by Sosie Frost
“All right.” I sucked in a quiet breath. “Let’s say…hypothetically…if a kid happened to wander outside without me knowing…how far could they toddle?”
“Rem!”
“Hypothetically.”
“There’s a three-year-old lost in the woods?”
Cassi crashed through the back door and rushed into the yard. The trees bordering my property closed in hard and fast. The canopy engulfed the house, and the thick weeds, ferns, branches, and rocks cluttered the clearing below. The yard was overgrown to the point of strangulation, but a path spread beyond the forest’s edge. The evening sun penetrated in spots, long shafts of golden light. Right out of a Disney movie.
Just the spot a princess would love.
“Mellie!” My voice echoed off the trees. “Come here!”
Cassi must have mentally mapped the entire forest. She scoured the tree line. “Okay. She couldn’t have gotten far.”
“Maybe the wolves took her.”
“Be serious.”
“She’d probably be better off with them than me.”
What sort of man lost a little girl in the damned woods? My gut churned. I wasn’t cut out for the baby-sitting gig, but this was a new level of incompetence.
I swore. “I only took my eyes off of her for a few minutes.”
“That’s all it takes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you knew better than to let a little girl wander off in a freaking forest!” Cassi sucked in a calming breath. “How many minutes is a few?”
“Five.” A lie. “Maybe ten.” Didn’t make me feel better. “Fifteen?”
“Jesus, Rem.” The temper flared again, but Cassi contained it. Barely. “Fine. We’ll go looking. Let’s get a flashlight and a first-aid kit.”
My heart nearly stopped. “A first-aid kit? Why?”
“We don’t know how long we’ll have to look, and if she’s hurt…”
“Don’t even say it.”
I wasn’t hearing it. I rushed to the house. The first-aid kit was easy, some prissy little white box Cassie had insisted I buy at the store. No luck on the flashlight. I hurried outside and gestured for her to follow me to the workshop adjacent to the house. “Flashlight is in there.”
Cassi matched my pace. “And so is Mellie, if I had to guess.”
“I told her the shop is off-limits.”
“But you weren’t watching her.”
Just what I needed—a toddler stashed away in the most dangerous place on the property. Rusted tools hung from waning pegs. Old machinery with no guards for little fingers waited in the corners. Splinters, spiders, and shards of wood covered the floor. What had been my dad’s old shop was now my mess. I’d meant to get some work done on the inside—clean it up, start making some carpentry pieces again. Not like I’d get the chance if I had to balance two little girls around a band saw.
“Mellie?” I slapped the light switch. The old fluorescents flickered, but it took a while for them to hum. I searched between the old machines. No kid. No blood either. That was good.
As long as she wasn’t smooshed under an old wood pile.
“Mellie, come here.”
I’d kept an old flashlight pegged into a workbench, but the batteries had worn out long ago. I swore.
“Shit.” I pointed to Cassi. “Start looking. Check out front again. I’ll grab some batteries and search the back of the house. Call me if you find her.”
The baby started to cry, but Cassi shushed her as she jogged away.
My stomach plummeted to my feet and tripped over the gravel.
What the hell was I supposed to do in a situation like this?
Did I call the sheriff? Get a search crew?
Did I shout her name to scare her home?
What if she was lost? What if she’d gotten hurt?
For Christ’s sake, she was only three, and those had been some rough-ass years with her mom. Hopefully she wouldn’t remember much of this when she was older—especially when her good-for-nothing uncle lost her in a forest because he was too stupid to check on a suspiciously silent toddler.
I burst into the house, racing for the batteries.
A tiny voice greeted me from the living room.
Mellie sat on the couch, big smile on her face, reading from an upside-down children’s book.
“I want chocolate milk,” she said. “Read me a story?”
The girl was thirty pounds of absolute chaos, and she’d drop me to my knees. I clutched the wall.
“Cassi.” My words were too gruff. I shouted outside. “I found her.”
