by Sosie Frost
Name the favor…dinners out, foot massages, other sundry and immodest deeds that I’d willingly degrade myself to offer.
I could think of quite a few favors now—a clean bathroom, super glue to recombine the scattered shards of my dignity, and a wild and animalistic night of pure sex like I’d imagined so many years ago.
At least I had a cold shower.
I rushed through my routine, splattering my cheeks with some makeup, tossing on a simple sundress, and gathering my hair in a ponytail. I balled my dirty laundry in the corner of my luggage then sat on top to help it close. The latches whined before clicking, but it was done.
Finally.
I gripped the handle. The loop promptly ripped off the suitcase. The luggage cluttered to the floor, breaking a hinge. The entire mechanism failed.
The spring-loaded compartment burst. The contents exploded from the suitcase. Panties flew everywhere. The rest of my once folded, now knotted clothes followed suit.
Jules shouted from downstairs. “Cas, where did dad keep his tax returns?”
Hell no. One cold shower, a concussion, and a busted suitcase weren’t stopping me. I galloped down the stairs to grab a roll of duct tape.
I passed the office and called to Jules. “Bottom cabinet, under E for Extortion.”
“What about his old feed orders?”
“Under C for Critters.”
“It’s going to take me a week to find any of his paperwork!”
Probably longer, once he realized Dad opted against sorting his years chronologically in favor of classifying each harvest as good or bad. Dad had never once touched a computer, and he hated calculators. His business contracts were pre-arranged with lifelong friends who’d provided feed and equipment over a beer, a wink, and gentleman’s handshake.
And Jules thought he could pick it up in a season.
I mummified my suitcase with a layer of duct tape and considered tossing a strip over my mouth. God only knew what horrific words would come out—like, Hang on, Jules. Let me help you. Or Sure, Rem, I’d love to stay and watch those two adorable little girls.
I slung my purse over my shoulder and hauled the suitcase off the bed. I made it to the stairs before my phone buzzed. I reached for it, juggled it in my hands, and then watched as it crashed, banged, and shattered down every single stair.
Jules picked it up at the bottom, whistling as the screen spider webbed and fractured under his hand.
“Looks like you’ll have to stay and get that fixed,” he said.
“Not a chance.” The suitcase had no handle, and now I had no way to get it down the stairs. Screw it. I pushed the damn thing, wincing as it crashed through the bottom railing in a confetti of splinters. “I’ll get a new phone in the city.”
“With what money?”
“I’ll find a job.”
“You have a job on the farm.”
“I’ve seen the pay. I’m not working for your five-alarm chili, Jules.” I cast my brother a knowing glance. “If I stayed, I’d actually make money nannying for Remington Marshall’s two nieces. Would you like that instead?”
Jules kissed my forehead. “I’ll tell the others you said goodbye.”
I hauled the busted luggage out the door and tossed it into my trunk, managing to crush my favorite pair of sunglasses. My phone buzzed again.
Do it as a favor to me?
The car was loaded. I had plans. Friends waiting for me. Places I could stay. Jobs on the horizon. Maybe even a teaching gig at a prestigious preschool if my networking paid off. I couldn’t give up my one chance to get out of Butterpond because I still had feelings for a man who redefined the word flame.
I slid into my car, regretting my decision immediately. The interior hardened with mud. Flecks of dirt, grass, and hay spewed from the air conditioner. My tank had plummeted to empty. A note waited on my dash.
Borrowed the car to go hiking. Owe you gas money.
-Tidus
I’d kill him later.
Butterpond had one gas station directly in the center of town. The two old-fashioned pumps offered everyone ten minutes of gossip per fill-up. Patricia Martin owned the station, the diner next door, and the debts of at least ten families in Butterpond—including my father’s. Kinder than a bank but less forgiving than a loan shark.
Today, Pat wore a garish straw hat with a bird’s nest and fake robins. She’d included a cross over her heart and her granddaddy’s .38 special on her hip. She grinned when she saw me—a beaming smile that only grew wider when presented with a credit card.
