by Hart, Emma
She clasped her hands in front of her body, swayed, and looked away. Contemplation crossed her tiny features before she grabbed her dress. “My dwess might get dirty.”
The princess room made a lot of sense.
“Nope. And if you’re careful, it won’t even get wet.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as sure can be.”
She sighed. “Okay, but if my dwess gets wet or dirty, I’m telling Daddy.”
“I can’t argue with that. Grab the sponge,” I instructed. “And squeeze it really, really hard.”
Ellie lifted the sponge as high as she could and squeezed.
Water splashed.
Everywhere.
She squealed as it splatted her dress.
“Okay, not that high.” I lowered her hands. “Right there. It’s okay, it’s just water. It’ll dry.”
She looked at me dubiously, but tried again, albeit with a few scathing looks at the wet spots on her very pretty dress. “Like this?”
“Yes!” I smiled as she squeezed the sponge’s excess water out a couple inches above the bucket. “Now, rub this bit of wall here and get the paper wet. You might have to do it a couple times.”
She scooted over.
She kicked the bucket.
I just caught it before it splashed everywhere—not that it saved my booted feet, of course.
Awesome. I now had to spend the rest of the day with wet shoes and wet boots.
“I’m sowwy!” Ellie looked at me with wide eyes. “I didn’t see it!”
Reason number two I disliked kids. They didn’t “see” anything.
“It’s okay,” I said, moving the bright red bucket out of the tiny tornado’s path of destruction. “It’s just water, right? You should wash the wall now before the sponge gets too dry, okay?”
“Okay. Here?”
“Right there.”
Ellie wiped the sponge across the wall a few times. “Wet enuss?”
I touched my fingertips to it. Only just. “Perfect,” I said to her.
She grinned.
“Fingers out the way,” I instructed. “Just in case.”
She held her arms above her head…And dropped the sponge into the bucket. Water splattered up my leg, but I ignored it and scraped the damp paper down the wall until it was big enough for her to grab.
“Okay, now, grab it.” I gently held it out.
She pinched it with her finger and thumb. Slowly, she pulled, leaning backwards as she ripped the paper from the wall.
“Careful. You’re going to—”
Thud.
She hit the ground with her full weight, her butt slamming into the floor and rocking the already-unsafe floorboard. She stared up at me with wide eyes, the bit of wallpaper tucked safely in the palm of her hand.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs.
“What the—” Brantley stormed into the room, stopping in the doorway, gripping either side, and staring at us both before his gaze homed in on Ellie. “Ellie!”
“Look, Daddy! I helping!” She grinned and held up the bit of wallpaper. “Kawi said I could pull the paper offt!”
He blinked at her—again and again. Finally, he turned his gaze to me. It wasn’t angry or annoyed, just…mildly amused and curious.
“She wanted to pull the paper off. I tried to tell her she’d fall, then she fell. She tore it a little too fast.” I pinched two fingers together.
He sighed, running his hand through his hair. “Damn,” he breathed. “That girl. I swear.”
“Are you angwy?” Ellie whispered.
“No, princess. No.” Brantley came over to her and crouched down, kissing the top of her head. “I heard a bang and got scared. Maybe you should come down for a snack and let Kali finish her work now.”
“What if Kawi’s hungry?”
“I have a lunch date with my best friend,” I reassured her. “Don’t worry. I’ll go for an hour then I’ll be right back.”
Ellie looked at me. “Can I help you aster?”
I looked to Brantley for confirmation. I wasn’t a fan of the idea, but if she agreed to pull the paper slowly and carefully, I couldn’t say no.
“Paper only,” he said to her. “And you do exactly what Kali says.”
I nodded to agree.
“And you eat your fruit snack and all your lunch up before I say yes,” Brantley agreed, sliding her hair behind her ear. “Is that a deal?”
Ellie sighed heavily before holding out her little hand. “That’s a deal.”
Chapter Five
And that was how I ended up with two helpers on Tuesday morning.
Apparently, just taking one twin wasn’t enough. Thanks to Ellie’s help yesterday, I’d barely gotten through her room, never mind starting Eli’s the way I’d planned to.
However, today was a new day, and that new day involved Brantley joining me with a scraper and sponge while the kids used their face cloths and plastic, toy knives he’d dug out of one of the mountains of boxes.
It was awkward. I didn’t enjoy having help when I was working unless it was someone in the business or my dad, but it was even worse when the guy helping me was as hot as Brantley.
All the hot guys I knew, I’d known for years. We were friends, and aside from misplaced teenage crushes and a few—ahem—slightly inappropriate adult fantasies I’d since grown out of, I couldn’t see them that way anymore. Our relationship was mostly business now, and it was pretty obvious that my dating life was severely lacking in the hot guy department.
Well, the decent hot guy department.
Not to mention we had nothing to talk about. I didn’t know a damn thing about him, and after my foot-in-mouth moment yesterday, I was afraid to ask.
Honestly, I’d probably mean to say, “How are you?” and it would come out, “How big is your cock?”
That’s just the way it was for me.