Cassi ran inside, cradling Tabby and sinking against the wall in relief as Mellie volunteered to read her an excerpt of Cinderella even though she held the Frozen book in her hand.
“Oh, thank God.” Cassi couldn’t catch her breath. “Did you put her up to this?”
If only. Might have worked better than the three hundred bucks I’d stuffed in the envelope. “Nope.”
She sighed. “You okay?”
“Twenty-seven is a good age for an aneurysm.”
She groaned, her head striking the wall. Tabby liked that. She giggled as Cassi did it again.
“Okay. You got me.” Cassi’s surrender was as beautiful as it was absolutely necessary. “I think I might stick around for a couple days.”
“You won’t regret it.”
“Already do.” She closed her eyes. “You’re a bad influence on me, Remington Marshall.”
Hell, even I knew that. It was why I left Butterpond in the first place. Cassi Payne deserved better than a man like me. But now I needed her more than ever.
“You afraid of a little trouble, Sassy?”
She approached, handing the baby off and smirking. “You aren’t a little trouble. You’re the worst kind of bad boy.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because you’re the type who thinks he can turn good.”
5
Cassi
At 2:01 AM, my phone rang.
At 2:02 AM, a very groggy me bashed the traitorous, expensive phone into the wall.
At 2:04, 2:05, 2:06, and 2:07, the once-cute, now-enraging rendition of Aerosmith’s Ragdoll finally lost its charm.
Considering I’d already cracked its panel, pitching the phone out the window would end the device for good.
I slid out of bed, the sheets sticking to my skin. Was it a hot night or a hotter dream? Did it matter when both ended with a cold shower?
What did he want?
Well, the answer to that was obvious, but even Rem had found some class. No way he was he looking to me for a booty call.
The phone blazed against the wall. Even his name on the screen cast a terrible shiver of delight through me.
And that was bad.
Every innocent thought, every curious fantasy, every searing hot memory of his kiss tore down my wall, brick by brick. My defenses had been perfected for five years. With one word, it toppled over me. I should have used a better mortar than resentment.
I debated not answering, but it was either facing Rem on the phone or meeting him again my dreams. A very sweaty, very intimate dream. I prayed those desires came from the trouble between my legs and not the hopeless patter in my chest.
I croaked a hello. Rem didn’t greet me. Strangely enough, he didn’t make a flirty pass or spread that boyish charm. His voice hardened with a rough and dire demand.
“The baby’s sick.”
Those weren’t words anyone liked, but I’d expected them at some point. Tabby had been a little sniffly when I last saw her two days ago.
I had hoped four days of temporary nannying was enough time to help him wrangle the kids before any more five-year kisses overwhelmed us. I’d left him in charge with all the encouragement I could offer without trapping myself in his embrace.
It wasn’t enough.
“Are you sure she’s sick?” I faceplanted on the pillow and groaned.
A shout rum
bled from downstairs. Jules. A second shout answered. Quint.
Something thudded against the floor. A retaliatory crash shook the windows. Glass shattered. My brothers shouted.
Just a normal Thursday at two AM for the Payne family.
“Of course I’m sure,” Rem said.
“Is she sick sick or sick?”
“I don’t know. What’s sick sick?”
“Scarlet fever. Pneumonia. Has she lost a leg?”
Rem practically growled. “Her legs are both accounted for. What the hell do I do? How do I tell if its scarlet fever? What if she’s really sick?”
She wasn’t, but I doubted I could convince him of that. “Is she warm?”
“She’s always a goddamned furnace. I sweat buckets when she sits in my lap.”
Another threat of violence from downstairs. Quint slammed a door. A string of profanities followed. It would be the third time he’d threatened to leave. His suitcase was parked near the door almost as often as mine.
“Is she sniffling?” I asked.
“Yeah, there’s all this gunk in her nose.”
“Coughing?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it a bad cough?”
