“Are you serious? The Bluelick Buffalos home team cheer will turn him on?”
“Not the cheer. You. Roger, hon, is your yearbook handy?”
Roger got up, crossed the room to one of the bookshelves lining the opposite wall, and retrieved a large blue-and-white book. He flipped it open and placed it on the coffee table.
“The sight of you”—Doug gestured to her—“in this tiny skirt”—he pointed to a picture of her leading a cheer at a football game—“with the tight sweater and those swishing pom-poms? Please. He won’t stand a chance. Bonus points if you meet him behind the bleachers at the high school and surprise him with the whole performance. Put your own twist on it.”
She looked closer at the picture in the yearbook. Her senior-year self stared back at her, painfully young, smiling wide, with a life-is-wonderful expression on her face. And it had been, right then. She’d won the Miss Bluelick crown earlier that year, she’d made head cheerleader, and on graduation day she’d gotten engaged to her high school sweetheart. Senior year had been the pinnacle of her life. The poor, stupid girl smiling in the picture didn’t know she’d be starting over ten years later.
Who’d have guessed a fresh start required pom-poms?
Chapter Six
Josh walked up the steps to Melody’s front door with a smile on his face for the first time in hours…possibly in the seventy-two hours since he’d last seen her. He’d teased her about not going for instant gratification, but when it came right down to it, he didn’t have much—okay, any—experience with delayed gratification. Consequently, he’d been cranky, and edgy, and irritated as hell for the better part of three days. Plus, his shift had ended on a particularly annoying note thanks to a call from his old chief in Cincinnati, asking him if he was enjoying shining trucks and rescuing kittens from trees. It didn’t help that he had actually shined the trucks and rescued a cat during his shift. The only fire he’d extinguished today—or all week, for that matter—consisted of the flaming bag of poop someone had left on crotchety Mr. Cranston’s doorstep that afternoon. He’d tossed his coffee on it. Emergency averted.
The chief’s social call had smacked of a secondary agenda, but all the man had hinted at was that the department was planning a party next month to celebrate his twenty-fifth anniversary with the CFD, and he hoped Josh would be able to tear himself away from his grueling schedule to hop up to Cinci and attend. Josh had assured his mentor he wouldn’t miss the fun.
Tonight, however, he anticipated fun on a much more intimate scale. He hadn’t been able to get Melody out of his mind. Damn inconvenient, because as soon as his thoughts turned to her, the rest of his body followed, and next thing he knew he was standing in the local senior center discussing fire safety with a boner the size of Class AA hydrant in his pants. Even more disturbing, he’d caught some appreciative looks from the bingo crowd. Those ladies didn’t miss a thing.
He knocked on the black-painted door of Melody’s traditional brick townhome.
A series of skull-splittingly high-pitched squeals sounded from the other side, growing louder as a herd of small-footed buffalo approached. The door swung open and three pint-sized…hookers…stared up at him, their glitter-glossed smiles slowly disappearing from their over-painted faces.
“Dada?” This from the shortest one—the one wearing a fairy princess diaper, a halo of blond curls, and a shitload of makeup.
“Uh…not as far as I know.”
The biggest one—and big was a relative term because she didn’t clear his belt buckle—flipped the end of her pink feather boa around her shoulder, tipped her head to the side, and gave him a look that reminded him so much of Melody, he wondered if he’d stepped into a time machine when he’d climbed her front steps. “Are you Aunt Melody’s boyfriend?”
Aunt Melody. Stupid as it was, a quick current of relief flowed through him. “I’m her…” His brain fumbled for an appropriate term. “I’m a friend.”
Just then Melody swept into the hallway, wearing a robe and an apologetic smile, and swung the littlest girl up into her arms. “Girls, this is Josh. Move out of the way so he can come in.”
As soon as he stepped inside, the big one and the medium one flanked him, storm trooper style. “Come this way,” Melody said, and led him and his escorts into a living room where some kind of Barbie convention had exploded. She placed her chubby armful down on a rug strewn with doll-sized pink gowns. “This is Gracie. Say hello, Gracie.”
