by Pippa Grant
What are you wearing is probably not what I should lead with here. “Hey. You busy?”
“No, I—Zoe Elizabeth, put your brother down—I’m good. Breathing through my nose. Not planning to sell my children to a wolf pack. Doing just—Piper. We do not pull our pants down and moon our family at the breakfast table.” She snorts like an angry rhinoceros to punctuate her statement.
Even though I’m an ocean away, I back up from the window in my hotel room to get out of the blast zone.
No phone sex.
Right.
Dammit. “I can call back later. Or you can call me. Whenever. Anytime.”
“So help me, if you hang up this phone, I might not have three children when you get back to the States.” She blows out a loud breath. “And I don’t actually mean that, but—Hudson Andrew Scott, DO NOT TOUCH YOUR SISTER’S HEARING AID. Jeremiah was a bullfrog, I cannot with all of you this morning. Oh my god, why is the squirrel in the refrigerator?”
There’s a mass of voices and shrieks on the other end of the phone.
A door slams, and all goes quiet.
“Sorry,” Ingrid mutters. “You didn’t need to hear that.”
“I called Tripp once when James was giving Emma a bath in the toilet.”
“Oh my god.”
“Not the best discovery for a guy dealing with hypochondria…”
“I just want to pull my hair out. We do this every morning. Seven days a week. We always have somewhere to be, but can they just eat breakfast and brush their teeth and get dressed and get out the door without fighting or breaking something or telling me they forgot they have a science project due tomorrow and we were supposed to be growing mold for the last two weeks? No. No, they cannot. And there was a squirrel in my refrigerator. Do you know what that means? That means if I hadn’t opened the fridge door before we left, I’d come home to half the things in my fridge eaten by the dead squirrel laying in the middle of it. How is this my life? How? Do you know when I was in the Army, I once broke up with a roommate because she left cups on the coffee table without using coasters? And now I’m happy if all the laundry in my bedroom is shoved in a small pile in my corner because it means the kids have just picked stuff out of it all week so there’s less to fold when I finally get around to it.”
“Spa day.”
“When the fuck am I supposed to do that, Levi? When? WHEN?”
She blows another breath over the phone line as I trip over my own two feet retreating from my tactical error.
Single mom. No family. Friends just as busy as she is.
Right.
“Sorry,” she says. Swear I can hear her wincing. “Sorry. Not your fault. I shouldn’t yell. Sorry. Seriously. Bad time.”
“Hey, let it out. Can’t keep it bottled up all the time.”
“Are you serious?”
“Back in our Bro Code days, Davis used to get amped up when the local reporters would ask what his mom thought of all of his tattoos, or if it was true he was dating an actress as old as his parents. We had scream time on the bus to help him cope. All five of us. We’d yell like banshees, call each other names, fight about who used whose toothbrush and who kept putting dirty socks in whose bunk. Yell away. Thick skin. I can take it.”
“You have lived the weirdest life.”
I reach across the bed and grab my laptop. “If you ever need a babysitter, let me know. Tripp has one or two he trusts, which means they’re basically qualified to take care of royalty.”
“Thank you, but it’s not necessary. I’ve got this. I do. I have babysitters. I have friends. I just—some mornings I need to blow off steam. Zoe’s almost ten. Ten. I don’t have any idea how I’m old enough to have a child with a double-digit age, especially when she was born yesterday—and I don’t mean that in a she’s stupid way—but the next thing I know, even Hudson will be leaving the nest, and as much as they drive me crazy some days, I don’t ever want them looking back and saying I wasn’t there and that I didn’t do everything I could to help them find their way in the world.”
I pause in the middle of starting an email to my brother to ask for his favorite babysitters’ names. “Ingrid. You’re like supermom. They’ll know.”
“But will they?”
“Maybe by the time they’re forty.”
She laughs, but it doesn’t sound like she’s amused. “If I’m lucky.”
I wonder how many of these days my mom had when I was growing up.
Probably more than I want to know.
“You know what might help?”