“How the hell should I know? Aren’t all coughs bad?”
Well, I wasn’t getting back to sleep tonight. “Is it a chesty cough? A throaty cough? Post nasal drip cough?”
Rem lost his patience. “I have no clue! It sounds like this…”
The sound he created was no more child’s cough than it was constipated donkey.
“If that’s the case, you might want to grab the shotgun,” I said.
He swore. “Cas, can you just help me before I go insane? I haven’t slept all night.”
“What a coincidence,” I said. “I can’t get any sleep either.”
Varius was now in on the fight. A clatter rose from the kitchen. The usual frustrations echoed through the house. You’re not Dad. Dad left me in charge of the farm. You’re not in charge of us. We have to make these decisions together. You already made the decision and never asked. You never put in the effort…
My midnight mediations—or meddling, as Tidus called it—had never once calmed my arguing brothers before. It certainly wouldn’t do a freaking thing now, not with an emptied six pack of beer and four years’ worth of repressed rage surging through their veins. Tensions were high after Mom died. They worsened when Dad got sick. And now?
Another broken glass downstairs.
This family wasn’t blood anymore—binding contracts and executive directives were all that kept us together. It was Dad’s last wish that the family come together, make unified decisions, and become whole again.
That son of a bitch had a sick sense of humor.
“Cassie, I’m out of my element here,” Rem said. “I don’t know what to do for her.”
Damn my heart of gold. Lugging it around really weighed me down. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Thanks, Sass.”
He shouldn’t have thanked me yet. Agreeing to help was easy enough. Escaping the house was the tough part.
God only knew what I’d have to clean up in the morning. Broken glass. Jules’ face—again. I never wanted to spackle another wall as long as I lived. It wasn’t worth wandering into the middle of the fracas to inform them that I was going to visit Remington Marshall.
I’d be back before they’d slept off the buzz. Quick like a bunny. Quick like a bunny who wasn’t about to change out of her pajamas or do more than ponytail her hair.
I tossed a windbreaker over the spaghetti tank and my pink fuzzy bottoms, exchanged the slippers for flip-flops, and did what any respectable woman would do when brothers armed themselves with whiskey and dug trenches in the kitchen. I shimmied my booty out the bedroom window and climbed down the rain gutter.
“What the hell are you doing?”
My feet hadn’t hit the porch roof before I got busted.
I flattened myself against the roof, shushing Tidus with a quick finger to my lips. Not like he’d ever listen. He hopped the railing and hauled me off the roof before I jumped to the ground.
“Cassi, we have doors.”
He reeked of cigarette smoke.
I slapped his shoulder. “You promised to quit!”
He snorted and pointed towards the kitchen. The yelling even echoed outside. “You head into that hellscape. Tell me what you’d do to escape the insanity.”
“I wouldn’t smoke.”
“No. You’d just risk a very breakable neck by climbing out the window.”
Tidus wasn’t as tall as my other brothers, but he made up for it with meathead strength. His muscles were wrapped in tattoos and leather. His hands might’ve crushed me, but, underneath the petty criminal record and scars, he was a teddy bear pushed onto the wrong side of the law.
And it was Rem who gave him the shove.
“Cover for me,” I said. “I’m going out.”
No hesitation. “Nope.”
“I used to do it for you.”
Still a no. “That’s different.”
“How so?”
“Cause I’m…and you’re…” His eyes had an electric quality to them, far brighter green than the rest of my brothers. “Where the hell are you going in your jammies?”
Who was he to judge me…just because the pink pants had little strawberries embroidered and the word Sassy emblazoned on the butt.
“These are totally real pants,” I said.
I never gave my brother enough credit. “You’re going to see Rem!”
“Fine. Don’t cover for me.”
“Why are you getting involved with him again?”
I wasn’t involved. Maybe mixed-up. “I’m not, not that it’s any of your business.”
