by Whitley Cox
He lifted one eyebrow. Obviously he was waiting for her to continue.
Right!
She swallowed. “Should we take this opportunity of us at the same table, while Sophie’s sleeping, to discuss my contract? Hours. Wage. Expectations.” Damn, the man had nice eyes. Bright blue with yellow around the center. The colors worked with his dark red hair and tanned complexion.
Aaron finished chewing his steak, took a sip of his beer, then leveled his gaze back on hers. “What do you want?”
Well, that wasn’t the response she’d been anticipating.
“What do you mean what do I want?”
“What kind of hours do you want? What kind of pay?”
She shook her head, still confused. “I’m not the one who has a baby she needs help with. What do you even do for work?” She pointed at his chest. “Are you in the military? Are you going to be going off on missions for months on end? What do you need from me? Let’s start with that. What do you want from me?”
Something animalistic flashed in his eyes, but he quickly caught it, chained it and tossed it in a cage. But that didn’t stop her heart rate from skyrocketing from that brief look.
He took another drink of his beer. She should have been irritated with his stalling, but she wasn’t. It simply gave her an opportunity to check out the long, muscular line of his neck and the heavy drop and lift of his large Adam’s apple as he swallowed.
Mother Mary, that was hot.
“I need you to be here for Sophie,” he finally said. “Whenever she needs you.”
Isobel fought the urge to grumble and instead bit down hard on her tongue for a moment. “So you want me here more than a typical forty-hour work week? Is that what you’re saying? Are you paying me salary or hourly? Are you deducting my living costs from my wages? Because I have a home, and if you’re going to charge me room and board, I’ll just go live at my apartment with my sister and show up in the morning and leave when you return home from work.” She wrinkled her nose. “Which, by the way, you still haven’t told me what you do.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I’m in construction. Carpentry.”
She pointed at his muscular chest again. “But you used to serve?”
“Used to. Retired now.”
“Army? Air Force? Marines?”
“Navy.”
Did her vagina just spasm?
Did she dare ask the next question? Did she dare ask if he was a SEAL?
“I work eight to six Monday through Friday and some weekends. Depends on the job. I need you here with Sophie when I’m at work and when I’m here because I do paperwork at home at night.”
Okay, now they were getting somewhere.
“So you own your own company then?”
He nodded.
Did this guy have a word limit each day and if he went over, he lost a limb?
“I can do eight to six Monday through Friday. But I will need days off as well. I do have a life and another job.”
His eyes went wide, then his brows narrowed. “What other job?” The tone of his voice wasn’t angry, but it wasn’t innocently curious either.
“I’m a graphic designer. My business is small, but I do have a few clients and commissions. I also have a dog walking business, but I’ve already found another person willing to take on all my clients if your need for me extended beyond full time.”
More grunts and this time a couple of grumbles as well. He scooped sour cream and bacon bits onto his baked potato. “You can have Saturday and Sunday off, but I’ll need you here for Saturday nights. I’ll pay you more. You can do your design stuff while Sophie naps.”
“So I’m off the clock when you walk in the door after work then? If that’s the case, I may as well just go home and come back in the morning.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “I didn’t think about that.” He lifted his head up. “I need you during the night.”
Whoa.
Realization how that must have sounded dawned on him, and his cheeks flushed an adorable pink. “I mean I need you here at night for Sophie. I need you to get up with her. I can’t be up all night with her and then at work all day. I’ll fucking cut my hand off with the circular saw.”
“Hence, why we’re having this discussion.”
His eyes hardened. “I don’t like your attitude right now.”
Isobel blinked and sat back in her chair, dropping her fork to her plate with a loud clatter.
What attitude? She had an attitude?
“My attitude?”
He nodded. “Don’t think I didn’t pick up on that sarcasm.”
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. She set down her steak knife, planted her palms on the table and looked him square in the eye. “Look, I get that you’re grieving. I get that you’re in over your head here. But I want to help you. When Liam told me your story and about Sophie’s mother”—she swallowed and a sob caught in her throat—“it gutted me. Nobody should have to go through what you and Sophie are going through. I want to help.”
A protective shield slammed down around Aaron. His eyes shuttered. His jaw tightened. His posture stiffened. “You think I like this?” he gritted out.
Her head shook. “What on Earth gave you the impression I thought you were enjoying this? I would think there was something seriously wrong with you if you did. Your sister just died. You are now raising her baby. Your life is a mess. But I am also not the enemy here. All I’ve done since I got here is help. All I’ve wanted to do since I got here is help, but you’re making it very difficult. I know nothing about you, nothing about what you want from me, and yet I’m still trying to make this work. You, however, have given me the cold shoulder since I arrived, which is not something I deserve at all.” She shook her head and glanced at her knitted fingers in her lap. “I know you’re grieving but—”
“Don’t fucking say that again.” His words were soft but clear, and they cut like a freshly sharpened blade.
She inhaled and slowly lifted her gaze to his.
