Upper Hand (Cedar Tree Book 5)

by Freya Barker

  “Sorry, Ma. I’m sorry, it’s just all a fucking mess. I’ll sort it—I promise—just look after Max for me, will ya? I’ll be in touch.” With a kiss on his son’s head and only a brief glance in my way, he walks straight to his truck, ignoring his mother’s plea for further explanation, and looking like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Yup, he’s got trouble. I make up my mind to put a bug in Gus’s ear, see what he can find out.

  I turn to find Beth standing a little forlorn on her front step with a now sleeping baby in her arms, watching her son drive off, and the worry is etched on her face. She knows it, too.

  “Let’s get the baby home,” I say again and her eyes snap to mine.

  “But—“

  “Let’s get off the lawn, go back to my place, put the little one down and figure it out over coffee. Okay?”

  She simply nods and looks around her at the car seat and bag that were left behind on her steps. She tries to balance Max on her shoulder while making a grab for the car seat.

  “Here, give that to me,” I reach for the seat and plop it on top of the walker. Beth follows behind with Max and the bag.

  “I’ve got to install his car seat.” Beth points out.

  “That’s just gonna wake him up. Give him to me.” I slide in the back seat and hold out my arms. After a brief hesitation, Beth leans in to deposit Max in my arms and his little baby body curls up against me easily. For a moment when Beth backs up, our eyes meet and a wan smile slips on her lips.

  “That baby looks good on you, Big Guy,” she teases, and I growl in response, which only makes the smile brighter. Good.

  -

  With Max boxed in with pillows on a quilt on the floor in Beth’s room, we settle in the kitchen with a pot of coffee on the go. Beth’s face is once again lined with worry.

  “He’s in trouble,” she says when she catches me watching her.

  “I know.”

  “It kills me, you know? Having him shut down like that. He’s not usually so closed off and bad-tempered.” She lets out a long shuddering breath, before adding. “Not sure what to do.”

  I take a minute to consider my response.

  “For starters, we’ll give Katie a call a little later and find out if we can borrow a travel bed, or crib, or something from them, so Max has a safe place to sleep. We can set him up in the other spare room, for now.” Katie is married to Caleb, both operatives for Gus’s company GFI. They worked together for years before their relationship developed into something lasting and they had a little boy, Mattias.

  “You want us to stay?” Beth seems surprised and frankly, so am I. I’d been quite convinced I was done with her, especially after finding out she’d been playing nice with my heel of a brother. I hadn’t wanted her here, but now that she is, I can’t envision letting her leave. Not now.

  “Seems like a decent enough solution. I mean for both of us. The doc doesn’t seem to think I can fend for myself just yet, not being able to drive and all, and you’re gonna need help looking after the little tyke. Seems like a win-win situation to me.” Even to my own ears it sounds like lame excuse, and the look on her face tells me she’s not sold on it either, but something inside me pushes me to keep her here at all cost. I didn’t like the way her son’s eyes were flicking around, scanning the darkness earlier. Although my gut instincts have let me down in the not so recent past, I’m not about to ignore the nagging feeling that whatever trouble he is in, he might just have dropped it on his mother’s doorstep, as well. Yeah, she and Max were much better off here, where I can keep an eye on them.

  “Look,” I reason, “you have a job to get back to sooner rather than later, and it’ll be some time for me to recover completely. You can’t take off work indefinitely, and surely I can come in handy looking after a two-year-old, every now and then.”

  She snorts loudly. “We’ll talk again when his energetic little body is fully awake, and we’ll see how you feel then.”

  How bad can it be?

  -

  -

  “Max, no. Don’t put the remote in the toilet, buddy.”

  Two-year-olds apparently haven’t quite grasped the skills of listening. My remote plunks wetly into the bowl and Max stands with a proud smile, watching it sink down. I just manage to save it from flushing down when my hand quickly grabs Max’s little one going for the lever on the tank.

  I had no idea—seriously not a clue—that a two-year-old angelic looking little boy, with dark curls and thick eyelashes that would make a drag queen happy, could wage such destruction on my house in just minutes.