And it wasn’t the least bit appropriate with the tiny people on the other side of the room. Who were making absolutely no progress with their paper scraping. But then they were using bright pink and blue plastic knives, so what did I expect?
“So,” Brantley said, breaking the agonizingly awkward silence that had lingered between us for almost an hour. “What made you go into building? Handywork? What do you call it?”
“Handywork, generally, because we do a bit of everything.” I peeled a long strip off paper off the wall.
God, it was so satisfying. Almost comparable to an orgasm.
Jesus. I needed to get laid. Or a life.
Preferably a life in which I got laid. Regularly.
“Interesting. Your dad is a carpenter?”
I nodded. “He loves it all, but that’s his true passion. He’s the reason I do this.”
“It’s different, don’t you think? I’ve never met any woman who wanted to go into this field.”
“Different is a word for it,” I said slowly. “I don’t think it’s the career I chose. More in that it chose me, and I fell in love with it as a young girl. Now, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I don’t think I could do anything else.”
“Really? You wouldn’t do anything else?”
“I’m gonna be a superhewo,” Eli said, knocking the knife against the wall.
Ellie blew a raspberry. “You can’t fwy,” she said in that way only four-year-olds can—sarcasm and sass wrapped up in innocence. “Superhewos have to fwy.”
“Not true,” Brantley replied. “Most of them can’t actually fly.”
Eli grinned. “I need a cape and then I can!”
“Capes don’t make you fwy!” Ellie shouted, pointing her plastic knife at him. “Magic makes you fwy!”
“Superhewos aren’t magic! They’re super!”
Well. That was a good argument.
“Superhewos are stupid,” Ellie carried on. “Who wants to be beaten up by bad guys? You should be a pwincess instead.”
Eli wrinkled his face up as if the idea was completely disgustin
g. “Only girls are pwincesses!”
“Then I’ll be a pwincess and you can’t come in my castle!”
“I’ll destroy your castle!”
“Okay!” Brantley put down his scraper and stepped between them, then crouched down. “Ellie, if you want to be a princess, be a princess. But it’s only nice to let your brother in your castle, okay? And Eli—if you destroy her castle, that makes you a super-villain, not a super-hero.”
Eli frowned.
“You’ll be Loki and not Thor.”
“I don’t wanna be Woki,” he said in a small voice. “Ewwie, if you wet me in your castle, I won’t break it.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “Will you save my castle from super-viw—super…bad people?”
Brantley fought a smile.
“Only if you have candy.”
“Okay. I have candy.”
“Shake hands,” Brantley ordered. “Then it’s the law.”
I raised my eyebrows. The law? Wasn’t that slightly extreme?
Their little hands met in the middle and they shook three times.
“Do they ever not fight?” I asked when he rejoined me.
He opened his mouth to answer, then paused, looking from the twins to me, clearly considering his answer. “I don’t know…It’s been a long time since we had a day without fighting. They’re so similar, I don’t think they know how not to disagree.”
That made sense. “Well, I have to admit that’s the strangest argument I’ve ever been privy to.”
He dipped his head as he picked up his scraper and laughed quietly. “Don’t put your expectations so low. There’s every chance you’ll hear something way weirder than that before you’re done here.”
“Really?”
He looked me dead in the eye and said, “Last night, after bathtime, we had an argument over who has the best genitals.”
I blinked at him. “The best…genitals,” I echoed.
What the hell?
“Eli insisted it was his because he can play with it. I told him we’d revisit this conversation in ten years.”
I snorted, quickly clapping my hand over my mouth to disguise the dreadful noise.
Brantley had caught it, though, and he flashed me a quick smirk, his turquoise eyes shining with mirth. Then, he turned away, back to the wall he’d been working on.
My stomach flipped completely inappropriately at the brief eye contact we’d had then.
I swallowed had and focused back on my work.
The sooner this room was done, the sooner I got my space back.
***
Hours later, all the paper was off, and the first coat of base paint was on Ellie’s room. An obnoxious shade of green had been the paint beneath the paper—yellow and red in Eli’s room—and it was going to take several coats of white just to cover it up.
I hadn’t been anticipating that. And that little detail had screwed with my plan, because I needed at least one more day to get that done, which pushed back my timeline by probably two or three. There wasn’t a chance in hell I was putting that floor in until the walls were done, done, done.
I yawned as I dumped my stuff in the back of my truck. I’d left the paint and roller after cleaning it in the bathroom, because I knew that would be my day tomorrow: painting and more painting.
What I needed right now was a hot shower. My shoulders killed from all the scraping and holding my arms above my head, and my neck was aching from it, too.
And a nap. God, I needed a nap. Or three…or four…
The most terrifying thing about this was the fact I kept wondering…Would I have to battle the kids all the time? Or did Brantley hear my silent questions to keep them away? Soon enough, I’d be doing more work and bringing other people in to fit the floors and do the electrics. I had my friend, Eric, coming in on Wednesday to look over the electrics of their rooms.
With any luck, he’d keep them out of the way.
I had a burning question: What the hell was he doing here, in Rock Bay?
I knew his wife died, but was that enough of a reason to move here? Colorado to California wasn’t exactly the other side of the country, but it was far enough from his family, whom I presumed still lived in Denver.