The human dumpling promptly fell onto her well-padded backside and gurgled something that sounded like, “Ro.”
“She’s a baby,” the big one offered, somewhat dismissively. “She still wears diapers.”
Melody aimed a stern look at her. “She’s one, Hope Stevens. When you were her age, you wore diapers, too. Since you’re such a big girl now, introduce yourself to Josh.”
The mini-Melody turned to him. “I’m Hope. I’m five and I don’t wear diapers. I go to school. My teacher is Mrs. Murphy, and I know my alphabet and I can count to one hundred, and—”
“And this”—Melody touched the remaining blond head—“is Faith. She’s three, and since it’s apparently a point of pride, she doesn’t wear diapers, either. Say hello, Fay-fay.”
The little girl hid her face in Melody’s robe. Melody smiled at him and mouthed, “She’s shy.” In a normal voice, she added, “These are my sister Belinda’s girls. She had to run an errand this afternoon so I’m watching them until their daddy comes to pick them up. He should be here any minute. In the meantime, make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something to drink, or—?”
“I’m good.” Since she was clearly in the process of dressing, he waved her off. “Go ahead and finish getting ready. We’ll…uh”—he stared at three sets of curious blue eyes—“entertain ourselves.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’ve given a lot of school fire safety presentations. I’m good with kids.” Not usually this young, but how different could they be?
“Okay.” She gave him a grateful smile. “I’ll be back in a flash. Holler if you need me.”
“Will do,” he said to her retreating back, and then eyed the girls. The big one plopped down on the sofa, bouncing a few times as she settled in. The quiet one stayed where she was, eyeing him speculatively and absently winding her white feather boa around her arm. The littlest one toddled over on chunky legs and raised her arms. “Uppies!”
He glanced at the big one.
“She wants you to pick her up.”
“Oh. Okay.” He leaned down, hooked his hands under her armpits, and lifted her. She laughed and bicycled those dimpled legs, so he pulled her in until he had a handful of diaper and held her against his side. She squealed with happiness, and then, in a completely unexpected and suicidal move, bowed her back and used her arms to push away so fast he nearly lost his grip.
“Holy shit! I mean…shoot.” He tightened his grip and pulled her upright. She smiled with glee and promptly attempted another back dive.
“You said a baaaad word,” Hope shouted, and popped up from the couch. “I’m telling.”
“Hold on, there, turbo-tattle. Can’t you pretend you didn’t hear that?”
“What do I get?”
Behind those narrowed blue eyes beat the heart of a mercenary. “What do you want?”
“Fifty spins.”
He had no clear idea what a spin was, but fifty sounded like a lot. “Ten,” he countered, and bobbled the baby upright again. “Stop doing that. Why does she keep doing that?”
“She likes to go upside down. Mommy telled me it’s a phase. Twenty spins, or I tell Aunt Melody you said the s-word.”
“Fine. Sold. What the fuuh…what’s a spin?” The sound of a hair dryer came from upstairs.
“It’s easy. You hold my hands and spin me around in a circle, and I fly.”
“Sounds like a broken arm waiting to happen,” he muttered, though he kind of recalled his dad doing something similar with him and his sis
ters.
“Spinning is an outside game, so we don’t smash anything.”
Gracie “Death Wish” Stevens dug her toes into the waist of his jeans and attempted to springboard off him like a Chinese acrobat. He somehow kept hold of her squirming weight. “Fine. Everyone outside.”
Faith, the allegedly shy one, darted to the front door, threw her arms wide to block the threshold and babbled some protest at him in a rapid, high volume language he didn’t comprehend. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don’t understand what you’re saying… Oww! Stop that!” The last bit was directed at Death Wish, because she kept attempting to pull herself onto his shoulder using fistfuls of his hair as leverage. But it came out louder than he intended and she burst into tears.
Fay-fay followed suit, wailing at some perceived injustice at the top of her lungs.
Hope crossed her skinny arms, shouted, “Faith, you ruin everything!” and started bawling.
Good with kids. Famous last words. Christ, he was starting to sweat.
