“Don’t you worry about my roof. It’s vacation time,” Sloane said, instead of admitting that as a precaution she’d put a pot on the floor in the tiny back room, under where there’d been a leak before. Probably in an abundance of caution, she’d assured herself, because a month ago Joe had been up on the roof and replaced the worst of the shingles.
Alice leaned in to give Sloane a quick squeeze. “Enjoy yourself while we’re away and don’t make yourself crazy worrying about the upcoming in-laws’ visit. Relax some, okay?”
Stretching a smile across her face, Sloane agreed, and spent the rest of the day doing laundry, coloring with Paige, and watching two Disney movies back-to-back, a special treat for them both. The heavy, unrelenting rain prevented them from getting outside to work off her daughter’s physical energy, so it was past bedtime before she managed to get the little girl finally settled beneath her covers.
But once Paige nodded off, Sloane took to the living room with her manicure/pedicure kit—a shoebox filled with items purchased at Target—her face clean and shiny after the application and removal of a goopy mask she’d slathered on—from a foil pouch also found at Target, on the shelves of the discount end cap. With Boo settled on the rug and the TV tuned to an investigative series, this episode focused on a mysterious poisoning case, Sloane lined up her polish choices, ranging from a tasteful mauve to a hot pink she’d only ever painted on Paige’s tiny fingers and toes, per her insistent request.
For herself, Sloane couldn’t remember the last time she’d done anything more than the rudimentary grooming of her nails. But now she gave the available colors a serious study. A spring shade, she decided, pushing aside one she remembered wearing the Thanksgiving when she was heavily pregnant.
Red wouldn’t work, because it didn’t shout spring and because she didn’t have a bottle of scarlet polish. But mostly because she’d noticed Eli’s date wearing that color.
Head bent as she filed and buffed, Sloane recalled the tall brunette, how she’d been smooth and shining from head to toe. Her look had matched Eli’s, two beautiful single people prepared for a carefree night out.
He deserved that, she reminded herself. He’d explained himself that after eleven years as head of the King household he wanted a couple weeks of unfettered…comings and goings.
His exact words.
The brunette was the exact type of woman to provide that for him.
Comings and goings.
An unbidden smirk took over her face, but it felt less like humor when she acknowledged the iron grip her hand on the small bottle of medium-pink polish. To throw off her budding crankiness—Alice had instructed her to relax, remember?—she got to her feet, waving her hands in the air to dry her nails.
The rain pounded on the roof as she moved down the hall to check on Paige, Boo’s nails clicking on the hardwood floor as he followed. She widened the gap made by the half-open door, leaned against the jamb, and in the glow of the princess nightlight enjoyed the sight of her sleeping daughter. Her ill-humor eased and she knew she smiled.
What was more satisfying than this? Her little girl safe in dreamland, their cozy cocoon of a cottage sheltering them both on a dark and stormy night. What else did a woman need?
At this moment she could only thank JJ for being part of the creation of their precious child. He’d been impulsive and reckless and irresponsible. She’d been vulnerable and naïve and much too young to have a baby.
But in the last years she’d found new strength. A new confidence in herself. Maybe JJ would have grown too, and she liked to think he would have come to love Paige and appreciate fatherhood, no matter that he’d railed against the idea in the last days before he’d left her, six months pregnant and scared witless.
She’d made it through the birth alone and those first long nights with an infant, determined to do her very best for the life she’d brought into the world. Every sleepless minute had been worth it, she thought, fondly gazing on Paige’s tousled strands of white-blonde hair.
“Thank you, JJ,” she murmured. He’d been snorkeling in Belize when she’d gone into labor and she was still recovering in the hospital when she’d gotten word that he’d drowned in an accident she suspected was drug-related.
Sloane didn’t hold any of that against him now. At the thought of her late husband, only sadness welled and she hoped he’d found peace somehow, somewhere. “Sleep well, old friend.” He would always be that in her mind, a friend, because at the beginning one reason he’d thought to marry her was to save her from being alone in the world. She’d agreed because she’d been so eager to love and be loved in return.
