The Job (Auctioned)

by Cara Dee

  The Job

  Cara Dee

  The Job

  Copyright © 2021 by Cara Dee

  All rights reserved

  * * *

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment and may not be reproduced in any way without documented permission of the author, not including brief quotes with links and/or credit to the source. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This is a work of fiction and all references to historical events, persons living or dead, and locations are used in a fictional manner. Any other names, characters, incidents, and places are derived from the author’s imagination. The author acknowledges the trademark status and owners of any wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction. Characters portrayed in sexual situations are 18 or older.

  Edited by Silently Correcting Your Grammar, LLC.

  Formatted by Eliza Rae Services.

  Contents

  Welcome to the Camassia Cove Universe

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Epilogue

  A Quick Question

  More from Cara

  About Cara

  Welcome to the Camassia Cove Universe

  Camassia Cove is a town in northern Washington created to be the home of some exciting love stories. Each novel taking place here is a standalone—with the exception of sequels and series within the CC universe—and they vary in genre and pairing. What they all have in common is the town in which they live. Some are friends and family. Others are complete strangers. Some have vastly different backgrounds. Some grew up together. It’s a small world, and many characters will cross over and pay a visit or two in several books—Cara’s way of giving readers a glimpse into the future of their favorite characters. Oh, who is she kidding; they are characters she’s unable of saying good-bye to. But, again, each novel stands on its own, and spoilers will be avoided as much as possible.

  If you’re interested in keeping up with secondary characters, the town, the timeline, and future novels, check out Camassia Cove’s own website at www.camassiacove.com. There you will also see which characters have gotten their own books already, where they appear, which books are in the works, character profiles, and you’ll be treated to a taste of the town.

  Get social with Cara

  www.caradeewrites.com

  www.camassiacove.com

  Facebook: @caradeewrites

  Twitter: @caradeewrites

  Instagram: @caradeewrites

  One

  How the fuck did we end up here?

  I swallowed tightly and peered down into the crib. The little girl was too big for the crib, but it was all we had at the moment. I didn’t know what kind of bed a toddler required. I just knew it had to be bigger than the one I’d slept in as a newborn.

  “She’s cute when she’s asleep,” Case murmured next to me.

  Yeah, she was cute. And terrifying.

  I reached down and brushed a finger over her cheek.

  “I will murder you if you wake her up,” my brother stated. “It’s as if you’ve forgotten it took us four hours of her screaming to get here.”

  He had a point. I took a step back and folded my arms over my chest. Well, okay, as scared shitless as I was to shoulder this responsibility, I knew it would be okay as long as we did this together, Case and me. He’d steer us right.

  Then Case sneezed, and Paisley woke up with a loud cry.

  “Fucking murder me,” he whispered in horror.

  Casey O’Sullivan

  “Ma! Ace!” I tucked my shades into the chest pocket of my shirt and walked farther into the house. “Anybody home?”

  Maybe they were at the pool. Mom had gotten lucky, managing to reserve one of the little two-bedroom houses that was like twenty feet away from the community’s pool. She’d waited for two years for the area to go from development to finished, and now she could kick back on her patio and still keep an eye on Ace when she was in the water.

  I eyed the couch in the living room—or more specifically, the wicker basket next to it where a certain fuckhead stashed his sheets and pillow every morning. That asshole needed to find his own place soon and stop crashing on Ma’s couch.

  Hearing laughter coming from outside, I crossed the room and opened the blinds. Then I clenched my jaw at the sight of Boone. What the fuck was he doing here? He was supposed to make himself disappear when I picked up Ace. And dropped her off, for that matter.

  I slid open the patio door and stepped out, and Mom looked up from her crossword puzzle.

  I was surprised she didn’t have her laptop here. She was always working on her crime novel.

  “You’re here! Ace is making friends.” She pointed at the pool.

  “Hey, Ma.” I dipped down and kissed her cheek. “Your hair looks different. I like it.”

  She didn’t demand much from us, but she absolutely loved it when we noticed changes with her. She’d dyed it this week. Fuck-ugly red shade that matched her bathing suit. In a few weeks, it would be another color.

  “Thank you.” She beamed and fluffed the curls. “And you’ve met your brother, yes? Boone? Say hello.”

  I straightened and composed my expression. “Fuckface.”

  He rolled his eyes and reclined in his seat.

  I turned to Mom again. “He’s not supposed to be here.”

  We had a deal, goddammit. No matter how much our bullshit frustrated our mother, we weren’t gonna work things out, and she just had to live with that.

  “He’s been sick, sugar,” she explained. “Look how pale he is.”

  That was his normal fucking complexion. Dark-blond, blue-eyed, overgrown, pale man-child. He had the body of a lifeguard—and not the ripped ones on a sunny beach in California. More like one of those giant trolls who flanked pop stars. A cheeseburger in one hand, a fifty-pound dumbbell in the other.

  I hated seeing his fucking face. I wanted to smash him into a bloody pulp, then throw him into the Hoover Dam. All his ugly short-sleeved shirts could follow. Nobody over the age of twelve wore short-sleeved button-downs—or under the age of sixty-five. Except for him. Always. Every day. Open like that, with a beater underneath. Man, I hated his guts.

