Single Dad Next Door

by Cathryn Fox

  He laughs and says, “It’s not…” he shakes his head. “Never mind. So, you agree then, that something’s not firing right?”

  Firing? Oh, things were firing all right, and lighting up my body like a goddamn Fourth of July celebration.

  Damn him.

  Damn Mother Nature.

  Damn dim-witted moths.

  2

  Jaxon

  I grab the rag from my back pocket and swipe a bead of moisture from my forehead, as the girl from the upstairs bedroom stands next to me, looking so goddamn hot in her tight AC/DC t-shirt and ripped jean shorts that her car isn’t the only thing close to overheating. If I didn’t love the band before, I sure as hell would now.

  She might have lived next to me for two months, and numerous times I’ve glimpsed her moving around her bedroom with little to nothing on, but this is the first time I’ve been so close to her—and it’s making it a little fucking hard to breathe.

  Talk about fueling all my college girl fantasies.

  Not only is she gorgeous, everything about her, from the swell of her cleavage, her barely-there curves, to legs that go on for miles, reminds me it’s been a long-ass time since I’ve had a woman in my bed. It’s not that women are on my do without list, which is sizable now that I’m the sole caregiver to a five-year-old girl. It’s just that after working all day and being a full-time single parent at night, it leaves little time for anything else. That, and I have to be very careful who I let into my daughter’s life. No way will I ever let anyone hurt her again.

  My sexy neighbor bends over the hood to examine the car again, and my cock twitches—very well aware of how long it’s been since it’s been touched, too. I try not to chuckle as she tugs on some wires, acting like she knows what she’s doing. A moment later, she stands and shifts from one foot to another, her nervous gaze darting from me, to the cars passing by, back to the engine.

  “Will it take long?” she asks, as I resist the urge to adjust my thickening cock.

  Probably not.

  “Uh…” I search for my words, my hard cock interfering with my brain process.

  Her eyes fly back to mine. “The car, I mean. Will it take long?” she explains, like I’d misunderstood what she’d meant the first time. I didn’t. I just had my mind on other things that likely wouldn’t take long, you know, because of the huge hard on I’m sporting at eight in the morning.

  I check my watch. “Not long, but I won’t be able to get at it for a bit.”

  She blinks thick lashes over the prettiest brown eyes I’ve ever seen. “Um…how much will it cost, do you think?”

  Her breathy question has me thinking about plunging my hands through her hair and bending her over the hood so I can fulfill all my dirty college-girl fantasies. All I can think about is fucking her until her roommates hear her screams.

  “Have you noticed the temperature gauge going high?”

  “Yeah, when I was at the stoplight last week, I noticed that.”

  “Well then, it’s not the spark plugs that are going to set you back. It’s the radiator. It needs to be replaced.”

  “Oh…damn.” She chews on her bottom lip and crinkles her nose. That’s when her scent hits me. Peaches. Why the fuck does she have to smell like sweet peaches? My goddamn favorite fruit. “Maybe we better forget this.”

  She starts to back away, and I have no idea why, but I’m not ready for this conversation to be over. “Look, I can probably get you a good deal on one, cut your costs in half, and I can do the labor for free.”

  Jesus, what the fuck am I doing?

  “I can’t—”

  Just then Cassie sticks her head out the upstairs window. “Daddy, I can’t find my shoes.”

  I shade the early morning sun from my eye and my heart misses a beat the way it always does when I see my little girl. “We came in the back door last night, remember?”

  “Right.”

  Cassie disappears and I hear my neighbor mumbling under her breath. Apparently, a broken-down car, one she can’t afford to have fixed, is going to make her late for class.

  I shove the rag back into my pocket and close the hood. “What time do you need to be there?”

  She blinks up at me. “What?”

  The lock clicks into place. “School. What time do you have to be there?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “I can get you there on time.” I nod toward the window my daughter just stuck her head out of. “I’ll drop Cassie off, then take you.”

  She shakes her head fast. “I don’t want to put you out like that.”

  Put me out? Oh, she can put me out anytime, or better yet, put out for me.