“Miss Cassia Payne…” Pat was showing a bit of shoulder today. Her skin might have been a shade darker than mine, but no one but Jesus ever saw most of it. Modesty was a virtue, and gossip a sin, so Pat kept a close eye on the scales. “I just heard some dreadful news about you, sweetness. Lord bless you, I hope it’s not true.”
“Hi, Pat.”
She ignored my offered credit card. “There’s stories about you running around with that Marshall boy again.”
Apparently, Rem was the most exciting thing to happen in Butterpond since Billy Bisco accidentally loaded his rifle with real bird shot for the civil war reenactment. The south rose that day, and the historical society was not at all pleased.
“He’s just a friend,” I said.
“Well, Layne Carlisle said you and that no-good Marshall boy were shopping together last week. Said your older brother had to come down and stop him from pawing all over you.”
“That’s not exactly—”
“If your poor Daddy only knew—Lord bless his soul—”
I handed her the credit card again. “He wasn’t pawing on me.”
She swiped the card and frowned. “Heard he had Emma’s kids with him.”
“Yeah. He’s watching them.”
“Good thing too. Not sure they’re okay with a bad egg like him, but they’re better off than with that girl.”
“What do you—”
The machine beeped. Pat had a way to look both mortified and exhilarated in the same breath.
“Aw, sweetness. Your card is declined.”
“What?”
Pat practically salivated over the potential gossip. This would keep her high for a week. “Probably just a card error. The bank does that sometimes.”
Not often. Just today.
A cold shower. Concussion. Busted luggage. Broken phone. No gas. And now a rejected credit card?
Good thing it wasn’t storming. Today was a good day—or a bad day—to get struck by lightning.
I dug through my purse and pulled out the two twenties I kept in reserve. She took my money as well as pity on me.
“Poor thing.” She waddled behind the counter and busied herself at the slushie machine. “Seems like you could use this. It’s on me.”
The Icee drink wouldn’t last five minutes in the heat, but it’d be the first and only meal I’d eat until I got my credit card fixed. I took it with a smile.
“Thanks, Pat.”
“Heading out to Ironfield again? Think you’ll make the county line?”
“How did you…”
“Got me a bet with Julian.”
Of course she did.
“Make me proud, sweetness.” Pat hooted. “No. Make momma some money!”
I was trying. God help me, I was doing my best to get out of town. I seized my drink and filled my tank, but I only made it halfway into my driver’s seat before a bee buzzed the window. The fuzzy little bastard dive bombed my face, collided with my ear, and gave an angry zzzzzz as he charged my lobe.
It took only a second before his stinger created a fashionable—and painful—new earring.
I screamed. Brandished the Icee as a weapon.
And I defeated the insect in a pool of red, sticky slushie that splattered my dashboard, steering wheel, purse, and clothes.
My ear throbbed. I clutched it, peeking into the rear-view mirror. Yep. Swollen. Little asshole stung me, and the shooting pain radiated from my
ear into my jaw.
I couldn’t win.
At least, only my phone now buzzed.
Do it as a favor to them?
Rem had posed the girls for the camera—Mellie all smiles, Tabby five minutes too long passed her lunch. Her lip pouted, cheeks puffed, and a tantrum was eminent. Rem probably had no idea. But he’d learn. Slowly, sure, but he’d be able to manage the kids.
All by himself.
With no prior experience.
And no easy way to get a sitter.
And a sick sister doing chemo who would need help too.
I tapped my head against the steering wheel, regretting the sticky decision. An icepack, shower, car wash, new phone, and replaced credit card all waited for me in Ironfield. I was so close.
But was it fair to leave him all alone to manage the girls, his family, and his sister’s health?
No.
Could I trust myself that close to him?
Absolutely not.
Nannying was just not an option.
I flicked the melting slushie off my keys and stuck them in the ignition. Turned.