I had no place wondering it. It was none of my business, but I had a big issue when it came to what was my business and what wasn’t. More to the point: I didn’t care. I was like a dog with a bone when there was information to be had, and I blamed that on living in such a small town.
I always knew everything about everybody, so when I was faced with a situation where I didn’t…I didn’t like it much.
In fact, I was kinda twitchy about it.
Brush it off, I told myself. Forget about it. It really, really was none of my business.
I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel as I pulled into my driveway. I pushed the stick into neutral and killed the engine with a twist of the key. The echo of my keyrings as they jingled through the cab of the truck, and I sighed, sitting back in my seat.
After staring at the side of my house for a moment, I pulled my cell out of my pocket and texted Jayda.
Me: Are you at work?
Jayda: About to start. Got 5. What’s up?
Me: Tell me that Hot Dad’s reasons for moving here are none of my business.
Jayda: Hot Dad’s reasons for moving here are none of your business
Me: THANK YOU
Jayda: But they are my business
Me: I take it back
Jayda: Why did Hot Dad move here?
Me: Idk. That’s the point
Jayda: Find out
Me: You’re supposed to be making sure I DON’T
Jayda: It’s Hot Dad or Mr. Kinky Sub’s
Me: Don’t even
Jayda: I know your MatchPlus password
Me: You’re a bitch
Jayda: *devil emojis*
Ugh.
I locked my phone, refusing to reply, and hopped out of my truck. This wasn’t what I signed up. Had Jayda even seen him, or was she operating solely on the Rock Bay Gossip Vine?
Wait—no. I knew the answer to that. She’d probably been grocery shopping an hour after him and now she was a fucking expert in the Hot Dad.
Damn my life, I needed to stop calling him that. It wasn’t going to help the awkwardness I felt around him.
I didn’t know a hot guy that wasn’t my friend. And I absolutely had no time in my life for someone with children.
Hadn’t I just turned down a guy on the dating site because he had a kid?
Yes. Yes, I had. I was shallow and selfish, and I was okay with that. I didn’t picture my life with kids in it. I was the person who, when asked, “When are you having kids?” said, “Never. I don’t want them.”
At least, not right now. Maybe that would change in the future, but right now, in the place I was in my life, I was happy with my choice. Jayda was desperate to meet Mr. Right and settle down, but all I wanted was Mr. Oh-Right-There unless he didn’t want kids either.
I was weird, and I was okay with that. At least according to everyone in Rock Bay I was weird.
But I was a handywoman, so I was automatically weird in their eyes.
I let myself into my house, dumped my keys on the side table, watching lamely as they slid over the back of the table and onto the floor with a clink.
“Whatever,” I muttered to myself, leaving them there until I had to lock the door later.
This was Rock Bay. The closest thing to robbery that had ever happened here was when Mr. Jenkins forgot his pants—outer and under—and ran down the middle of Main Street with his manhood swinging side to side.
What was stolen?
My eyesight. Albeit briefly.
Actually, now I though about it, I didn’t think I’d been able to look him in the eye for two years.
Maybe that was for the best.
I pulled water from my fridge and stared at the bottle before opening it. I was too tired to even do that. The work had
been more rigorous, mostly thanks to the twins’ major fail at getting any paper at all off the walls and Brantley having to finally leave me alone to get it done.
Brantley.
Turquoise eyes flashed in my mind.
I shook off the thought and swigged the ice-cold water. By the time I swallowed it, the memory of his eyes had disappeared, and I made the executive decision in the Life of Kali to order pizza from the local pizza place.
Ten minutes later, I was on my sofa in yoga pants. Discarding the water for wine—I’d give Jesus a run for his money if I didn’t have to use my fridge to change it—I put my achy feet on my coffee table and leaned right back against the back cushions.
With Friends season five on my TV, I set my phone on my lap and tapped the dating site’s app.
That was my first mistake.
My second was reading my messages.
The first was okay—cringey, but not bad, as far as it went.
The second?
“Hot, horny cuckold for you and your dom partner. Will let you chain me to your floor while he fucks you and pretends I’m your boyfriend.”
I hit delete before my face had wrinkled in disgust.
Yep.
That was enough MatchPlus for tonight.
Maybe my entire week.
Chapter Six
Two days passed without me seeing either Brantley or the twins. By the time Thursday lunchtime rolled around, I’d finished the base coat on Ellie’s room and was about to start the final two coats in Eli’s room. Eric was in Ellie’s room measuring her floor and weighing up what he needed to do to fix it up.
“Kali?” He poked his head in Eli’s room, his dark-blond hair swishing in front of his eyes. “I have a lunch meeting. Do you mind if I come back when I’m done?”
I put down the paint can and looked at him with a smile. “That’s fine. You’re working on your time, not mine.” I winked at him. “I’d just like Eli’s floor done so I know when I need to finish painting.”
He held his hands up. “Don’t worry, babe. I’ve got you covered. It doesn’t take me half as long as it takes you to figure out some flooring.”
“Do I look like flooring is my expertise?”
“No.” He grinned lopsidedly. “Plenty of other things, though…”