“You’ll work Tuesday through Saturday,” he said. “I’ll take Sunday and Monday off. You’ll work seven in the morning until seven at night with the understanding that if Sophie wakes up after midnight and before six o’clock in the morning, you are to get up with her. I will pay you overtime for everything beyond forty hours. You get two weeks’ vacation, which will become effective after a three-month probation period. Research what a competitive live-in nanny wage is and come to me with a number. I will not charge you room and board. I’ll pay for groceries. You’ll eat here. I will get you a car seat for your car, and you can bill me for gas.” He stood, shoved his unfinished plate of dinner away, grabbed his beer and stalked off toward the garage, leaving her sitting there staring at their plates wondering what the hell she’d just gotten herself into.
7
Aaron finished his bottle of beer and then windmill-hurled it across the garage and into the retracting door, causing it to smash and fall to the concrete floor. It was moderately satisfying but not enough.
He wanted to smash. He wanted to hurt. He wanted to maim and demolish. He wanted to shatter. Just like his heart had shattered a little over a week ago. And just like it repeatedly did over and over and over again every time he looked down at his niece and saw his sister staring back at him. And it would continue to shatter until nothing but dust remained. Because the pain would never end. It might subside over time, but it would never disappear. And it would resurrect itself countless times over the days, weeks, months and years to come. The wound might scab over, but then, when Sophie grew old enough—inevitably looking just like her mother—and curiosity began to consume her, he’d have to explain to her what happened to her mother, and the scab would be picked and the wound would be open and exposed once again.
He needed to learn how to live in pain. Day-to-day pain was his life now. His present and his future.
He glanced down at the demolished beer bottle, and fury rippled inside him.
W
ho the fuck did Isobel Jones think she was anyway?
She waltzed her tight little ass into his house and made herself at home. What the fuck?
She bought groceries.
She cooked.
She stood up to him.
She … was willing to help and go above and beyond for a total stranger. A stranger who was grieving. A stranger who was angry. A stranger who was neck-deep in a life he didn’t think he ever wanted and was most certainly sure he had no idea how to live.
It was the pity in her eyes that made him see red. The sadness and desperation to fix his situation. Next thing he knew, she’d be trying to fix him, to fix his heart.
He was the fixer. Not her. But he was unfixable.
His heart, at least the biggest part of it, was gone. All that remained of it, he gave to Sophie, but he knew very well that it wasn’t enough. That he’d never be enough for her.
He scrubbed his hands over his face and up into his hair, pulling on the ends until there was pain. He screamed and pulled harder. He screamed louder and pulled even harder.
Nothing he did could distract him from the hollow ache inside his chest. No amount of pain anywhere else in his body could mask the agony of losing Dina.
He went to the beer fridge he kept in the garage and opened the door, pulling out another bottle of San Camanez Lager and twisting off the cap. It wasn’t quite a smile, but a flurry of something light, something not heavy or angry, fluttered through him when he stared at the cap, and his lips twitched slightly out of the deep frown.
That woman was fucking stubborn.
Who didn’t want to get an injury treated properly?
He’d never been able to understand people’s fears of modern medicine or needles. That shit was necessary for survival. You suck it up, buttercup, bite down on a strip of leather and let whoever has the sewing needle close the gaping wound before your intestines spilled out.
Fuck, she would have gotten a local anesthetic and not felt a goddamn thing. Unlike his time in Medellin when the henchman for a Colombian drug lord had stabbed him in the gut with a rusty machete.
Thank God he was with Colton, their team medic. Since it was more than just a superficial cut, Colton had his work cut out for him. Aaron had grabbed their emergency first aid kit, bit down on a strap of leather and let Colton, one of his brothers, darn his abdomen like it was just a hole at the bottom of his sock.
They’d poured enough brandy into the wound first to get a sumo wrestler drunk, then burned the needle and cauterized his flesh with a lighter to stop the bleeding. All without any pain meds or freezing. All he had was the dregs at the bottom of the brandy bottle to numb his pain. Even then, he’d still gone into septic shock a few days later, needing to be airlifted to Bogota for surgery.
Yeah, getting a finger stitched up at the hospital was a walk in the fucking park.
He wasn’t ready to go back into the house yet. Wasn’t ready to face Isobel and the pity in her eyes.
He exhaled as he slowly slid down against the beer fridge, his back to the cool metal. With his free hand, he ran his fingers over the tattoo on his left arm.
Vos potest conteram ferro.
You can’t break steel.
Or the most equivalent translation they could find.
Since she was ten, Dina had hounded Aaron for the two of them to get matching tattoos, something that would solidify their bond as siblings and all the other person would ever need. He didn’t think they needed tattoos to symbolize that, but whatever. When he turned eighteen, he got his first one. A black and white rose—which was Dina’s birth flower—on his right shoulder. She’d been both elated and also jealous as all get-out. He got the larkspur—the July birth flower—on his other shoulder a week after Sophie was born.
He got a couple of other tattoos when he turned twenty-one, this time to celebrate getting his journeyman ticket for construction and Dina turning eighteen. A hammer and saw creating an X on his right bicep with the date he passed his test beneath, and then the Latin saying Vos potest conteram ferro on his other bicep.