The car hummed, buzzed, and then died, clicking when I turned the key.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
The phone vibrated again. Another photo, this one a selfie. Both girls on his lap—him and Mellie making goofy faces, Tabby looking inconvenienced.
I needed to get out of town. To forget Rem. To move on with my life.
But now? I needed money—specifically, fifty dollars for my eldest brother.
My fingers tapped an answer over the fractured screen.
When can I start?
7
Remington
Cassi Payne stepped out of my bedroom in a yellow bikini designed to stop my heart, knot my cock, and destroy the pinkie-promise we’d made when she agreed to become the girls’ nanny.
This job was supposed to be purely professional.
I’d made a lot of mistakes in my life. Fires. Drugs. Letting this woman get away.
Agreeing to stay professional while the most beautiful woman in the world strutted around my cabin in a teeny-tiny bikini?
I was a goddamned idiot.
“I’m taking the kids to the lake,” Cassi said. “Why don’t you come with us?”
“Swimming!” Mellie bounced into the living room, proudly displaying her frilly pink bathing suit, yellow flip flops, and a pair of sunglasses shaped like two daisies. “Come on, Uncle Rem!”
Mellie’s excitement riled up Tabby. Cassi had somehow tucked her little toddler rolls into a spandex suit with a mermaid on the front. She bounded around the floor by bouncing on her butt while chasing Mellie and the last graham cracker. Both girls screamed, giggled, and then tussled in the beach towels Cassi dumped over their heads.
“Pass,” I said. “I’ll stay here.”
“Alone?”
She’d been the girls’ full-time nanny for two days. I’d had them for three weeks. That many tantrums, screams, shrieks, cries, and crashes had burrowed a migraine deep into my head. I’d see them graduate before I got rid of the headache.
“I think I’ll survive,” I said.
Cassi winked and puffed up a pink beach ball. “Aw, what’s the matter? Can’t brood all alone in your cabin anymore?”
“There’s lots of things I can’t do by myself anymore.” The bikini would kill me. A bright and cheerful yellow caressed her perfect, mouth-wateringly tempting dark skin. Cassi might have been a little thing, but she had curves in all the places that made this world right and good. “There’s plenty I could do with you though. What do you say?”
“I say…I better get out of this cabin quick.”
“Why? Intrigued?”
“Nope. Just suffering a bad case of cabin fever.”
“Sure you’re just not hot for me?”
“I don’t know.” She pitched the beach ball at my head. “Why don’t we get out of this stuffy house and find out.”
And miss the first and only peaceful afternoon I’d had in a month? No stories to read, no diapers to change, no visions of my past waltzing through my kitchen and tempting me with her smile, hips, and vanilla scent?
I had enough to do, starting with a call I’d put off to the project manager of the logging company. He wouldn’t like to hear that my temporary leave of absence would last another couple of weeks. Plus, I had a load of timber piled high in my woodshed, waiting for me to begin work on a custom new dining room set for a family in town. Most importantly, I had a hard log I was waiting to chop, but I couldn’t shout timber without some privacy.
Sometimes, a man needed to be alone.
“Come on, Rem.” Cassi nudged Mellie. “Don’t you want your uncle to come too?”
Mellie was a sociopath in waiting—the world’s cutest master manipulator with golden curls who took no prisoners when inflicting that bottom lip in a pout.
“Please Uncle Rem?” She clapped her hands and nearly tumbled over her sister. “We…can…play…NEMO!”
Pretty sure that was the movie about the fish, not the racecar. “Sorry, kiddo. Uncle Rem doesn’t have a pair of trunks.”
Cassi arched an eyebrow. “When has that ever stopped you?”
“Haven’t done it for a while. Believe it or not, we don’t skinnydip much in the Canadian wilderness.”
Her smile slayed me. “I haven’t either…not since that one time.”
The woman would destroy me from the inside out. If it wasn’t the nostalgia killing me, it’d be the blood pressure surging between my head and cock. The memory blinded me. A night long ago when a beautiful girl slipped beneath the water and cast off a pair of jean shorts and white t-shirt.
