by Chant, Zoe
Well, Lila did appreciate it. More than she could truly express.
She’d try, though.
Meanwhile, Flynn was busy being a ninja, so Lila just...let herself sink down into the couch. Oh, wow. When was the last time she’d sat down and relaxed? She felt like if she wasn’t careful, she’d just melt into the cushions and disappear.
She couldn’t believe Victor had really sent his henchmen after her. What did he think he’d get out of kidnapping her?
The kids. It must be. Victor wanted a new generation of little lions to raise up under his control, and he’d already lost his own son when he’d driven his ex away...by being a controlling bastard.
She wondered if he’d ever realize that he was a self-fulfilling prophecy. If he didn’t hold on so tightly, people wouldn’t keep slipping out of his grasp.
Probably not.
Well. Okay. There were lions after her and the kids. Flynn was here, and he’d keep them from getting them.
Then what, though?
It wasn’t like Flynn could just move in and stay here until they all died of old age. Him bodyguarding them was a very nice short-term solution, but it wasn’t going to help anything in the long term.
She was going to have to think of a way to keep Victor from wanting to come after them.
Lila sighed, sinking back into the couch. She had absolutely no idea how to accomplish that.
Well, she’d done a lot of things she’d thought were impossible in the last year. She’d just have to figure it out.
She was taking a few minutes to just sit here first, though.
God, the couch was comfortable for something that looked so ugly.
She closed her eyes for a second. The adrenaline crash was making her body heavy. She could hear Flynn and Sophia scuffling around in the other room, and Grant was safely asleep upstairs. Maybe if she just...
Sleep carried her away before she could finish the thought.
***
Lila jerked awake, hearing the rising tide of Grant’s wail.
“I’m coming, kiddo, I’m coming,” said an unfamiliar male voice in the hall, and Lila sat up abruptly. Who was—what was—
Flynn.
Lila’s shoulders relaxed as she remembered. Flynn was in the house, Flynn had driven off Victor’s lions, and Flynn was—
—going to get Grant up from his nap?
Lila jumped up from the couch, hastening to the stairs. “Wait, you don’t have to do that,” she called up, following him upstairs. “I’ll get him.”
Flynn had paused in the hallway, looking chagrined. “I didn’t want him to wake you up. You looked like you could use the rest.”
Well, that was flattering. Lila knew she looked like an exhausted single mom, but she didn’t need to hear it spoken out loud by a man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a firefighter calendar.
“Hard to sleep through that,” Lila said, waving at the door to the baby’s room, where the air-raid siren cries were still rising. “I got him. He’ll get upset if a stranger comes in.”
“Right,” Flynn said. “Of course.”
Then Lila felt bad, for no reason she could really figure out. But her baby was still crying, so she edged past Flynn to get to his door.
God, the man was huge. He took up practically all the space in the hallway, it seemed; their hips brushed when Lila passed him, and she felt a spark at the touch, a bloom of warmth in her stomach.
No. Bad Mommy. She had to focus on keeping her kids safe right now; she couldn’t afford to get distracted by a man. Not even one who looked like he’d stepped out of a firefighter calendar.
She went into Grant’s room without looking back, and as she picked the baby up and his crying calmed down, she could hear Flynn’s footsteps on the stairs.
Well. Good. He’d keep Sophia occupied while she got Grant up.
She played with his chubby feet while she changed him, getting him to giggle. “Ma,” he said, looking up at her with serious eyes.
“That’s right, baby. Mama,” she told him. Both of her kids looked more like her than Michael, but Grant still had his dad’s blue eyes. She hoped they’d never change.
She got him all dressed and picked him up to bring him downstairs. He laid his head on her shoulder, still waking up a little, and her heart clenched. God. She’d do anything to keep him and Sophia safe. Absolutely anything.
She just needed to figure out what anything was.
***
Downstairs, she went into the kitchen, stopped and blinked.
“Uh,” Flynn said, looking a little sheepish. “It was getting kind of late, and Sophia said she was hungry, so I got something started? Sorry for invading your cupboards. I hope you didn’t have plans for any of this.”
There was a pot simmering on the stove with tomato sauce and ground beef, and she’d caught Flynn in the act of shaking oregano into it. It smelled amazing.
“Um. No, that was just going to be—dinner tonight,” Lila managed.
A smile, surprisingly sweet, appeared on Flynn’s face. “Oh, good.”
Lila looked at the stove clock and realized that it was after five PM. Oh, jeez. “You slept a long time,” she told Grant.
And so had she. She felt a little fuzzy-brained from the long nap, and hesitantly grateful that dinner was happening without any effort from her.
Sophia appeared from under the table, grabbing onto her right leg and hanging backwards. “Mommy, you took a long nap! Flynn said we had to be quiet, so he read me a book and then I got hungry so now I’m drawing and then we’re going to eat dinner.”
“That sounds like a great plan, honey,” Lila said. “Can I see your picture?”
“Yeah!” Sophia vanished under the table again and came back with a piece of paper with crayon scribbles all over it. Lila noted the places where the crayon swooped right off the page and resolved to remember to scrub the floor under the table sometime soon.
