by Amy Vastine
She handed over the sledgehammer. In two hits, he detached the counter from the cabinets. “You loosened it up for me.”
He was too nice. Bonnie snatched the sledgehammer away. She wasn’t cut out for removing the counters—she was better when she got the help of gravity when she swung this thing. “You are in charge of counters, and I am going to get rid of these horrible floating cabinets.”
Without missing a beat, she spun around and attempted to hit the cabinets separating the kitchen from the living room. Only instead of hitting the cabinets, the sledgehammer slipped right out of her hands and went flying right into her dad, who had come over to see what they were doing.
“Dad!”
It was a total knockout. Everyone ran over to where he went down. Blood flowed from his head like a river. Bonnie felt herself get a little woozy. She wasn’t used to seeing so much blood. Her dad opened his eyes and put his hand over his wound. It didn’t do much to stop the flow.
“This is not good,” Aaron said.
“Do we have anything for him to hold on that cut?” Sasha asked.
There was nothing in the house that was clean enough to put on an open wound. Aaron didn’t hesitate. He lifted his shirt off his head and folded it up so her dad could use it to stop the bleeding. A shirtless Aaron would have been the distraction of a lifetime if Bonnie wasn’t feeling so panicked about her dad.
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Bonnie said. He probably couldn’t get up off the floor. Calling 911 might have been her only option.
“I’m fine,” her dad protested, trying to sit up. “I don’t need to go to no hospital. Head wounds bleed a lot.”
Aaron and Sasha helped him to his feet. “David, you just got knocked over by the flying handle of a sledgehammer. Let me see that cut.” Bonnie’s dad pulled his hand away. The blood was still pouring out. The cut on his forehead was deep. There was no bandage that was going to hold that together successfully.
“You need stitches, Dad. It’s not good.”
Her stubborn father shook his broken head. “I just need to sit down for a minute.”
“Dad.”
“You can rest for a minute in my car,” Aaron said. Bonnie was about to start a fight when he added, “But I’ll be driving you to the hospital while you do it.”
Her dad started to protest when he lost his balance. Sasha scooped him as though he were a child. “Don’t worry, Dave. I’ll keep tearing stuff down while you guys are gone,” he said. “We won’t get too behind. I promise.”
Bonnie was so grateful for these two men who had her father’s back. She relaxed enough to appreciate the way Aaron looked from behind without his shirt on. In one day, she’d almost killed her dad and was suddenly both hot and bothered whenever Aaron was near. Things were so confusing, it was like she had been the one hit on the head.
* * *
NOT ONLY WOULD she mention how close Blue Springs Hospital was to the house when she listed it, Bonnie would also talk up how amazing the ER staff was. After the doctor stitched up her less-than-cooperative father, Bonnie sat with him until they brought him his discharge papers. Thank goodness the Coles didn’t own the hospital.
“I am so sorry I wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing.”
“I’m sorry that I thought I was safe around you and weapons of mass destruction,” he said with a chuckle.
Bonnie tipped her chin up. “Weird, your head injury somehow made you less hilarious than usual.”
“How are we doing in here?” Aaron popped into the room. He had a soda in each hand and one tucked under his arm. The nurse had given him some scrubs so he didn’t have to sit in the waiting room half-naked. “I wasn’t aware of the fact that you were such an injury magnet, David. Your luck has not been very good lately.”
He handed them each a soda and sat on the doctor’s stool. He spun around in a couple circles. Bonnie smiled at his silliness. She felt bad that he’d stopped working to accompany them to the hospital, but he’d been adamant that he would drive them.
“I think we need to be honest about the bad karma coming from us working together,” Bonnie said. Her dad had worked for Cole Construction for years and never had to be rushed to the hospital. He worked for Aaron for a couple weeks and he’d become a regular in the ER.
“I don’t know why you’d say I’m unlucky,” her dad said to Aaron. “And I don’t know why you think this was bad karma, Bon Bon. Things could have been much worse.”
“That is true. It was actually very lucky that you hit him with the handle of the sledgehammer instead of the head.”
“Right,” Bonnie said. Emotion began to tighten her throat. “Unlucky would have been dying from a massive brain bleed. Killing you would have been worse than slicing your head open.”
He reached for her hand. “It’s going to take more than a swarm of angry wasps and a flyaway sledgehammer to take me out, sweetheart.”
It was dumb to be upset. He was fine. She hadn’t done any major harm, but her dad was her person. He was the one who loved her unconditionally. He was the only family she had left. Their bond had only gotten stronger when her mom died, and losing him was completely unthinkable.
Aaron wheeled himself over to her. “I know you’re letting yourself doubt why you agreed to take this on with me, but I promise I’m going to make sure that we are safe moving forward. It’s my responsibility to make sure there are no more injuries.”
“Don’t beat yourself up, kid. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I should have known something like this could happen. I mean, I’m the one who coached her when she played T-ball and usually threw the bat farther than she hit the ball.”
Aaron laughed while Bonnie narrowed her eyes. “Wow. There’s that terrible sense of humor again. That hit on the head really messed up your ability to tell a funny joke.”