  Apparently Max is not quite potty-trained, as is evident from my soaking wet quilt now tumbling in the washer. Beth had to run out to the store before Kendra would show, to get some diapers which his father had failed to pack. Left me in charge; chuckling that this was a perfect opportunity for me to showcase my skills. Fuck me. She hasn’t been gone more than ten minutes and already I have coffee stains on my carpet, the bottom cabinets in my kitchen have been emptied of all contents, which are now strewn over the whole house, and my TV remote is dying a certain death in the toilet bowl. I’m exhausted.

  Half an hour later, Max has apparently run out of steam when his little head starts bobbing on my shoulder. He has a newfound fascination with my hairless head and spent the last five minutes rubbing his little hands all over it, while camped out on the couch beside me with some old magazine, which is now laying in strips around us. Trying not to look around me at the disaster in my living room, I rest my head back on the couch, closing my own eyes for a moment. I only register Beth’s presence when I feel the warm weight lifted off my shoulder and hear her soft chuckles.

  “You could’ve warned me,” I groan, making her laugh harder. Squinting my eyes open, I find her smiling face burying in Max’s little neck, her eyes warmly on mine.

  “What—and spoil all the fun?” she whispers cheekily before heading down the hallway to the bedrooms, Max securely in her arms.

  Slowly letting my eyes roam over my surroundings, I flinch at the mess. Strips of paper, pans and Tupperware containers, the contents of a box of cereal, and other random items are littered about. Jesus. I groan as I get up and make my way to the kitchen for the garbage can, hauling it with me to pick up the debris from every elevated surface, not trusting myself to bend down all the way. Apparently the little monster had found his way into Beth’s bag, judging from the utilitarian cotton panties tossed on the dining room table. They stand in stark contrast with the lacy black and grey Victoria’s Secret bra that hangs over the back of one of the chairs. I know it’s Victoria’s Secret because I’m inspecting the label with interest when a shocked gasp comes from behind me. Busted.

  “What? Ohmigod, that little terror,” Beth blurts out as she rushes to yank the bra from my hands and her panties off the table.

  “Enticing combo; functional and frilly,” I tease her, deepening the blush on her cheeks.

  “Whatever. Stop looking at my underwear. Oh Lord, I have to get a lock on my suitcase,” she mutters, stuffing the offending underwear in her pockets, not quite successfully, before snatching the garbage can from my hands. She makes short work of the rest of the scattered paper, scooping the containers and pans off the floor. It’s done before I can even blink.

  A knock on the door reminds me that I need to replace the batteries in the doorbell. Beth heads to open the door to Kendra, whom I’ve met only briefly once before, while I was working on the clinic. Kendra’s face registers surprise when she follows Beth into the living room.

  “Eh... you guys? If I’m interrupting something I can come back another time, you know?”

  Beth looks at her confused and I can feel my mouth twitching. When Kendra indicates the pretty lace bra dangling from Beth’s pocket, she blanches and pulls the offending lingerie out.

  “Oh for fuck’s sake!” she sputters, “we weren’t...I wasn’t... Nothing was going on, it’s that little trouble-maker.” She turns into the
hallway leaving Kendra a bit befuddled.

  “Her grandson, Max, is here and nothing is safe from him,” I say by way of explanation. Apparently that’s good enough for Kendra because she changes tracks immediately.

  “How are you doing?” She zooms in on me and for the next hour she proceeds to question, probe, and challenge me, leaving me feeling like I’ve been wrung out and hung up to dry. Other than to offer a meek apology and a cup of coffee to Kendra, Beth has kept a low profile. It isn’t until Kendra gets ready to leave that she appears in the doorway.

  “Done?” she asks no one in particular, and Kendra is quicker than I am.

  “For today,” she says, like I’m not in the room. “First order of business is to ditch that walker and work on his stability. I’ve got an adjustable cane in the car, which will be necessary outside of the house, but inside I want him to try and get around without. He just needs to remember not to make any sudden movements and to turn his head along with his eyes. It’s often the sudden eye-movements that trigger a shock to the equilibrium. That, and sudden changes in position; laying down, standing up, bending over—those are all triggers. Learn to move with control. I’ll be back tomorrow and bring my needles for the headaches.”