It was the night I’d almost had her, when only water and shadow had separated us. Had I known that was my last chance to be with her, I wouldn’t have let her out of the pond.
That night, we’d almost made love. Almost said those words. Almost devoted our lives to each other. That was the night before the barn burned down.
Then everything had changed.
“I’ll go if you’re planning on losing the suit,” I said.
“That wouldn’t be very professional.”
I grinned. “So take the day off.”
“And the kids?” Her eyes drifted to the expectant little girls—Mellie with her beach ball, Tabby gnawing a Barbie leg that hadn’t survived Mellie’s dance party/torture chamber. “You need to think of what’s best for them now.”
Hadn’t I already been thinking of them? All day, every day, for almost a month? Diapers. Baths. Banging my head against the wall at night when they refused to sleep after a dinner of Skittles and juice.
Still, the kids probably deserved more entertainment than making water balloons out of condoms. Not only did Cassi declare that to be inappropriate, the damn things never burst. At the very least, I thought that particular demonstration would have convinced Cassi to give me a chance.
I grabbed my keys. “Round em up. We’ll take them to the watering hole.”
Cassi grinned, shouldering diaper bags and lunches filled with carrot sticks and grapes. The kids squealed in excitement and rushed to the truck—a truck that was once filled with freshly cut wood and hand-crafted furniture. Now it carried freshly filled diapers and home-grown tantrums.
And a diaper blowout? That was a shittier time than a busted tire.
The watering hole had seemed much bigger when I was young. Either I’d grown up, or it’d shrunk. Then again, everything had seemed bigger when we were kids. The town. The problems. The words we never spoke and the moments we’d missed.
I’d never expected to come back to Butterpond. The people didn’t want me. The Paynes despised me. And the kids—
Mellie tripped over a rock in the shore and stomped her feet. “Sockcucker!”
I wasn’t the best influence.
The longer the kids stayed with me, the more likely they’d learn their ABCs in the back of a patrol car and do their first multipli
cation tables to help calculate bail. Mellie was swearing. I didn’t need to be Doctor Seuss to know Tabby was probably behind other girls her age. They had to go home to Emma, but…
No kid deserved to see their mother like that.
At least they had Cassi—someone to play with them, watch them, sing songs with them…
And unleash a hellish scream that curdled my blood.
I sprang over the tailgate and hit the dirt running. So much for a mid-afternoon nap in the sun. I ripped my shirt off as I ran, fearing that a woman’s screaming like that could only mean one of the girls was trapped in the turbulent, dark part of the lake with no floaties…
Her second yelp stopped me in my tracks.
No little girl thrashing in the water.
Just a nanny trapped in the tire swing.
Booty first.
Cassi flailed her arms and legs, struggling against the black rubber. The tire swing held her firm, the series of ropes along the sides positioning the tire flat, so a would-be swimmer had a platform to sit, pump their legs, and then jump into the water.
Instead of a gentle swing, the tire engulfed her. Her ass stuck deep enough into the middle of the tire to pin her arms and hips. Her dignity might have dropped onto the dirt below if she hadn’t been trapped inside the rubber like an upside down, humpbacked turtle.
“Mellie!” Cassi shouted as the devious munchkin slapped the tire round and round, giggling as her nanny spun in frantic circles. Half-naked, those bikini bottoms wedged firmly between those lovely cheeks, Cassi panicked each time the ground bumped that beautiful ass. “Mellie, stop!”
I grinned, admiring the view. “Any chance I can get a refund on this nanny service?”
Cassi spun. And spun. And spun some more. “Rem, help!”
“What the hell did you do?”
Cassi managed to grab the rope and stop her spinning, but she could do nothing to slow the crawl of the bikini turned thong encroaching on secret regions where I was never permitted access.
She spoke through gritted teeth. “My booty’s stuck in the tire swing.”
And I had almost stayed home and missed this fun. “Excuse me?”
“I said…my booty…is stuck…in this tire swing.”