“Traveling to a dimension where time moves in a way that I can have a full spa day in the three minutes before I need to go back out and face the monsters of my loins?”
“Phone sex has to be a close second, right?”
“Moooooom! Hudson showed me his penis!”
Ingrid sighs the kind of heavy sigh that settles on me like a blanket made of iron.
A guy who’s gone all the time, adding more things to her to-do list, demanding more of her time when she already has so little of it to herself, is not what she needs.
Or maybe I can be exactly what she needs for a little bit. “Next week. You pick the day and time. I’ll find you a babysitter, and then I’ll fix you dinner. My place. Stay as late as you want. Or leave as early as you want. Just—let me give you a night off. Or an afternoon off. Or—”
“WHAAAAA! ZOE HIT ME!”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
She needs someone who can be there. “Right. You need to go. I’ll text you later. No rush in replying. Sorry. Forgot it was breakfast time there.” Because I’m a self-centered asshole who wanted to distract myself from boredom with phone sex with my not-girlfriend.
“Did you just offer to find a babysitter for me?” she asks quietly while her kids keep yelling in the background.
There’s a landmine hidden in her voice. “I didn’t mean you’re not capable,” I sputter. “I just meant—”
“That you’d take it off my plate.” She’s getting quieter and quieter.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No. No. That’s—thank you. That’s incredibly thoughtful.”
“I don’t want to be a complication.”
A soft laugh carries over the miles, and she says something I miss over the sound of her kids all calling her.
I don’t know how she does it.
Some days I can barely handle myself, but she’s there running her life and three others’ like a boss.
“Text me later,” I say. “Whenever. You’ve got your hands full.”
“Thank you.” She says a quick goodbye, and then she’s gone.
It’s fine. She needed to go. Her kids are her life. I’m a side distraction.
So why do I want to be there to offer to walk Hudson to preschool and help put together a science experiment on non-existent mold?
I decide it’s because I’m a nice guy.
Ego? I can live with that.
Having my world turned upside down by a woman who’s filling in cracks that I didn’t even know I had?
When I’m everything she doesn’t need?
Not ready to face that yet.
So I tell myself I’m being melodramatic and go in search of a pretzel instead.
Twenty
Ingrid
Penny for Your Thoughts is decorated for Christmas. The shelves are stocked, staff schedules are set, babysitters are booked, and we are officially ready for the kick-off to the holiday season in four days.
My kids are nearly ready for bed.
And I am more than ready for one Mr. Levi Wilson to be back in Copper Valley.
He’s not due back from Germany until tomorrow sometime, but since he called late last week, we’ve been texting like crazy, and we have a date.
A date.
I mean, a fling kind of date, but still. Portia’s taking all three kids for a sleepover Wednesday night. I went shopping for lingerie. And Levi’s cooking.
For me.
At his place.
Where there are no children, no squirrels, and no interruptions.
But I have to get through tonight first, then tomorrow, and then all day Wednesday. And I can’t quite stay busy enough to distract myself from thinking about him.
And a night of grown-ups being grown-ups.
Talking without interruption. Eating hot food while it’s hot and cold food while it’s cold.
Sex.
We are so having sex.
“Mom! Hudson licked my arm!”
“Zoe said Mr. Axolotl is a fibbamibbian!”
“He is an amphibian! Ow! Piper! What are you doing?”
I love my children. I do. And I want them to remember childhood with fond memories of doing the things they loved and knowing that I love them.
But I am so ready for Wednesday night. Forty-eight hours.
Forty-eight hours until I get my first real night off in—actually, I’m not going to finish that sentence.
It’s for the best.
I finish folding the last of the laundry and head out of my room with the kids’ stuff in a basket. “Zoe. Shower. Hudson. Back to your room. Piper, put your—Piper.” I nudge her with my foot, since she’s laying in the middle of the hallway, poring over the same Sports Illustrated issue she’s read three times a day since it arrived over the summer, ignoring me, which means she took her hearing aids out so she didn’t have to listen to her brother and sister argue.