Neither of them anticipated how those intentions might go wrong.
“Mama?” Paige’s eyes suddenly opened and her gaze moved to Sloane. “Mama, is it morning?”
“No, baby,” Sloane said, crossing the rug to perch on the edge of her daughter’s bed. Boo came along too, and rested his chin on the mattress. “Close your eyes and go back to sleep.”
Paige obediently snuggled deeper into her pillow, one hand groping for the stuffed bunny, Bun, that was her usual sleeping companion. Then her eyes flipped open again and her brow furrowed with worry. “Mama! Where’s Baby Sally?”
The question struck Sloane’s heart with a new fear, a fear that every mother had experienced or heard tell of.
The Fear of the Missing Beloved Toy.
She made a mental scramble, trying to recall when she’d last seen Baby Sally. Since she wasn’t a usual bedtime plaything, they’d not rounded her up during the bath-to-pajamas transition. “Don’t you worry,” Sloane said. “I think she might be having a snack in the kitchen.”
“A snack?” Paige said instantly. “I want a snack.”
Bad move, Mama, Sloane scolded herself.
“Not now. It’s too late.” Tucking the covers more firmly around the little girl, she said, “Wow, what about that rain? It’s like a lullaby, don’t you think?”
Paige cocked her head as if listening hard and Sloane smiled, stroking her daughter’s hair with a reassuring hand. “Now just go back to—”
The sound of shattering glass interrupted.
The house plunged into darkness.
Sloane shot to her feet, her heart in her throat. Boo whoofed.
“Shh,” she told him, trying to focus. Nothing but the incessant pattering of the rain reached her though, and it wasn’t a leap to surmise the storm had caused the loss of electricity. A neighborhood power outage, perhaps.
“Mama?” Paige asked in a small voice, sitting up.
“You stay put, baby,” Sloane said, glad she’d not gotten around to painting her toes, so her shoes were still laced on her feet. Patting the mattress, she ordered the dog onto the bed. “There’s broken glass somewhere.”
Hands outstretched, she blessed the smallness of the house which meant she didn’t have far to go to find the flashlight she kept in the kitchen. Its sweeping beam revealed nothing amiss—except the loss of power—until she played it around the tiny room at the rear.
She recalled she’d left the overhead fixture on there after retrieving her manicure supplies from its narrow closet. The light had gone out, and the old-fashioned glass globe—old enough to be retro—had broken. Pieces lay on the ground while water steadily dripped from the remaining metal parts attached to the ceiling. Playing the light over the spot, Sloane stared up, uneasy.
The persistent trickle—just missing the pot she’d set on the ground—didn’t bode well.
She needed to sweep up the glass, collect towels to mop the wet floor, and devise some way to patch the hole in the ceiling.
After ten o’clock at night, with her landlords out of town, and a meager amount of cash on hand.
Running through her options, she strode back to her daughter’s room, intent on ensuring the child would stay in bed while she did some initial cleanup.
“Paige—”
“Did you find Baby Sally?”
Sloane’s sinking heart
took another dive.
Electricity out, leaking roof, no idea how to manage the necessary repairs.
And a missing Baby Sally.
Oh, God.
Sloane paused, all at once seeing the doll quite clearly in her mind’s eye. The last time she’d been aware of the toy had been yesterday, seconds before she’d thought Eli King might kiss her again. Right before his date had arrived.
Crossing to Paige’s window, she hooked a forefinger in the shade and pulled it aside to peer across and down the street.
To his house.
To Eli’s house that looked warm, dry, and in the dark and stormy night, well-lit.
Like a beacon.
Chapter 4
Eli contemplated his laptop screen and said into his phone, “What do you think about this? ‘My magic hair glows when I sing.’”