  “Needles?”

  Both women look at me and chuckle, but it’s Beth who speaks. “One of Kendra’s specialties is acupuncture. Didn’t you know?”

  Fuck no, I didn’t know. Even though I manage to tough it out for the occasional drawing of blood, needles scare the shit out of me. The idea of being used a human pincushion is not at all appealing, and yet I manage to smile and hold it together.

  “I look forward to it,” I grind out between my teeth, making them laugh even louder not buying my bluster for a second.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Gammy, dwink fow me?”

  Max’s melodic little voice, which makes everything he says sound like it should be followed be a huge question mark, never fails to put a smile on my face. The dramatic rise in pitch toward the ends of his sentences as endearing as the perpetual smile on his face. Even though he has had nothing but a sunny disposition for the past few days, his abounding energy has me worn to the bone. I don’t think I’m alone; Clint has crashed each night, not long after Max goes down for the count.

  Thank God for decent nights and long naps, but this morning I think we could all use a change of scenery.

  I pull my coffee out of the reach of Max’s little grabby hands—again—and look over to the table where Clint is tinkering with some new drawings. Something he’s taken to doing when he’s not working with Kendra, playing with Max, or sleeping.

  “What are you working on?” I try to engage him in conversation that’s been sorely lacking in the days since we’ve been back in Cedar Tree. His moodiness is still present, and I’ve got to admit, it’s starting to feel a little awkward staying here with Max, looking after him. Although he’s been surprisingly wonderful and attentive with Max, he never says much more than the occasional one or two word answers to anything I ask him. Maybe inquiring after something he obviously has an interest in will get him talking. I can try.

  His hands still and his eyes lift from the paper to look at me.

  “Doodling,” he says, before turning his attention back to the paper before him.

  Not letting the one-word answer discourage me I push on.

  “I was thinking we could go for lunch at the diner? Be good to get out some.”

  Truth is, I miss the place. Miss my friends. I feel I’ve been stuck in limbo for all this time, and despite the fact that Max is quite the distraction, I miss conversation; chitchatting with the customers, joking with Arlene. My ears ring with the silence once Max is down and with a chest full of feelings I’ve got nowhere to go with, I need some distraction. It wouldn’t hurt to get away from Clint a bit too, since even with his lacking conversational skills, I find myself wanting to jump him. I don’t like being on this side of the fence. Christ, I’m a mess. It hasn’t even been a week since I basically forced myself on him, and here I’m already trying to get away. It’s not like he’ll need me much longer, I’m sure. He just uses the cane now outside, and although a bit wobbly at times, nothing at all in the house. All I do now anyway is cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Kind of like a glorified housekeeper for a very, very grumpy man. A different man than the one who’d chat, charm, and make friends everywhere, despite his foot-in-mouth disease.

  His head lifts again and he tilts it slightly.

  “Diner?” he says with a hint of smile on his face.

  Well, alleluia! There’s life in there after all. I plaster a moderate smile on my face to hide the inner jumping up and down I’m doing.

  “Yeah. We’ll take Max, see if Katie and Mattias will meet us there because the boys were gonna have a ‘play-date’ anyway this afternoon, and we can head into Cortez to see Kendra right after lunch?”

  With the clinic not scheduled to open until after the weekend, Kendra had suggested yesterday he come into the care facility where she is finishing out her week. She wants to ‘push his limits’ a bit and says she needs her equipment to do that. Thinking I could use the time to stock up on some stuff we’re running low on, I think about calling Katie to take her up on her offer to take Max for the afternoon.

  Katie was a security specialist for GFI before Mattias was born, but now she chooses to stay at home with him. Oh, she still works, but mostly tech support while one or more of the guys are working a case. Having already offered, I have no doubt she’ll say yes.

  “Miss it?” he asks, surprisingly attuned.

  “I do,” I admit honestly. Mainly ‘cause I suck at lying. “But with Max here now too, working would be complicated.”

