself during naptime to practice bass and read a book that I’ve been trying to finish for months.
If things continue to go this smoothly, I might ask Dean if it would be okay to set my sewing machine up by the desk in the living room. I could get half a pantsuit made during naptime, and still be right downstairs if the girls got up early or needed me for some reason.
Dean…
I’ve barely seen him today, just a quick “hello and goodbye” on his way out the door this morning to hit the gym before practice. But damn, he looked good. He was wearing one of those yummy, skintight, long-sleeved workout shirts and gray sweatpants that just…
Well, let’s just say that “catching print” was not difficult. At all. I mean, I would have had to try hard to avoid catching it.
And I didn’t try. Not even a little bit.
My eyeballs zoomed right in on that delicious lump while my thoughts dove happily back into the deep end of the smut pool, from whence I had just pulled them not twenty minutes before.
Because yes, I had another kinky sex dream about my boss.
This time Dean was a soldier from another kingdom who’d captured me behind enemy lines and was “torturing” information out of me with orgasms.
Orgasms on his tongue.
On his fingers.
On that long, thick, oh-so-skilled—
“Are you still alive?” Ava calls out. “You’ve been quiet for a long time, Clover.”
That’s because I was thinking about your dad’s penis, Ava, I think to myself, a thing I obviously don’t say aloud.
“Yes, honey, I’m fine. Just…concentrating.” I reach out, trying—and failing—to get a hand around the slick orb. “The ball landed in a puddle, and it’s all wet. I’m having a hard time getting a hold of it.”
“Ew! Yucky!” Bella cries. “Is it a big muddy puddle?”
“Not that big,” I say. “But plenty muddy.” I reach for it again, cursing beneath my breath as it slips away, floating to the far side of the small pool of water. “I’m going to have to get closer and go in with two hands.”
“Be careful!” Bella cries. “Be very, very careful!”
Ava huffs again, and I can practically hear the eye roll in her voice as she says, “A muddy puddle isn’t going to hurt her, Bella. The worstest that can happen is her fingers get wet.”
She’s right.
That’s the worstest that can happen.
Should have been the worstest that could have happened, anyway.
But somehow, I come up onto my knees at the wrong angle, get thrown off-balance as I reach for the ball, and end up pitching forward with a grunt, scratching the bottom of my chin on a chunk of dead shrub before chest-flopping into the middle of the puddle.
“Ugh!” I cry out, full-body cringing as water soaks through my sweatshirt.
“Oh no!” Bella cries out. “She’s hurted! Clover’s hurted!”
“Clover, are you okay?” Ava calls, sounding worried now, too.
“I’m fine, guys. I’m fine,” I rush to assure them.
“We heard you make a hurted sound,” Bella says.
“I know, but I’m fine, I promise, I just…” I spit out mud as I rise from the puddle, clothes clinging uncomfortably to my skin. “I just slipped and got wet. But I’ve got the ball, and I’m on my way back now.”
“Okay, good,” Ava says. “The clouds are starting to look scary up there. I think there might be thunder soon.”
I frown as I grab the ball, cursing it silently as I tuck it under one arm. “Really? It wasn’t supposed to rain today. I checked the weather forecast twice.”
“The weather forecast is shitty now,” Ava says matter-of-factly, making me snort with laughter. Again. These two crack me up constantly. They deserve a comedy special on Netflix. Maybe two.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to say that word, Ava,” I say, quickly realizing I can’t crawl while holding the ball. I shift to rolling it ahead of me through the hedge as I start toward the yard.
“No, it’s okay when it’s about the weather,” she replies.
“Because it’s the truth. Daddy says it all the time.
And Miss Maybelline does, too. She says it’s because the government is shit, too, and spends money on dumb things instead of making sure the weather is right.
” She sighs before adding in a southern accent that’s a dead ringer for their elderly neighbor, the one I met earlier while Bella and Ava were having “petting Edgar” time, “The world’s gone nuttier than a five-pound fruitcake. ”
“Fruitcake,” Bella echoes, giggling.
I snort again, amazed that I still have a sense of humor, considering my nipples are stinging painfully against my soaked shirt, while my leg throbs like a thumb with a splinter under the nail.
Even my arm hurts, aching more than it has in weeks.
Note to self: Metal plates plus prolonged exposure to the cold equals a bad idea.
But seriously, Ava’s impression is too good not to laugh, even in the depths of my damp despair. “You’re so good at that, Ava. You sound just like Miss Maybelline.”
“I love her voice,” Ava says. “She sounds like a cartoon.”
“She does,” I agree, breaking off with a hiss as another shrubby bit scrapes across my cheek, not far from where the doctor stitched me up after the car accident. I reach up, pushing the stick away and rubbing at the skin with the top of my forearm with the one dry part of my sweatshirt.
When I pull my sleeve away, there’s red on the fabric.
“Oh no,” I mutter with a curse, worried I might have torn my scar open. But my cheek doesn’t hurt that badly. Not much at all, really.
It’s my chin that feels scraped and raw.
Further investigation confirms it’s my chin that’s bleeding, not my cheek—which is good, I guess?—and that the damage isn’t bad. But I’m still going to need a wash and a bandage.
Heck, my entire body needs a wash, a thing I’m not sure how to accomplish since Dean isn’t due back for another hour, and I’m still on full-time kid duty.
I consider texting Cristina to ask how she would manage it.
She doesn’t have kids of her own, but her sister does.
But Cristina is gone until March. She ended up missing her husband so much that she got permission from her accounting firm to work remotely for a few months.
Then, she and their puppy went to join him on his deployment in Germany.
Meanwhile, she’s renting her house out as an Airbnb.
I don’t want to disturb her while she’s busy. I have no idea what time it is in Germany, but I’m pretty sure she’s working U.S. hours. And then there’s the fact that I haven’t told her that I’m nannying for her crazy hot neighbor.
I don’t know why I feel weird about it, but I do.