  “Maybe if he got off his ass and found a job, he’d feel better.” I didn’t wait for a response. I wasn’t here to fucking chitchat with my idiot brother. Instead, I walked over to the pool and saw my eight-year-old doing laps like a little champion. “Ace!” I recognized her clothes and Barbie towel on one of the loungers, so I picked them up and aimed for the steps.

  “Hi, Dad! Is it five already?” She swam closer to the edge.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I enveloped her in the towel once she got out of the water, and I squeezed her to me until she giggled and wheezed. “Did you pack your things?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” she mimicked. “Lemme go say bye to Daddy. He’s not feeling well. I think he might be pregnant.”

  “Why? Is he feelin’ bloated? Are his tits sore? Is his period late?”

  She guffawed and stepped into her dress. “No, silly! But yesterday, he got teary-eyed at a commercial and excused himself. It happened on Tuesday too. Something about pet insurance…”

  I frowned to myself as she darted over to Ma’s patio, and Ace jumped right up on Boone’s lap.

  He grunted and winced and nearly flew up from his reclined position, and then he hugged her tightly and peppered her fa
ce with kisses.

  “I’m gonna miss you,” I heard him say once I got closer. “Text me before bed every night, okay?”

  She nodded and smooched him back. “Will you come to my game?”

  “Have I ever missed one?” he retorted with a wink. “Of course I’ll be there.”

  “Come give Gramma a kiss too, honey,” Ma said. “Don’t forget your homework on the kitchen counter.”

  We went through the regular drawn-out Friday goodbye, with Ma fussing, Ace running around to make sure she had everything, and me promising to go through her schoolwork before something was handed in. The kid was brilliant, rarely needed help, but she had an attitude problem with outsiders. If she felt a teacher’s question was dumb or too simple, she let them know.

  She’d been fluent in Sarcasm before she’d started kindergarten.

  Soon enough, we left Mom’s house. I had Ace’s backpack and duffel in my grasp, and she was the little terror who still found it funny to crawl over the door into my car instead of opening it. The only curse of driving a convertible.

  My sweet baby. The car, not my daughter. Back in the good ol’ days when Boone and I were best friends, he’d restored my ride for me. A dark-green ’94 Ford Mustang convertible, the pride of the ’90s, despite what everyone else might say. Everyone was chasing classic cars from the ’60s, but not me. My life was a shrine to the ’90s, give or take a few years.

  I threw Ace’s bags in the trunk, then got behind the wheel and pulled out from the curb. Shades on, music on, my girl in a good mood. It was Friday, and everything was right in the world when it was my week with her.

  “Hey.” I reached into the back seat and grabbed her booster seat. It was the rule. If she wanted to sit in the front with me, she had to grow half a foot and act like a preteen.

  She grunted and pushed the booster under herself, then adjusted her belt. Around the same time, I drove out of the gates of Ma’s community.

  Ace located her neon-yellow Ray-Ban knock-offs in my glove box.

  Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” blaring out of the speakers made me forget why I wanted to know if something had happened to Boone. He wasn’t part of my life anymore.

  “Do the moves with me!” Ace grinned at me.

  Well, I couldn’t not. If one listened to MJ, one moved to the fucking beat.

  We bobbed our heads and lip-synched like pros, complete with turntable gestures, “ow!”s, “ooh!”s, “ahh!”s, and crotch grabs.

  Five minutes later, I pulled into the Walmart parking lot, and we’d moved on to “Beat It.”

  “Beat eeeeet!” Ace sang—or yelled—and nodded rapidly. Her fingers hit the imaginary keyboard too, ’cause she fucking rocked like that. “Beat it, beat it!”

  I grinned and killed the engine, but the fun didn’t stop there. We moonwalked into the store, shared a chill when we got blasted with the icy AC, and I grabbed one of those baskets on wheels while Ace got a kiddie cart.

  “What’s on your list?” I had mine somewhere… There. Tucked into the back pocket of my jeans.

  “Freeze pops!” she declared.

  I nodded. “Definitely getting freeze pops.”

  She tapped her chin as we started our weekly grocery run. “Pizza?”

  “Obviously.”

  We started in the frozen food section and filled up the basket pretty quickly. Pizza, breakfast burritos, burger patties, sausage patties, taquitos… We said hello to our dear friends Pillsbury, DiGiorno, and Jimmy Dean. Then we continued to bacon and shredded cheese, eggs and milk, and last but not least, waffles, four boxes of Pop-Tarts, bread, and some cookies.

  “We forgot salad!” she exclaimed.

  I squinted at her and scratched my neck. I needed to trim my beard soon. “Uh…”

  She sighed and gave me a look. “I’ll go get it.”

  Yeah, she could do that, if she insisted. We had vegetables at home. I wasn’t an animal. We had pickles, ketchup, a bag of frozen peas, and sweet corn.

  While I waited for her to return, I scanned my list to make sure we had everything. We were good on condiments, soda, snacks, and coffee. I needed to replace my water filter, but that could wait another couple weeks.