Dina had gone with him to get the latter of the two tattoos, and he surprised her for her birthday by paying for her to get her own as well.
She got the same saying across her ribcage.
It was a silly saying, but it was the mantra they lived by their entire lives. They were the Steeles. They were tough. They were resilient. They could bend, but it would take a lot to break them.
After they’d been moved to their third foster home in a year and a half, Dina, who had only been six at the time, was developing anxieties and fears that could only be explained by the lack of security and roots. So Aaron started telling her every night before they went to bed that you can’t hurt steel.
He explained to her the properties of steel and how they were similar to Dina and Aaron.
Just like Dina was a tough cookie with a hard shell and a no-nonsense personality, steel has a high tensile strength. It’s difficult to fracture. It takes a lot of pressure, a lot of strength to break steel. And Dina was the same way. Her years in the system, not knowing who she could trust—besides Aaron—had forced her to grow up far quicker than she should have, and as a result she was slow to trust, slow to warm up to people and even slower to accept help. She rarely broke down and cried, rarely showed her vulnerability to anyone but Aaron. Her outer shell was six inches thick and almost impenetrable.
So while Dina slowly grew cynical of the world, Aaron was forced to bend and change shape to keep the peace. Like steel, he was ductile. When the need called for it, he put on his big brother hat, or his father hat, or his friend hat. On occasion, he even had to put on his mother hat and explain things like menstruation and training bras to Dina.
He kept the peace between Dina and their foster families. When Dina would shut down or refuse help, lash out in frustration or pain, he had to ramp up his willingness to join the family—as much as he would have rather not.
Dina’s favorite comparison between her and steel was that they were both lustrous and shiny. That always made her giggle when Aaron compared her to the sparkle of a chrome bumper freshly washed and drying in the sun.
She’d shake her head, tossing her red curls over her pillow, and roll her eyes, calling him a goofball.
“And you’re durable,” she would say. “Long-lasting and resistant to wear and tear.”
He’d tuck her in. “I try to be.” Then he’d show her the scar on his elbow from when he fell off the jungle gym at school. “Wear and tear right here, but I’m still going strong.”
She’d take his hand, pull him in so their noses touched, and they’d whisper the mantra that kept them going: “Strong as steel. You can’t break steel.”
They’d say it three times before he’d kiss her on each cheek, then the forehead, and tell her he loved her.
She’d say it back, close her eyes and fall asleep holding his hand. Every night, he held her hand until she fell asleep. Until he knew she was off in dreamland, dreaming of their future and life outside the foster home, life outside the system.
Aaron wasn’t sure what time it was when he finally stood back up. He’d fallen asleep on the concrete floor of the garage, and his ass, back and hips were paying for it.
He hadn’t even finished his beer.
It was warm as monkey piss now, so he dumped it on the back lawn, threw the cover over the barbecue and went into the house through the door from the patio.
The house was dark and quiet. The kitchen clean.
Had she left?
Panic at the thought of Isobel gone swam through him, and he raced to the front window in the living room.
Her car was still in the driveway.
Thank fuck.
His stomach rumbled in protest at his stupid decision to abandon his dinner, so he made his way back into the kitchen and opened up the fridge.
Stubborn and thoughtful.
She’d placed his dinner plate in the fridge with a piece of plastic wrap o
ver it.
He pulled it out, pulled off the plastic and tossed it into the microwave, then he grabbed another beer out of the fridge, twisted off the cap and took a long swig, waiting for his steak to heat up. It would probably overcook in the microwave, be tough and rubbery, but it served him right after he’d left dinner the way he had. He’d only taken one bite of the meat, but the rub Isobel had made had been amazing. From what he could tell, the woman knew how to cook.
The beep of the microwave drew his attention away from thoughts of his new employee slash roommate, and he grabbed his dinner, choosing to sit at the counter and eat, rather than at the table.
He was two bites into his steak and practically moaning from how good it tasted when the sound of an infant wailing down the hallway made him pause mid-chew.
Crap.
He dropped his fork to his plate and took off at a steady lope down the hall toward Sophie’s room.
He was almost there when the sound of Brahms’s “Lullaby” made him stop in his tracks.
“Lullaby and good night, with pink roses bedight, with lilies o’er spread … ”
He knew her singing voice was going to be soothing and beautiful.
She alternated between gentle hums and soft, quiet lyrics.
With an ache in his heart, he stepped forward and peered into the dark room. Isobel stood with her back to him, swaying softly.
He entered the bedroom, the floor creaking on the threshold of the door from his big frame and causing Isobel’s body to stiffen and the singing to stop. She turned around to face him, Sophie in her arms.
Aaron’s cock immediately jerked in his jeans.
Fuck.
Isobel’s pajamas, although not a see-through teddy, were hot as fuck—a tight black tank top with a low cut and blue and black plaid pajama pants that hung disastrously low on her hips, showing off a very tight, very tanned midriff. And fuck almighty, was that a navel piercing?
He held back the groan deep in his throat as best he could and averted his eyes to the floor, then to the top of Sophie’s head, and finally to the dark, blank wall behind Isobel’s head.