  I scrub the scruff on my chin. “It’s not a problem…uh...shit, I don’t even know your name.”

  “Rachel,” she says.

  “Jaxon.” I hold a hand out for her to shake it, and she hesitates, going back to shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Cassie does that when she has to go to the bathroom. But I don’t think that’s Rachel’s problem. Tension vibrates from her, and I take in the almost fearful way she’s staring at my hand. Why the fuck is she afraid of me? Is it the murder rap her friends were talking about, or is it something else altogether?

  I eye her carefully, note the way she continually casts uneasy glances over her shoulder as she shifts. I might be on the straight and narrow now, but over the years I’d be dragged up and kicked around. I’d survived playground bullies, cruel foster parents, and poverty, so yeah, I know a girl on the run when I see one.

  “Jaxon Morgan,” I say and continue to hold my hand out, and think back to the night she showed up here, with nothing but a rundown car and her belongings in a backpack. No family or friends to help. While I realize trouble is the last thing I need in my life—with the in-laws trying to prove I’m an unfit parent—I can’t just turn my back on her. I’m not looking to be anyone’s savior, but Christ, it’s obvious this girl could use a fucking break.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Rachel.” I roll one shoulder as a strange kind of protectiveness grips me. “Just offering a ride and a deal on some car work. We’re neighbors after all, right?”

  She shoves her hand into mine, and I give it a squeeze. “Right, sorry…I…” She exhales and gives me a smile, like she wants to start over again. “I appreciate it. Thank you.”

  “Can you give me a minute to get Cassie’s lunch packed?”

  “Sure.”

  “Come have a seat inside the shop. Get out of the sun while I get her ready.” She snags her purse from her car, locks the doors behind her and follows me into the service bay, aka the bottom half of my house. I grab a piece of paper from behind the counter and gesture toward my cleanest chair. “Have a seat there, and fill in your contact information.”

  “Oh, okay. What do you need that for?”

  “Just in case I run into trouble working on the car and need to run something by you.” I give her a wink. “Since you know so much about fixing vehicles.”

  She smirks as she fishes a pen from her purse, and that’s when I realize how much I like her, how easy she is to be around. Not that I know her. I don’t. But I love how she shut down her roommates this morning when they were all staring at me. The only one I like watching me is her. Yeah, I caught her checking me out—and not just this morning.

  Dammit, don’t go there, Jaxon. Cassie needs stability, and you can’t bring trouble into your life.

  “I’ll be right back.” I dash up the stair, tug on a T-shirt and hurry into the kitchen. I grab Cassie’s empty cereal bowl and drop it into the sink. It teeters on top of the pile of dishes already stacked high. Cassie comes skipping down the hall.

  She holds her sneakers up for me to see. “I found them.”

  I grin at her, and run my hands over her hair. “Good girl. Are you ready?”

  “Yeah, but I want twisted pony, Daddy.”

  Twisted pony, aka top twisted pony braid. I groan inwardly. Even after watching the braiding ninj
as on YouTube, my big fingers struggle to get it right. According to Cassie, we usually end up with Nightmare Moon—a reference to the villain on My Little Pony. Sometimes I swear she asks just to torture me.

  “How about we just put it up into a ponytail.” My mind rushes back to the no-nonsense way Rachel wears her hair. While I like that, I’d love to pull the elastic out and watch those long curls spill over my sheet. I clear my throat. Fuck man, I need to stop fantasizing about my neighbor.

  “Please…” she says.

  “Okay, hurry, grab the elastic and brush. I have a customer downstairs and I need to give her a drive because her car is broken down.”

  As Cassie dashes back down the hall, I reach for her lunch box, but it hits the pile of dishes and two plates clatter to the floor and break.

  Fuck. I do not have time for this. “Cassie, don’t come in here,” I yell out.

  I crouch down and pick up the big shards of glass and drop them into the garbage can. One cuts my finger. “Shit.” I shove it into my mouth.