The friend on the other end of the call, Hart Sawyer, didn’t speak for several long moments. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sorry,” Eli said, “I should have filled you in better when I said I needed help with these dating app profiles. This one suggests using movie quotes to describe yourself. I was paraphrasing there.”
Another long pause. “You don’t have magic hair that glows when you sing, and do you, uh, actually ever sing?”
“Do you suppose anyone’s honest when writing these up?” Eli asked. “Face it, when it comes to anything online, it’s as that same movie says, all a man has is a fake reputation. Also paraphrasing.”
Hart let that lie for more long seconds. Then he began, almost gently, “Eli—”
“Crap, I know.” Frustrated, he slapped the cover down on his computer. “Those aren’t good choices. But can I help it that when I see ‘movie quotes,’ that the entire Disney princess canon comes to mind?”
“No, you probably can’t help it,” Hart said. “Which Disney princess movie is about the magic hair?”
Eli pulled his phone from his ear to stare at it, then returned it to position. “Tangled.” He sighed. “For a second there I thought you were an idiot for not recognizing it, but that would be me, right?” Other men his age had spent the last decade watching movies starring comic book heroes or action films centered around illegal street racing.
“You’re not an idiot. You raised four younger sisters.”
“Yeah.” Closing his eyes, Eli rested his head on the sofa cushion behind him. “I need to get this right. I have less than two weeks before they’re back.”
“You could ask Cooper to help. He’s a TV and movie buff and probably on every dating site there is, too. You’d have matches—or whatever they call it—in no time.”
Eli grunted, now reluctant for reasons he couldn’t articulate.
“Anyway, you found your Saturday night date on your own. Do you really need to—”
“Actually, Sophie fixed me up,” he admitted.
“Ah.” Hart cleared his throat. “By the way, is she doing okay? I called her to thank her for the dinner she dropped by my place last week but she won’t pick up. Instead I get weird texts with acronyms I can’t interpret.”
Eli opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling. “You can go by Harry’s. Buy a coffee. She’s barista-ing most days.”
“Nah. If she needs some space for whatever reason, I can give that to her.” There was a sound Eli recognized, a refrigerator door opening, the clinking of one beer bottle against another. “But back to you.”
“What about what you need?” Eli asked, thinking of his friend, home alone in the house he should be sharing with his now-wife. Instead, his fiancée had died of an aneurism just a few weeks before the wedding. “Is there anything I can do?”
He could picture Hart downing half a beer in one go. “I’m good,” the man said.
Right. “I know what it’s like to face a loss—one both unexpected and cruel.”
“So then you understand I’m not up for a chat about it.”
Eli winced. “Okay.”
“Sorry.” Hart’s tone lost its jagged edges. “But we’re supposed to be focused on you achieving your goal of mindless, meaningless boinking until your sisters get home.”
“Ouch.” Eli winced again. “Do you have to put it quite like that?”
“Just reading between the lines, bro.”
Crap. He pressed his fingertips to the middle of his forehead.
“What was wrong with the Saturday night woman?”
Wendy. Sleek brunette. Clever. Funny. “Well…”
“Not drawn to the little you were offering?”
“Is that a crack about the size of my dick?” Eli asked, more amused than offended. “Actually, signs were I could have interested her in a visit to my bedroom, but…”
“But?”
During dinner, she’d asked about the single mother who lived down the street, the “nobody important” that Sloane had called herself. And that had brought the curvy blonde to mind and her image had never left him the rest of the evening.
So he had to move on to another prospect, and find a way to make sure Sloane didn’t get stuck in his head. He could see her even now, her make-him-sweat mouth pursed, blowing on his shirt, making his blood chug south and putting him in the mood to—
His doorbell rang, yanking him from the ledge, just before falling into that sweet little fantasy. “Hell,” he said, looking toward the nearest window—outside still pitch-dark—and listening to the pounding rain on the roof.
“What’s the problem?” Hart asked.
Eli stalked toward the foyer. “Let me call you back later. Some crazy person is at my front door.”