“That’s me, and that’s Flynn, and that’s the fort, and that’s the moat, and that’s me beating him like he’s a bad guy!” Sophia reported, pointing to each thing.
“Very impressive,” Lila told her. “You look super brave.”
Sophia nodded vigorously. “I’m so brave.”
“Dinner’s just about ready,” Flynn put in from behind them.
“Can you be brave enough to wash your hands and come sit nicely at the table?” Lila asked.
Sophia made a face—hand-washing and sitting properly on her butt were both things she disdained—but she trotted off without any whining. Probably on her best behavior for Flynn, Lila thought, and hoped it would last.
Lila went to set the table. “I can do that,” Flynn said, half-turning from the counter where he was making a salad. Lila was impressed; Michael had never voluntarily eaten salad in his life.
“You’re finishing the food,” she told him. “I’ve got it.”
“You’ve got a baby, though.”
“Flynn, if I stopped doing anything because I was holding a baby, I wouldn’t have gotten a blessed thing done in the entire last year,” Lila said patiently. “I can set the table.”
And in fact, by the time she was halfway done, Grant wanted to get down, so she put him in his high chair and gave him a couple of toys. He’d been more interested in the floor than the high chair, but he got distracted by pressing buttons and making things light up.
“Save some pasta out with no sauce,” Lila remembered to tell Flynn.
Flynn was searching through the cabinets for something, but before Lila could ask what it was, he unearthed a colander. “Sure thing.”
Lila looked around, trying to figure out what else to do. She’d set the table, poured drinks for everyone, Grant was in his high chair, Sophia had come out of the bathroom with damp hands and sat herself primly in her chair...
Once again, there was nothing for her to do. Flynn had even done most of the dishes already.
It all felt weird. Uncomfortable, like it wasn’t r
ight for him to be doing all these things for her. Lila prided herself in her ability to do everything as a single mom, and there was a part of her brain that was yelling, We don’t need his help! He came in here and did all this without asking, went into our kitchen and took care of our kids—this is our house—
To which Lila had to reply, Well, no, it isn’t.
It was Flynn’s mother’s house. It was more Flynn’s house than hers, if she thought about it that way.
She only had this house at all because she’d needed help, and someone had given it to her. Now she needed help again, as much as she loathed admitting it, and someone was here, giving it to her.
She wasn’t going to be so ungrateful as to get mad at him for making spaghetti, for Pete’s sake.
Even if it felt—weird.
“Okay, dinner is served!” Flynn brought a big bowl of spaghetti and meat sauce over to the table, and Sophia immediately went up on her knees to look at it.
“On your butt, kiddo,” Lila reminded her, and went to get Grant’s food ready.
She saw Flynn watching closely as she cut up plain noodles, blowing on them until they were just lukewarm, and set them on the high chair’s tray, ready to be squished between baby fingers and dropped into the depths of the chair and maybe, occasionally, brought into the baby’s mouth.
“Does he eat regular food already?” Flynn asked as they sat down.
Lila served Sophia and nodded. “He stopped nursing just a month or so ago. I still give him baby food, but he can eat pretty much what we eat. Just not too hot or too hard to get into his mouth by himself.”
Flynn nodded seriously. Lila wondered what he thought he was going to use that information for.
Maybe he was paying attention as practice for when he had kids. That made sense. Lila wondered if he had a girlfriend or a fiancée, if he was thinking about kids soon.
He probably did. No one that good-looking stayed single for long, right? She shouldn’t have ogled him earlier. Well, for lots of reasons, but because he probably wasn’t single and his girlfriend certainly wouldn’t appreciate it if random people Flynn helped because he was a goodhearted, honorable man took it as an invitation to leer at him.
That was settled, then. Flynn was just being nice, and she’d be nice back, and that was all. Firmly, Lila sat down and started eating her spaghetti.
She blinked. “This is amazing.”
Flynn smiled a little. “I’m not a crazy good cook like Lachlan is, but our mom made sure that we both knew the basics. If I couldn’t put together a decent spaghetti sauce, she’d probably disown me.”
“I wish more men were like you,” Lila sighed, and dug in.
Flynn didn’t seem to know how to respond to that, and Lila thought guiltily that it might have sounded flirtatious. Damn it, what was wrong with her? Normally she had no problem ignoring men, even if they were sending obvious signals in her direction. She hadn’t been interested in a single date in the whole year since Michael died.
Of course, she’d been a little distracted. Her prime distraction decided that his spaghetti would look better on the floor, and she gratefully leaned in to help him actually eat something, letting her stupid thoughts fade right away.
***
Flynn was around all evening. He washed the dishes. He ran around with Sophia while Lila put Grant to bed. He acceded gracefully to Sophia’s demand that he read her a story, and then that he stick around while Mommy read her another story.
It was a little spooky. Lila kept turning around, ready to attend to the crisis that had arisen while her attention was on something else, and realizing...there was no crisis. Because while she’d been busy changing Grant’s diaper or kissing Sophia’s bruised knee or putting toothpaste on a toothbrush...Flynn had been there.
She couldn’t get used to this. It was dangerous.
Finally, both of the kids were asleep, and Lila turned to cleaning up the kitchen—and remembered that the dishes were already done.