  “Are you okay?” My head jerks up to see a breathless Rachel standing in the doorway. “Sorry, I heard a crash, and thought you might need some help.” Her gaze leaves mine and takes in the state of my kitchen. Fuck, the in-laws are threatening to call child protection services. If they showed up now, I’d surely lose Cassie. But I’ve been so busy at work, and with Cassie starting kindergarten, I’d gotten a little behind on the housework. Then again, it’s also possible I got a little lax because they’ve been away for the last month, vacationing in the Caribbean. Apparently, their absent daughter, and my ‘unfit’ parenting hasn’t prevented them from jet-setting around the world.

  “Excuse the mess.”

  “No, it’s okay,” she says quickly, her t-shirt shifting over her breasts as she rests a shoulder against the kitchen doorframe and folds her arms. Does she have any idea how sexy she looks standing there? “You should see my bedroom.”

  “I…uh…I have seen your bedroom,” I say. “It’s always clean and tidy.”

  Her eyes go wide and a blush spreads across her cheeks. “You…you’ve seen my room?”

  “It’s across from mine, hard not to, right?”

  Hard being the key fucking word here. Cause yeah, that shit’s happening between my legs again.

  “Yeah, true. I can see yours, too. Not that I’m trying to look or anything. It’s just that sometimes when I’m up late studying, you have your light on, and your blinds open, and like you said, our windows are directly across from one another.” A nervous laugh catches in her throat. “I could toss you a slice of pizza. Sometimes I bring a pie home with me.” As she rambles on, I take in the flush on her cheeks. Damn if she isn’t sexy when flustered.

  “Rachel.”

  She stops for a moment, takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. “Yeah?”

  “Can you hand me the broom?” I gesture toward it, and she steps into the kitchen to hand it to me.

  “I’m not like my roommates though,” she starts up again. “And I want to apolog—”

  “Daddy, what happened?” Cassie gasps as she pokes her head into the kitchen, her big blue eyes wide as she takes in the broken dishes. “You’re bleeding.” She makes a move toward me, but Rachel runs and grabs her before she can walk on the glass.

  “I dropped a couple plates, and it’s just a little scratch. Stay there, okay, and get your shoes on. I don’t want you to get cut. And say hello to our new friend Rachel. She’s the client I’m giving a drive to.”

  Rachel crouches down to Cassie’s height, and smiles at her. “Hello, Cassie. I’ve seen you around but we’ve never really met before.”

  “You’re Daddy’s friend?”

  “Yes.”

  Cassie crinkles her nose. “You’re a girl.”

  “I am.”

  “Does the mean you’re his girlfriend?”

  “No, no,” Rachel says quickly and explains the difference between girl friend, and girlfriend.

  “You’re pretty,” Cassie says, and I glance up to see her holding her brush and elastics out. “Daddy was going to braid my hair and make me pretty, too.”

  “You don’t need your hair braided to make you pretty, but how about I do it for you, since your dad has to put a bandage on his hand.”

  Cassie leans into Rachel. “Daddy makes Nightmare Moon.”

  “Nightmare Moon, what is that?”

  “Her name is Princess Luna but when she’s evil they call her Nightmare Moon.”

  “So you’re saying your dad makes evil braids?”

  “I can hear you,” I say, but my heart is in my throat as I see how quickly my child has taken to our neighbor. Cassie has seen her around of course, and they’ve waved in passing, so truthfully Rachel isn’t a stranger to her. None of the college girls next door are.

  Rachel giggles with Cassie, and in my heart I know how much my little girl needs a mother, one who isn’t an addict and chose a life of drugs and partying over her family. I tried to help her, I really did, but in the end, she ran off with her dealer, without so much as a glance at us in the rearview mirror. I guess we weren’t enough for her to get clean. Then again, I was labeled a lowlife and was never enough for anyone to stick around. But I plan to do everything in my power to be enough for Cassie. Outside of her grandparents I’m all she has.

  My in-laws were always worried about me taking care of Cassie—considering my past—when they should have been worried about their own daughter. But they didn’t know what was really going on behind closed doors, and I didn’t want to be the one to shatter their image of their sweet Sarah, a college-educated girl from an upper-class family who veered off track. They blame me for that, but I was slowing down on the partying scene when I met her, and gave it up completely after Cassie was born.