Her dad smiled and gave her hand another pat. “I love you. You know that.”
The lump in her throat was back. She did know.
* * *
AARON DROPPED THE Windsors off at David’s house. Bonnie was going to stay with him overnight, since he had been diagnosed with a concussion. Even when she nearly took his head off, their love for one another shone through. He wasn’t so sure his dad would have been so forgiving.
“How’s the patient?” Sasha asked when Aaron got back to the job.
Sasha the Giant had single-handedly bulldozed everything in the living room and kitchen. He’d seriously finished more on his own in a few hours than Aaron would have hoped the four of them could accomplish all day. He had knocked down the wall between the living and dining rooms. The countertops were gone, and the cabinets were all removed.
Aaron’s jaw dropped. “You are the hardest-working man I have ever met.”
“It wasn’t that much. The hanging cabinets our little firecracker was trying to hit fell down with nothing more than a tap. Had she hit her mark, those things would have gone flying at her dad like the hammer did. He’s probably lucky she lost her grip.”
His use of the word lucky made Aaron laugh. Bonnie would most likely disagree that any of this was lucky. She didn’t realize what a good-luck charm she was. She was the one who’d found Sasha, and he was more than Aaron could have asked for.
Aaron inspected the work that had been done. It looked like nothing had been holding the cabinets to the ceiling, but the paint under them was a completely different color than the rest.
“It’s going to look so good in here when we’re finished,” Aaron said. “I love how open this space is now. If we could just find a way to get some more light in here, it would be perfect.”
There was a sharp knock on the door. Aaron felt his brow furrow.
“Sounds like you have a guest,” Sasha said.
That was strange. Aaron hadn’t given this address to anyone. “I don’t have any friends who would come looking for me here.�
�
“Maybe it’s a neighbor.”
Aaron would need to be neighborly while he was working on the house, but he didn’t need people nosing around until they were closer to being finished. He made his way to the front door. “Are there still door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesmen? I’d rather deal with that.”
“Oh, what if it’s a little girl selling cookies?” Sasha’s eyes got big. Aaron could only imagine how many cookies Sasha could eat.
He opened the front door to find out if either one of them was right. Two Blue Springs police officers were on the other side. They were a huge letdown after the mention of cookies. “Good afternoon, Officers. What can I do for you?”
“Are you the owner of this house?” the burly officer in sunglasses asked. He wasn’t exactly Officer Friendly.
“I am.”
“We’ve had multiple complaints from your neighbors that there is excessive noise coming from your house that is disturbing the peace and quiet in the area,” the officer explained.
Aaron tipped his head to the side. “During the day? People can complain about noise in the middle of the day?”
“They sure can. When it’s excessive,” the lanky, bearded officer replied.
Aaron looked over his shoulder at Sasha. “Were you doing something excessively loud while we were gone?”
“I don’t think so,” he said with a shrug. “Nothing that would have woke the neighbors.”
The first officer put his hand on the doorjamb. “I sure hope you have all the proper permits for the work you’re doing here. I would hate to have the city come out and shut you down.”
Suspicion set in. That sounded much more like a threat than a warning. Something was not right here. “We have all the permits.” Aaron folded his arms across his chest. “Who exactly called about the noise? I would love to apologize and let them know we’ll keep it down moving forward?”
“We aren’t at liberty to give out names, Mr. Cole. How many people do you have working here?” The officer took off his sunglasses and tried to see around Aaron, who quickly blocked the doorway with his body the best he could.
“How do you know my name? I don’t remember giving you my name.”
Officer Big Mouth glanced back at Officer Lanky, who answered for him. “The person who made the report gave us your name.”
Unlikely, since he had yet to introduce himself to any of the neighbors. This had his dad and sister written all over it. “So, am I getting some kind of ticket or citation for being ‘too loud,’ according to this anonymous neighbor who knows my name?”
“No citation. Just a warning,” Officer Lanky said. “Of course, if we have to come out again, we might need to shut this down.”
“‘Shut this down’? You mean the renovations on the house that I own? You’re going to stop me from remodeling my own house because someone says that one man—” he pointed back at Sasha “—disrupted the entire neighborhood in the middle of the afternoon? I’m not sure you can do that, Officer. I think that my lawyers would have a thing or two to say about that.”
Officer Big Mouth slipped his sunglasses back on. “Well, we might not be able to shut you down, but like I said, I sure hope you have all your permits in place, because the inspectors sure can.”
“Bring them on down. I have all the permits. If that’s all, I think we’re done here.” He shut the door and pressed his back to it. “Can you believe that?”
“What did you do to make the police hate you so much? Rob a bank or something?” Sasha asked.
It was so embarrassing to admit the truth. He didn’t want Sasha to think he came from some evil family that would sic the police on their son or brother because he was nice to Bonnie. “I didn’t rob a bank. I just made some powerful people unhappy.”
“You and Bonnie have a lot in common, huh? That poor girl got run out of a coffee shop yesterday by a pack of angry women accusing her of all kinds of wild things. I didn’t realize this town was full of so many cutthroat individuals.”