  “Daddy, I’m cold.”

  I turned around to see she’d come back. At the top of her cart was a collection of small ready-made salads and fruit cups.

  “Because you’re still wearing your bathin’ suit underneath the dress.” I pushed down the sleeves of my denim shirt and unbuttoned it. “Don’t drag it along the ground.” It’d taken me hundreds of washes to get it perfect. Soft, faded black, well-worn. I draped it around her shoulders and tied the sleeves around her neck, and she giggled and called it her new cape.

  “I can be your super-strong sidekick,” I said.

  She bit her lip. “Are you super strong? Like Dad?”

  What the fuck? I’d been working out like mad lately. Even my abs showed! But I wasn’t gonna flex in front of my daughter. It was probably weird.

  Comparing me to Boone was harsh, though.

  “If you can’t see my impressive biceps, we need to have your eyes checked,” I grumbled.

  “I don’t think anyone can see past the impressive mustard stain on your tank,” she replied frankly.

  I peered down at my beater and winced. “I went to Costco for lunch.”

  “Great, now I want a churro,” she huffed. “Can you ease my pain with a new nail polish?”

  I laughed. “You fuckin’ drama queen. Sure, go pick out a nail polish.”

  She strutted off with victory written all over her, and I got to stand right there and watch our shit. My daughter had me too wrapped around her finger sometimes. She was too much like me sometimes as well. One might even think we shared genes.

  But at the end of the day, she was just like her mother—God rest her wild soul.

  My phone rang in my pocket, and I was surprised to see my cousin’s number. We hadn’t talked in a while.

  “Darius, how the fuck are you?” I smiled. We didn’t share genes either; he was Boone’s biological cousin, but we came from families that picked up strays left and right. I’d once been a stray, just like Ace.

  “I’m good, kid. All good,” he answered. “How’s Vegas?”

  “Hot.” I eyed a guy walking past. “What can I do for you, cuz?”

  “I have a job for you and Boone,” he told me. “Willow’s gonna send you all the information you need.” That would be his tech-savvy little sister. “Pretty straightforward—recon work, virtually no pay.”

  I grinned. “My favorite kind. How’d you know?”

  He chuckled. “When push comes to shove, it’s more of a favor, but there will be plenty of opportunities for you and Boone to collect a reward from our target.”

  Color me intrigued. Darius used to be a private military contractor, but he must’ve taken a break from retirement if he was calling me about a job. Unless he wanted to hire me at his restaurant outside of fucking Seattle, and evidently not. He was also a good guy. He came from a family of good guys. But outside of the occasional family reunion, our paths didn’t cross, so to speak. Except for that one time he sent a couple buddies my way for intel.

  “You can count me in,” I said. I trusted him, and I was always on the lookout for my next job. “Boone’s another matter. We haven’t been on speaking terms for the past four years.”

  “Why the fuck not?” Darius demanded. “Shit was good when we saw each other last year.”

  No—far from it. “We’re good at pretending when we have to, I guess.” Boone and I kept our most vicious fights far away from our daughter. She was used to the silent treatment he and I gave each other, and at the most, she’d been around a few bitch fights. But we pulled our shit together for her soccer games, recitals, and our family reunions.

  “How does that even work with Ace?” Darius asked. I could practically see his frown through the phone. “You share custody?”

  “Essentially.” It’d never be
en the plan for Boone and me to live together in the first place, but since when did life give a flying fuck about anyone’s plans? Shortly after Tia died, we found out she’d wanted us to raise her girl. Two screw-ups and a toddler—nothing could go wrong. Except, we’d moved in to a small apartment together and showed the world that precisely everything could go wrong.

  I hated thinking about it. I hated being reminded of it. “I don’t wanna get into the details,” I said, peering down an aisle to see if Ace was coming back anytime soon. “Long-ass story.”

  “So we’ll save it for another time,” Darius said. “But you better patch shit up with him, kid, because I need you both on this. You’ll hear from Willow tonight.” The fucker hung up on me. Was he even ten years older than me?

  “I’m not a kid,” I bitched at the phone. Thirty-five years old and called kid… Fuck you, cousin.

  Patching things up with Boone was outta the question. It’d be like building a bridge from desert sand.

  When Ace returned from the cosmetics aisle, we made our way to the registers and decided to have patty melts for dinner. Whatever information Willow had for me, I’d work out on my own. I wasn’t gonna worry about it.

  “Is the porch done yet?” Ace asked as we walked out of the store.

  “Almost. It just needs a coat of paint.” I was mostly glad the hammerin’ and drillin’ were done.

  I’d been stoked to learn that the trailer park where I lived got a new owner last year, just six months after I’d moved in to my run-down single-wide. Repairing and renovating the inside was a responsibility I had no problems handling myself, but the exterior fell on the owner of the park, and the previous one hadn’t given a fuck. Then the guy who’d taken over had announced that all trailers would get a paint job, the double-wides would be given a small deck in the back, the single-wides a front porch, and we’d get new mailboxes. Five months of constant construction had followed, waking me up at the ass-crack of dawn.