  “I think I want a ponytail, like you,” Cassie says, bringing my thoughts back.

  “Easy enough.” Rachel holds her hand out for the brush and elastics, and Cassie hands them to her.

  Rachel stands, and turns Cassie around. As she combs out my daughter’s hair, I sweep up the rest of the glass, wash and bandage my finger, then grab Cassie’s lunch from the fridge. I drop the food into her plastic lunchbox, and look up to find the two girls chatting quietly.

  “Are you two whispering about me?” I ask

  “No,” they both say in unison, but from the grin on Rachel’s face, I know it’s a lie.

  “All right, come on. Let’s get you both to school.”

  “You go to school?” Cassie asks Rachel as we make our way downstairs and back outside.

  “I do?”

  “What grade are you in?”

  “Well, I’m in college?”

  “What’s college?”

  Rachel glances at me and I shake my head. “Chatty Cassie,” I say.

  I open the door to the back seat as Rachel grabs her backpack from her car. “In you go, kiddo.”

  Cassie climbs into her car-seat and buckles herself in. “Good?” I ask.

  “Good?” she says and picks up her mock iPad and turns it on. As music blares, Rachel slides into the passenger seat. Once we’re all buckled up, I back out of the driveway and head to Cassie’s school.

  Rachel casts me a glance. “You have your hands full.”

  I scrub my chin and flick on my signal. “Yeah. She’s definitely a full-time job, but I wouldn’t change it for the world.” Rachel shifts restlessly beside me, and I don’t miss the curiosity in her big brown eyes. “What?”

  “It’s not my business, but I take it her mom’s not in the picture.”

  I stiffen and grip the steering wheel tighter, and Rachel holds her hands up, palms out. “Sorry, none of my business. I wasn’t trying to pry.”

  “No, it’s okay. I just…” I pause, not wanting to divulge too much about myself. “You’re right, her mom’s not in the picture. She left a couple years ago and we’ve not seen her since. It’s just Cassie and me.”

  “I’m sorry, Jaxon.”

/>   “Yeah, me too,” I say, and clench down on my jaw.

  “I was thinking…”

  I cast her a quick glance, note the way she’s playing with the straps on her purse. “About?”

  “That you could use a little help around your place, and with Cassie. Everyone needs a break once in a while right? You’re giving me one with my car.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That maybe I could help you around the house. Cook, clean, babysit, teach you how to braid Cassie’s hair,” she says with a grin. “Although I hear you make a mean Nightmare Moon.”

  I laugh at that. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. What’s the going rate for something like that?” I ask. I’m not hurting for money. I have a very successful business, and have been thinking about hiring someone to help me with the house. I just haven’t found the time to look more into it. That, and I don’t trust too many people with my belongings—time in juvenile hall will do that to you—or with my daughter.

  “Well, I was thinking, instead of money, I could spend the next couple weeks working off the repairs to the car. You’re helping me, I’m helping you.”

  “Tit for tat?”

  Shit, now I’m thinking of her tits.

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  I mull that over as I pull up to Cassie’s school. I jump out as she unbuckles herself. The second I open her door, she hops from the car and is about to take off until I bend to give her a hug and kiss. “I’ll see you later, kiddo.”

  “Bye, Daddy. Bye, Rachel,” she says and I wave to the playground monitor as Cassie runs to catch up to her friends. I slide back into the car and pull in to traffic.

  “Okay, so tit for tat. I like it.”

  I like it a lot. Which is a real fucking problem.

  “Um, just one thing you should know, Jaxon.”

  “What’s that?”

  She continues to twist the strap of her purse. “What you heard this morning…from my friends.”

  I shake my head and laugh. “I heard a lot from your friends.”

  “Yeah, but the part about—”

  “Me having killed someone. For the record, I never killed anyone. Gave a few good beatings to a few bad people who deserved them, but I never murdered anyone.”