Well, at least she could scrub the crayon off the floor.
Flynn followed her into the kitchen, of course, but he stood back while she crawled under the table with a Magic Eraser and some paper towels.
“Sorry,” he said, shamefaced, when she came back out, crayon streaks scrubbed away. “I didn’t even think about what would happen if she was using crayons on the floor like that. I should’ve had a—tarp or something.”
Lila had to snort at the image of Sophia coloring on a tarp, but she shook her head. “It’s not the sort of thing you think about if you’re not a parent. And it’s really—you’ve done so much. I thought you were just going to bodyguard, not...babysit.”
“If I’ve overstepped—”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Lila interrupted.
Although what did she mean, if not that?
“I just—you don’t have to do any of this. I’m used to not having any help. Don’t worry about wrangling the kids. You shouldn’t have to spend your afternoon playing ninja with Sophia.”
A smile teased at the edges of his mouth. “I liked ninja. It’s a fun game.”
“But still—”
“I get what you’re saying,” he said, more serious now. “But I promise you—I like kids. My nephew’s only a little older than Sophia, and I babysit him all the time. And he’s more of a tiny little nerd, always wanting to ask science questions. I’m much better at running around playing stealth games than I am at answering science questions.”
Lila shook her head, not sure what argument she could really muster in response to I like babysitting your kids so you can take a nap on the couch, no really, I like it.
Especially since she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten a nap.
And she supposed she had to take Flynn’s word for it—he really did seem to like Sophia. Which was great, honestly, because Sophia tired most adults out pretty fast.
“Okay,” she said finally. “Well. Thank you.”
“My pleasure. Honestly.”
“So then—” Lila looked at the cleaning supplies she was holding, went to get everything put away, and then came back and sat down at the table, motioning for Flynn to sit across from her. “I know you’re planning on staying here and keeping watch against Victor’s lions. What about in the long term, though? You can’t just guard our house forever.”
“Well, I could,” Flynn said, with a hint of a humor—but just a hint. Lila found herself wondering if he was serious. He couldn’t be, though, right?
“What,” she said, a little defensively, “you’re going to quit your job and work for me full-time? I don’t have the funds for a private bodyguard.”
Flynn shrugged easily. “I’m the sheriff’s deputy. My job is to keep this town safe from criminal activity. Victor and his lions are engaging in criminal activity. Malachi—the sheriff, my boss—told me to keep an eye out here, and when I called in what happened, he said I should stay here until further notice. So technically I’m at work right now.”
“Oh.” Lila processed that, and then said, “Well, but—you have a personal life. You can’t just be at work all the time.”
Flynn’s smile had an edge to it this time. “Not much of a personal life, I promise you.”
Maybe there wasn’t a girlfriend or fiancée after all?
Lila forced that thought away. It didn’t matter. “Okay,” she said. “Well. Thank you. But I don’t want to constantly be on the lookout for lions ready to kidnap my children, no matter how good you are at bodyguarding. I want to do something to make Victor stay away permanently.”
Flynn sobered immediately, nodding. “Yes. We’re working on that ourselves. The problem is—it’s hard to think of a permanent solution that doesn’t involve killing Victor, killing whoever rises up as Victor’s successor, killing Victor’s whole family...” He waved a hand. “And potential legal consequences aside, we just—we don’t want to do that if we can avoid it. We’re not murderers here.”
“No, of course no
t,” Lila hastened to say. “I don’t want to kill anyone, either.” Not that she could even if she tried. “I just want them to leave me alone.”
“And we’re going to figure out how to do that. I promise you.” Flynn’s voice was serious.
“But how?” Lila pressed. “Is there a plan? Do you know if Malachi or Lachlan or anybody has a real plan?”
She could feel the tension curling up her spine, the need to do something. She hated feeling like this, anxious and humorless. Once upon a time, she’d been fun and cheerful, always ready for a joke. When Michael had been alive, they’d joked around constantly.
Now, it felt like all of that had been sucked away drop by drop, over the last year. All that was left was a burning need to make sure her children were safe.
“Well.” Flynn looked away. “No. We’ve been going around in circles. Nobody wants an all-out war. Victor keeps on using these sneaky underhanded tactics, darting in with a couple of henchmen and then melting back into the forest. We can’t patrol it all. And—the thing that’s causing the most worry right now—he told Cam that he’s mustered up some mysterious allies who’re going to help him fight us. We haven’t seen them yet, and we have no idea who they might be.”
“Hmm.” Lila frowned. “So you need information from the pack about the allies.”
Flynn nodded. “Yes. But it’s not like any of us can infiltrate a pack of lions. None of us have shifter forms that are good for stealth, either. They’d probably notice an enormous dragon lurking outside their windows trying to listen in.”
“I...might have an idea,” Lila said slowly.
Chapter 4: Flynn
“No,” said Flynn. “Absolutely not.”
Lila looked taken aback. “Why on earth not? It might help, and it surely won’t hurt.”
Lila had apparently received a call from Victor’s lawyer earlier in the day, and hadn’t been sure whether she wanted to call back. She’d been afraid that Victor might be trying some new threat or intimidation tactic.