  Clint shrugs his shoulders as he leans back in his chair, his attention now fully focused on me.

  “Maybe—maybe not. Why don’t you give Katie a call, see if she’ll meet us and we’ll check out how the diner is managing without you.”

  I waste no time and in short order have Katie on board, Max’s stuff packed up for the afternoon, and am ready by the front door. Clint chuckles as he walks up to me, cane in hand, ripped jeans hanging off his hips, and a flannel shirt over a white Henley perfecting the picture of rugged mountain man. Together with his sheer size, the old cowboy hat he’s taken to wearing outside perched on his bald head, greying scruff complete with fucking dimple, he takes my breath away. The cane doesn’t do anything to minimize his impressive appeal. I find myself staring slack-mouthed when Max, who’s sitting on my arm, slaps his tiny hand on my cheek, snapping me out of it.

  “Gammy go?”

  “Little guy seems as excited as you are to get out of here,” his voice rumbles. The sound of it travels right down between my legs causing me to clench them together. A squirming little body in my arms reminds me how inappropriate my ungrandmotherly thoughts are, and propels me out of the door without a word.

  “Here, I can take the bag,” Clint says from behind me, tugging lightly on the strap over my shoulder, and I can feel the light brush of his fingers over my shoulder right through the layers of my clothing. While he stops to hoist the diaper bag on his own shoulder and lock the door, I’m already opening the car door to strap Max in his seat. When I straighten up and attempt to step back to close the door, I bump into a large body.

  “A gentleman would’ve offered to do that for you, but when you bend over with that fine ass on display, I suddenly don’t feel so gentlemanly anymore.”

  His breath tickles my ear and my body freezes in the spot. Mortification and arousal do battle for supremacy while I struggle for a smart come back. All I manage is an illiterate grunt, before slipping around the trunk of the car, keeping my head down to hide the telltale blush. His low chuckle follows me all the way into the driver’s seat, and that’s where my indignant self comes alive.

  “What’s with you?” I blurt out the minute his fine ass hits the seat beside me. “For days, no, make that weeks since you’ve woken up, you’ve
been mostly a grumpy ass. And now suddenly you’re going all sexy and shit. The hot and cold routine is giving me hot flashes,” I mumbled the last, but apparently he hears because the car fills with the best sound I’ve heard in months—Clint throwing his head back and laughing without restrictions. I can’t help but look over and take in the strong column of his throat and the strong white teeth showing between his lips. Fuck, those lips.

  “Sexy and shit?” I lift my eyes from his mouth and find him looking at me with one eyebrow raised in question.

  “Seriously? That’s what sticks from all I said?”

  “Well, no. The hot flashes made an impression too.” He winks. He bloody winks.

  “Very funny, Big Guy.” I resolutely turn forward and start the car, Clint chuckling softly beside me, and Max clapping his hands enthusiastically in his seat behind me.

  “Gammy, GO!” he yells from his perch. “Fwunny, big gah?”

  -

  -

  I know I’ve been a bear. Both in attitude and in the urge to crawl into a cave and hibernate.

  It all comes home when Beth turns those expressive brown eyes on me and suggests we go out for lunch. The barely contained eagerness is right there for me to see, even if her words try to veil the fact she is jumping out of her skin to get out for a bit. For someone raised as a ‘southern gentleman,’ I haven’t done the moniker much justice by being less than pleasant to the woman who has put her life on hold to provide family for two lost souls, Max and me. She deserves more.

  -

  I’ve got to admit, after the sudden and shocking breakdown of my marriage to Luanne, kids never really beeped on my radar. First time that changed was the birth of Mattias, Katie and Caleb’s son. I’m not sure if it was the fact that I had a front seat to Katie’s pregnancy while renovating their barn, or whether it was the first time she shoved that little scrunched up and squirming ball of humanity in my arms. I never felt the loss of something I’d never had as strongly as when his little hand tried to squeeze the life from my much larger index finger. And the smell—no one ever told me babies smelled so fucking good. Well, at least until they crapped their pants, but that’s what parents were for.