She looks up at me.
My hands are full—no signing get your tush to your room and get ready for bed, so I settle for giving her a mom look.
She rolls her eyes.
Rolls. Her. Eyes.
She’s seven.
And she’s flipping back to Sports Illustrated like it’s more important than the mom look. Even the squirrel on her shoulder is ignoring me. “Ares is in this issue.”
I nudge her again, which earns me a dirty look from Skippy. I’m very aware of which issue she’s reading, because it’s the only issue she ever reads. “Bed,” I say, very distinctly, when she scowls up at me. “Skippy too.”
“Ares’s mom didn’t make him go to bed.”
“Yes, she did. He probably talks in that article about how important sleep is, which you can finish reading tomorrow.” It’s pointless to argue. She’s not looking at me, and even if she was, her lip-reading skills only get us so far.
But she climbs off the floor, tucks the magazine under her arm, cradles the squirrel, and heads to her bedroom.
I nudge her again, prop the laundry basket on one hip, and point to my ear.
“They were being annoying,” she grumbles.
I’m suddenly jolted sideways, and I twist in time to grab Hudson by the arm while Piper shrieks and Skippy uses all of our heads as springboards to get back to the living room. “No running in the hallway.”
“Super Axolotl to the rescue!” he crows. “’Scuse me, ma’am, let me put out that fire!”
He points his buggy-eyed amphibian toy at me, hisses like he’s spraying water, and grins.
Zoe stomps out of her room too. “Quit spraying Mom, Hudson. That’s rude.”
“You’re rude!”
“No, I’m helpful. You’re a baby.”
I growl.
Both of my children slide glares at each other, but they also go their separate ways.
An hour later, I collapse on the couch, everyone tucked in, the squirrel in his cage, and I’m staring at the TV, which is muted on a nature channel. I want to read a book or listen to an audiobook, but my nervous energy kicks up and sends me right back up to my feet.
When is Levi getting back?
Will it be first thing in the morning or in the afternoon? Or late tomorrow night?
I don’t know.
And does it matter?
Not really. I have a full day at the shop tomorrow, plus the girls are off, and Hudson only has half a day, and then there’s the preschool Thanksgiving program tomorrow night.
Huh.
I haven’t scrubbed the stovetop in a while. Probably time.
Maybe I’ll tackle the fridge while I’m at it. We have Thanksgiving dinner at Portia’s every year, so it’s not like I’d be cleaning something to make a massive mess again in a few days.
Not that my kids will let anything stay clean more than thirty minutes, but still.
It’s a grown-up thing to do, and one that usually gets neglected.
I cue up my audiobook app and try to concentrate on the mystery I’ve been listening to while I clean, but I’m honestly stealing more and more glances at my text messages.
Do I text Levi?
Do I leave him alone?
I sent the last message in our text string, so technically, it’s his turn. I don’t know his exact schedule, but I know it’s the middle of the night in Germany.
And I know I’m missing an entire chapter in this book.
But my stovetop is gleaming.
I’ve just emptied my fruit and veggie drawers from my fridge to scrub the hell out of them—you don’t want to know what I found in the bottom of the veggie drawer, and I probably couldn’t even tell you what it originally was if you asked—when my phone rings.
Yes!
Levi’s calling.
It takes me four swipes to answer because my hands are a disaster, and I might be too. “Hey, you!”
Do I sound like a dork?
I think I sound like a desperate, breathless dork.
“Hey. Your kids asleep?”
Yes! Finally. Phone sex. I am so in. “In theory. They’re not volunteering to help me scrub the fridge, at any rate. Why aren’t you asleep?”
“It’s not usually a good idea to sleep in alleys. Tried it once. Didn’t like it.”
“Why are you in an alley?”
“Because I don’t have a key or the code to your security system, and unlike some people I used to be in a band with, I don’t randomly break into my friends’ places.”
I drop the vegetable drawer. “Shit!” I hiss as the noise echoes through the apartment.
“Ingrid?”