Pulling it open, he stared at the company assembled on his front porch. “Sloane?”
It was the child of the group, in pajamas, a slicker over them and rain boots on her feet who answered first, a bedraggled doll clutched in her fist and an accusatory expression on her face. “You,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Let Baby Sally get all wet.”
They were all all wet, Eli saw, and he waved them inside to drip on the rug. Then he gathered towels from the downstairs linen closet and piled them in Sloane’s arms.
Boo the dog shook, spraying Eli’s jeans, a sign he should step back. But when Sloane threw a towel over the dog’s back and then began to dry her daughter, he stepped in to pluck another length of towel that he draped over her head.
She let it hang there as she turned her attentions from Paige to Boo.
Who was going to look after her?
Setting his jaw, Eli pulled her away from her canine and began rubbing her wet hair with the towel, letting one end dangle over her face, obscuring her features. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice muffled. She batted at his hands but he ignored them, trying not to absorb through his palms the shape of her head or breathe in the smell of her damp shampoo.
It was bad enough that a baby-scent wafted off Paige who had likely been in a bath before bed.
Sloane pushed at his hands again, then emerged from behind the absorbent fabric to stare up at him, her big blue eyes surrounded by lashes spiky from rain. “Are you trying to smother me with the towel?” she asked.
Or strangle you, he thought. Because that inconvenient pull she had on him was tugging at him again, making him want to explore it, explore her, no matter how wrong they were for each other.
As if to emphasize the fact, Paige yanked on his shirt. “You,” she said again in that accusatory tone.
Right. Me. The one having inappropriate thoughts about your mom.
“Mr. King,” Sloane corrected, then gave him a quick glance. “Sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he answered, and hunkered down to face the child at her level. “What’s the problem?”
She shook the doll in his face and he noted its clothes and hair were indeed drenched. “All wet.”
He looked up at Sloane, not sure why he was to blame. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “We must have left her here yesterday. We found her at the bottom of the porch steps.”
“Ah.” Standing, he took the toy in hand. “I’ll take care of this,” he said, heading to the hall bathroom.
Sloane and company followed him. “What are you doing?” she asked, sounding part anxious, part curious.
“Not my first doll-in-need,” he said, hunting through the cupboard beneath the sink. With the blow-dryer in hand, he plugged it into the outlet and then turned it on, aiming the heated air at the doll. The hem of Baby Sally’s dress fluttered and her long hair went wild. With those eyes she looked a little too much like Medusa, so he made an effort to avoid her unblinking gaze.
Being turned into stone was not on his evening’s agenda.
“You’ve got to be wondering why we’re here,” Sloane shouted over the whine of the device.
Sometimes it paid not to ask. He’d learned that as a pseudo-parent, raising four girls who turned into four teenagers. That said, his instincts were not always spot-on as to when it was time to enquire and when it was not. Once, he’d found out an embarrassing detail about Nora’s boyfriend’s parents’ sex life, as accidentally discovered by Nora and the boy. Another time he’d almost missed that Molly was struggling with a toxic frenemy relationship. Lynnie had clued him in and he’d scrambled to help solve the issue.
“We have a minor difficulty,” Sloane said now.
He caught her gaze in the mirror over the sink, then wished he hadn’t. Her face didn’t say “minor difficulty.” As he watched, she bit her bottom lip and he sucked in a quick breath of air, his belly caving.
His will to wait her out caved too. With his thumb, he flicked off the dryer and handed the doll to her owner. Then he turned to face Sloane, his back to the sink, trying to ignore the sense that he had his back to the wall too. “What’s the problem?”
“I was hoping I could borrow a tarp,” she said. Earnest eyes met his. “Then we’ll be out of your way, quick as a cricket. In a jiffy. Pronto, I promise.”
The thesaurus repeats put him on alert. He set down the dryer and crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s the problem, exactly?”
NO LIMIT (7-Stud Club Book 2) Page 5