Tidus scowled. “Drop the attitude, Sassy. I don’t want you moping around here for another five years because of that bastard.”
“That bastard is your best friend.”
“That’s how I know he’s a bastard.”
“If you were that worried, why did you have me take the clothes and toys up to the cabin?” I frowned. “And why didn’t you tell Jules or the others that he was in town?”
Tidus rubbed his face, but the displeasure didn’t fade. “I owe Rem for a lot of shit, okay? He fucked up, but I’m not gonna forget what he did for me. But that doesn’t mean I’ll let him hurt you again.”
“He never hurt me.”
“Yeah, right. That’s why there’s a parade of guys here on the weekends, begging to take you out.”
“And here I thought that would relieve my big brother.”
“We’d rather see you with anyone but him.”
I flicked my car keys in my hand. “The baby is sick. I’m going to make sure she’s okay.”
Tidus let me pass, but he called after me. “And then what?”
What did he think? “And then I’m going to make passionate love to Rem, and we’re going to run away to Vegas, spend all of our money on a roulette wheel, and live out the rest of our lives on a sunny Mexican beach.”
“Stay out of trouble.”
“You can trust me.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about.”
Likewise. Tidus still considered Rem a friend. My other brothers? They’d arm themselves with pitchforks and iPhone flashlights and march up the mountain to save a virtue that wasn’t theirs to protect or Rem’s to take.
Not that they needed to worry. I’d already told Rem—I was leaving town. Definitely and for real this time. I was only staying long enough to ensure he’d only use electrical tape to fix a broken toy, and then I was gone. Off the farm. Away from the fights, anger, and resentment.
I loved my brothers, but I’d run out of framed pictures to hang over holes in the drywall and lost enough sleep breaking up their fights. Until they made peace, I needed to find my own.
It took me a half-hour to sneak up the terrifyingly windy mountain road in pitch blackness. I sweated by the time I reached
the cabin and tumbled out of the car in relief.
Rem owed me big time for this.
The cabin’s front door was unlocked. I knocked and let myself in.
Rem greeted me without a shirt.
This night wasn’t going to get any easier.
Was he a man…or was he a monster made of pure muscle? His back, chest, arms, abs, everywhere ripped with strength. And decorating it all? Tattoos. Bright sleeves down his arms and across his chest.
A snake was his preferred design, coiling over one arm, across his shoulders, and down the other. The bright cacophony of colors practically slithered as his muscles flexed. Bands of red, yellow, and green swept in an almost tribal pattern across his skin. He’d drawn the design himself when we were young, even incorporating trees and foliage to hide the snake. A dogwood tree. Never thought a man could look so fearsome with delicate flowers tattooed over his massive biceps.
He’d inked himself with a new tattoo—a design so out of place, so deliberately positioned, it nearly ruined the aesthetic of his sleeves. The sunflower didn’t belong on his skin, especially over his heart. He hated the things.
But sunflowers were my favorite.
Good thing Rem was distracted, rooting through the kitchen drawer. I checked my chin for drool then stopped him before he marched out of the kitchen with a meat thermometer.
“What are you doing?”
Rem frowned. “I think Tabby has a fever, and this is the only thermometer I have. But I’m not sure where to stick it.”
“Back in the drawer!”
He grunted and tossed it in the sink. “Fine. What do I do?”
I dropped the windbreaker on the couch and peeked into the Pack-N-Play. A bundle of fuss greeted me. Tabby pouted. Kicked. Pretty sure she gave me the finger. She rubbed hard at her nose.
“She’s pissed,” Rem said. “I moved her here so she wouldn’t wake Mellie.”
Poor thing. I patted her tummy. “Aw, what happened, Tabs? Don’t feel good?”
She declined to answer, preferring to wail instead. This must have been a common sound. Rem groaned.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
Nothing really to do. Tabby calmed a little as I picked her up and cuddled her close. “It’s just the sniffles.”
“How do you know?”