“Okay, time out. Hope, why is Faith upset?”
She let out a long-suffering sound. “She wants you to spin her, too. She’s a crybaby. I hate crybabies.”
He hadn’t thought it possible, but Hope’s insult made Faith—the allegedly quiet one—cry even louder. Any second now windows would shatter.
“Well, then, why are you crying?”
“Because I hate crybabies,” she sobbed, as if he were some kind of moron.
“Hey, girls, if you stop the waterworks right now, I’ll spin all of you.”
A few sobs, a sniffle, a couple blinks, and then three wobbly smiles. Bribes worked. Awesome. He hefted Death Wish into one arm and pushed the door open with the other. The hair dryer was still going strong, but he called, “Bluelick, we’re stepping outside.” He barely got the last word past his lips when four little hands tugged him through the door, across the porch and down the steps to the yard, yelling, “Spin! Spin! Spin!”
“Jeez. Give me a minute here.” He herded them to the center of the yard and worked some logistics in his head. Obviously he couldn’t put Death Wish down, because she was just mobile enough to get her wish. He moved her to his left side, and supported her in his left hand and arm. “Cooperate,” he told her in a voice he hoped a one-year-old found authoritative, but not crap-her-diapers intimidating.
“Kay,” she chirped.
Right. He crouched down. “You,” he pointed to Hope, “get behind me and wrap your arms around my neck.”
“My daddy always holds my arms and spins me.”
“Yeah, but I’ve got to hold Death Wish…er…Gracie in one arm, and I figure I can hold on to Faith with the other. The person in back will get the highest, and probably best, spins, but I need her to be someone I can trust to hold on all by herself. I’m thinking that someone is you. Am I right?”
Now that Mercenary Barbie realized she’d landed in the best seat on the Josh-go-round, she grinned and wrapped her dainty arms around his neck. He stood slowly, testing her dangling skills, but she held on like a champ. “Now it’s your turn, Faith.” He reached out his right hand to her. “Grab on.”
When her little hand landed in his, he slid past her palm and wrapped all five fingers around her wrist. He gave that hold a quick test, by drawing his arm up and lifting her off her feet. She squealed but hung on.
“All right, Houston, we’ll have liftoff in three…two…one.” He started spinning. Hope’s squeal threatened to rupture his eardrums. From the shadow they cast on the grass, he could see her legs flying out behind him. Faith, also laughing, gripped his right arm with both of hers, and spun through the air about three feet off the ground. Death Wish let go of her grasp on his shirt and spun facing the sky, arms out over her head like some fearless sideways windmill. In between her screaming laughter he heard the other two chanting, “Faster! Faster! Faster!”
“Oh, no, man. Don’t do that,” a voice he didn’t recognize cut in.
“Daddddddy! Daaaadddy! Dada!” ricocheted in his ears, as he slowly brought the spin game to an end and turned to address a concerned reddish-blond-haired man standing by a dark silver Honda Accord parked at the curb.
“Sorry, is spinning them like this not good for them?” Was he accidentally scrambling their brains or something? He crouched so Hope could get down.
“It’s fine for them.” The man smiled, approached, and knelt to greet his girls. “They can do it all day. It’s not good for you.” The two eldest girls abandoned Josh without a backward glance and smothered the man they called Daddy with hugs. “Chief Bradley, right?” he managed to question, despite the arms twining around his neck like kudzu.
Josh nodded, and supplied, “Josh.”
“Ben,” the man replied, and stood. “Thanks to stunts like the three-in-one spin, I see an expensive chiropractor every week.”
Josh walked over with Death Wish still in his arms, amazed she hadn’t fired up some rocket launcher she kept in her diaper and sailed through the air to her dad. The baby reached for her father’s outstretched arms, but unlike the other two, had the good manners to turn back to Josh and say, “Buh-bye.”
He shook his head to clear it. Had she really just given him the “Buh-bye”?
“Thanks for the warning.” A laugh threatened as he watched the wily little one try the same springboard trick with her father. “But I think I’ll survive three little girls.”