Cutthroat was a good way to describe the Coles these days. Thank goodness Bonnie wasn’t here for the shakedown by the police. She would have thought she was headed for jail in the near future for sure. He’d have to warn her to be careful not to go over the speed limit in town. Something told him they wouldn’t let her off with a warning if his family truly had gotten to the police.
He’d tried talking to his dad. That had been miserably unsuccessful. His chat with Lauren had accomplished nothing. There was only one Cole left for him to try to reason with. He needed to corner his mother. She was the last hope for stopping this madness.
* * *
AARON PULLED INTO his parents’ horseshoe-shaped driveway and parked his car right in front of the door. It was before five o’clock, meaning there was no way his father was home yet. He rarely left the office before six.
This house always made Aaron smile. They had moved in when he was in high school, and his mother had been very involved in the design. He remembered her having blueprints spread open on the dining room table and listening in on her conversations with the architect. That may have been when he developed his love for house design.
The arched front door of their gorgeous Mediterranean-style house was surrounded by windows. He peered inside and tried the door. Thankfully, it was unlocked. He pushed it open and stepped into the massive two-story foyer.
“Mom?” he called out. The house was too huge to go room to room looking for her.
“Aaron?” Her voice came from the living room, which was unmatched in size and volume. They could host a party for the whole town in it and no one would feel crowded. The high ceilings were accented with wood beams. That was something Aaron would love to do in his house.
His mom was relaxing on the cream-colored chaise lounge that sat in front of the glass french doors that looked out to the patio and swimming pool. She lifted off it and sashayed over to him with the grace of the ballerina she’d been before she got married and had children. She greeted him with a hug. At least someone in this family still loved him.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came to talk to you.”
“Well, it’s about time,” she said, pulling back. Her hands rested on his shoulders and gave him a little shake. “I have only left you a million messages that were never returned.”
“I know. I apologize. I guess I just didn’t want to hear you tell me that I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing when I feel so strongly that I am doing exactly what I should.”
She dropped her hands to her sides. “Why? Sweetheart, your sister needs you now more than ever. She needs to know you have her back.”
“Mom, Lauren is being unreasonable. The reason I am standing with Bonnie is because that is what is best for Lauren. She needs to see that if she doesn’t end this attack on her innocent friend, it’s going to be her downfall.”
His mom shook her head. “No, it won’t. It makes her feel better. And she deserves to feel better right now. What those two did to her was unforgivable. She needs to show the world it cannot treat her like that.”
Aaron was all for Lauren standing up for herself. He was not okay with her trampling all over Bonnie to do it. “Mom, listen to yourself. What did those two do? From where I was standing, only one of them humiliated Lauren, and that was Mitch. He is the only one responsible for how bad Lauren feels right now.”
She waved that thought off. “You’re telling me that Bonnie, Bonnie Windsor, didn’t do a single thing to lead him on so he would be daring enough to do that to your sister? No one in their right mind would take a chance like that if he didn’t already know he was going to get what he wanted.”
How could he explain that was the beauty of Bonnie? She was completely clueless that she could win someone over by simply being herself. She didn’t have to do anything but smile and treat people with kindness. That wa
s what had him caught in her web right now. He could understand exactly why Mitch wanted to be with Bonnie instead of Lauren. Aaron would have liked his best friend to find a better time and place to tell Lauren he had changed his mind about getting married, but there was no ill intent on Bonnie’s part.
“I know you’re wrong. I know Lauren is wrong. But I’m not going to waste my breath trying to convince you that you are. Instead, tell me this. What if you are wrong? What if Bonnie had no idea what Mitch was going to say that day? What if Bonnie doesn’t even like Mitch? Can you live with yourself if her life is turned upside down because of Lauren’s hurt feelings?”
His mom sat on the enormous sectional in the middle of the room. She let her head fall back. “You know I have always liked Bonnie. She’s always seemed like a nice girl.”
Aaron felt a surge of hope. He sat next to her. “She is a nice woman, Mom. She always has been and will continue to be. Can we say the same about Lauren?”
His mom frowned. “Don’t talk about your sister like that. She is a nice person.”
“She’s not acting like it.”
“I’ll talk to her about backing off Bonnie a little bit. I’ll point out that she hasn’t had anything to do with Mitchell since the wedding. Can you imagine what your sister would have done if they were together right now?”
That was never a possibility, a reality Aaron would never have to consider. “Thank you for trying.”
“Now you have to do something for me,” she said, crossing her legs.
Aaron’s shoulders tensed. Nothing good was going to follow that sentence. She was going to ask him to go back to work for his father or something equally impossible.
“Mom—”
“Hear me out,” she said. “The library gala is coming up, and I need you to do me a favor.”
“What kind of favor?” he asked hesitantly.
“The kind that includes you accompanying Fred and Ingrid’s daughter to said gala.”
A date? That was unexpected, but still not something Aaron wanted to entertain. He wasn’t sure he was even invited to the gala this year, considering his father had basically banished him from the kingdom.