“You’re here?” Shit shit shit. Did I wake my kids? Tell me I didn’t wake my kids.
“Yeah, and I gave my security detail the night off, because I was supposed to stay home. If you want me to leave—”
“No! No. Stay. I’ll be right—erp—down.”
That erp?
That’s me sliding on a wet spot on my kitchen linoleum in my rush to get to the door.
Don’t slip and die, Ingrid. Don’t slip and die.
We could be heading to serious booty call time.
I’m halfway down the stairs before I remember I’m in leggings with a rip in the thigh and one of my hot mess mom T-shirts.
I don’t even want to think about the underwear underneath. Of which there are only panties, because I released the krakens an hour ago.
So. The plan.
Let him in. Go change. Hope the kids stay in bed.
I should’ve done better sleep training. Nightly meditation or something. Noise machines that induce deeper sleep.
Plus fashion training for me, if only to give myself a subconscious boost.
Right now, I’m not certain he won’t take one look at me, remember what he’s actually getting out of this deal, and decide to head home.
I kill the alarm system and unlock the back door, and he slips out of a black Audi and into the dim stockroom.
Where I’m in a ratty outfit that even I wouldn’t wear to get drive-thru Starbucks, smelling like bleach and oven cleaner, he’s in cargo pants, a button-down shirt, and a leather jacket, and he smells like fresh bread and a chai latte. His hair’s perfect—mine’s falling out of a makeshift bun—and despite subtle bluish bags beneath his eyes suggesting he needs three solid days of sleep, everything else about his scruffy face says I could make you scream my name in four-point-three seconds.
“You’re home early,” I blurt. My hands are raw and smelly, but I coul
dn’t keep them to myself if I tried. They have to touch him. To prove he’s not a hallucination—not the man, and not the smile teasing his full lips, and not the way his eyes are devouring me. “And you came here?”
“Had to. The pretzels aren’t as good the next day.”
I’m stroking his chest as he slips one arm around my waist and reaches into his jacket to pull out a white bakery bag that instantly makes my mouth water.
I swallow and stare at him. “No. Way.”
Pretzels, a man who smells like a corner tea shop, and that smile he aims at me—this is normal for a fling, right?
I’m soaking up extra happiness because it’s been so long since I’ve been spoiled by a man.
It’s not that I’m falling hard for someone who would be around even less than Daniel was.
I don’t have a love-at-first-attention problem. Really.
“It’s not gelato,” he says.
“Bread is always the answer.” I glance at the stairs, then back at the pretzel bag.
Would I be a horrible person if I scarfed it down right here, in the midst of boxes and books in my stockroom, rather than risk the smell of the pretzel waking my kids?
Also, would it totally turn Levi off if I did?
He chuckles like he knows what’s actually turning me on at the moment, and my face warms. “I’m glad to see you too,” I tell him. “It’s not just about the pretzel. I ran down here to let you in before you mentioned pretzels. Real pretzels? German pretzels? Oh my god. I did not see this coming.”
“You don’t want to share.”
Gah, that smile.
And he hasn’t stopped smiling at me since I shut the door. It’s like he thinks my pretzel-deprived-when-I-didn’t-even-know-I-wanted-one, questionably-fashioned, makeup-free, smelling-like-cleaner self is adorable or something.
“The vegetables! Crap. I think I left my fridge open.”
“Do you still have a pet squirrel?”
“Yes. Caged. I don’t think he can pick the lock yet, but clearly…I need to go shut my fridge.” I stick my nose in the bakery bag and inhale, almost have a nosegasm on the spot, and then promise the pretzel I’ll be back ASAP. “Five minutes,” I tell Levi. “Head up to the loft. I’ll meet you there.”
“Is Hudson comatose?”
I snort with laughter, but it could easily be a sob. Legit question. “I have a baby monitor, and once I set the alarm again, if he tries to sneak out, we’ll know it. Go on. Shoo. To the loft, I mean. Don’t leave. If I’m hallucinating you, I will be very pissed off.”