“And I used to think so, too.” Ben turned to the backseat of his car and began strapping his uncooperative armful into a rear-facing baby seat. “But as my wife says, she carried them each nine months, and I’ve carried them ever since. Hence, the chiropractor. Mention my name if you go see him. Make sure you get the Stevens discount.”
“Will do.”
The other man finished buckling Death Wish in, made sure Faith was correctly latched into her front-facing car seat, and then turned to face Josh. “You’re here for Melody?”
“Yep. She’s inside getting dress—”—no, that didn’t sound right—“getting ready for dinner.”
“He’s her friend,” Turbo-Tattler helpfully informed her father, and then climbed into the booster seat positioned by the window and fastened her seat belt.
“I see. Well.” He shut the door, grinned, and looked at Josh. “Thanks for amusing my girls.”
“No problem.”
Ben slid behind the wheel, shut his door, and started the car. “Tell Melody that Belinda and I said thanks, and Belinda will call her tomorrow.”
“Sure. Bye, girls.”
“Byeeeee, Joooosh,” emanated from the car as it pulled away from the curb and headed slowly down the street. Feeling a bit worse for wear, he carefully straightened his spine, re-tucked his white button-down shirt into his jeans, and turned back toward the house.
The sight greeting him on the other side of the open doorframe left him worse for wear in a whole different way. Melody stood there, blond hair tumbling down her shoulders in smooth waves. Her blue eyes danced with pleasure and something else he could only define as excitement. She’d wrapped her traffic-stopping body in one of those little sundresses that looked about as substantial as a butterfly’s wing and made a man thank God for eighty-degree heat and 90 percent humidity. The dress wasn’t particularly tight or short—the women he’d dated in Cincinnati routinely wore outfits consisting of half the fabric—but on her it was straight-up sexy. The pale pink shade should have looked innocent, like ballet slippers or cotton candy. But it wasn’t. Not on her.
The color made him think of her skin. The soft, hidden expanses not kissed by the sun. His mind filled with memories of her round, full breasts, her smooth, flat stomach…the peach-like curve of her ass. Raspberry-red high-heeled sandals strapped to her feet only intensified the effect by highlighting her slender calves and reminding him of another pink destination at the other end of those amazing legs.
He forced his eyes back up and stopped at her face. Her smile washed over him, and for the first time in weeks, th
e restless, hemmed-in feeling he’d gotten used to since moving to Kentucky backed off.
“You appear to be in one piece. Did the girls behave?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle. Like I said, I’m good with kids. Your nieces are fun.”
“They are.” Her expression turned wistful. “I always thought I’d have one of my own by now, but…” She shrugged and tipped the corner of her mouth up into a lopsided smile she probably meant to be sardonic, but didn’t completely erase the wistful look in her eyes. “Things didn’t exactly go as planned.”
He figured it was his job to put a real smile back on her face. He took a small square box from his back pocket and handed it to her.
Her brows lifted as she accepted it. “What’s this?”
“Something to celebrate me not getting your sweet ass fired.”
The explanation earned him even more pink—in the form of blushing cheeks this time—and a tap on his chest from her index finger. “The firing, had it happened, would have been my own fault, but you’re so nice. You didn’t have to get me anything.” She pulled the top off the box and laughed.
Inside he’d tucked a refrigerator magnet in the shape of a Powerball lottery ticket, with a logo across the bottom that read, “Get lucky at Boone’s.”
She slapped a hand across her mouth and laughed, her pretty blue eyes sparkling, and he mentally high-fived himself for following the impulse to buy the stupid thing.
“You ready to go?”
“Yes.” She placed his gift on the hall table near the door and grabbed a slim, dark pink purse the exact same shade as her sandals, which for some inexplicable reason made him wonder what color underwear she wore.
He hoped to catch a glimpse when he helped her into the passenger side of his truck, but no dice. Fate apparently wanted him to learn patience, and it promised to be a painful lesson. While he strapped in, she placed her little pink purse across her lap, unknowingly waving the red flag at the bull, and he fought the urge to go down on her, right then and there.
Light Her Fire Page 6
