by Julia London
“What?”
“Just for the record, I’m not upset that you launched yourself at me.” For the record, he did know why he said that. He wanted to mess with her a little bit because her fluster was charming the pants right off of him. And she didn’t disappoint him—she gasped and her eyes flew open wide. And then narrowed. “You are delusional!” she said and moved to shut the door.
“Wait,” he said.
“What?” she demanded.
She looked good with a little color in her cheeks, he thought. Hell, she just looked good. Really good. “I need your keys.”
She threw her backpack onto the seat and began to rummage through it. Things were flying out of it. Bills. Grocery lists. Used tissues. Makeup brushes and two plastic toys.
“You just had them. You woke me up grinding the engine, remember?” he said.
“I don’t know what I did with them. They’re here, I know they are.”
“Check the pockets,” he said.
She paused and cast a withering look at him. “Are you kidding me right now?” She gestured with both hands to her backpack. “What do you think I’m doing?”
“Don’t tell me you lost—”
“Nope,” she said and triumphantly held them up. She tossed the keys at him and began to stuff things into her backpack. When she had it all secured, she slung it over her shoulder and stepped back. “Again, thanks for the ride. And for taking care of my car. I’m still mad at you, but I really appreciate it.”
“My pleasure. It seems the least I can do after that kiss.”
The way she slammed the door, rattling his whole truck, made Dax smile.
He left her stewing on the sidewalk and drove on. He picked up the part he needed, grabbed a coffee at the Green Bean, then went back to Number Two to get to work. Her car was old and some of the bolts were hard to get undone, but he managed it.
Naturally, Ruby visited while he worked. He saw her feet approaching in her light-up cowboy boots, then her head appeared, upside down, the tails of her red hair dragging in the dirt. “What are you doing?”
“Working.”
She squatted down. “What’s that?”
“A car. Don’t touch.”
“But what are you doing?” she said, and sat on her bottom, sliding one leg under the car.
“Stay out there, Ruby Coconuts. I’m fixing it so your mom will have a car. What does it look like?”
“My mom hates this car.”
“Seems like an okay car to me.”
Ruby crisscrossed her legs and began to dig in the dirt with a stick. “She hates it because my dad was in a car crash. His car hit like, four cars. And then it went off a bridge.”
Startled, Dax looked at her. “I thought your dad was a cat trainer in Africa.”
“He is,” she said, as if one did not negate the other. “The crash happened before. They had to cut off his legs.”
Huh. Dax tried to picture how many Americans without legs were training big cats in Africa. He was going to go out on a limb here and guess exactly zero. “He doesn’t have any legs,” he said skeptically.
“No. But he has a skateboard.”
“Well, sure,” Dax said. “How else is he going to get around? Okay, kid, go play.”
“Okay!” she said and hopped up. He watched her boots disappear from view. He didn’t know if she went inside or not, because he knew how to fix a door, and he’d fixed the one on Number Three but good.
As he continued to work, he grew more curious about Ruby’s dad. Did she see the dude at all? What was he, a deadbeat dad who couldn’t cough up some money to fix Kyra’s car? Was Kyra divorced? Working on a divorce? Maybe she’d never married.
It made him think of himself. His child would make an entry into this world in the next couple of weeks. A baby—children—was the one thing he’d wanted out of life, and it was about to happen, at long last. And yet his own pride kept getting in the way of truly enjoying this moment in his life. Because he had a hard time swallowing the fact he was going to have to share this child with Stephanie. Frankly, he could hardly imagine sharing a child with Ashley after what she’d done to him, but he didn’t have any choice in that. He didn’t know what to expect, but one thing was certain—his kid would never have to make up stories about him, no sir. His kid would know exactly who and what his father was.
Ruby had not gone inside, as it turned out, because she appeared a few minutes later and dumped the many rocks she’d collected on the drive next to where he was working.
“We are not going to play with rocks right here, right now,” he said and pulled himself out from under the car.
Ruby stood up, too. She was tapping her fingers together, over and over, her gaze fixed on the engine under the open hood. Dax watched her a moment. He’d seen her do this before, sort of zone out, her hand moving, her gaze fixed. “Ruby?” he said.
It was as if she didn’t hear him. She didn’t look at him but kept staring at the engine, her fingers moving.
Dax dipped down. “Ruby,” he said and touched her arm. Nothing. Was she having a seizure? He was reminded of a call he’d gone out on in Teaneck. The emergency was an unresponsive child, but when they’d arrived four minutes after the call came in, the kid was running around the yard. “Hey,” he said and squatted down.
Just like that, Ruby looked at him and said, “I’m building a rock castle. You wanna see it?”
She’d checked out for a few but then reappeared. “Not unless it’s big,” he said. “I’m not wasting time on a tiny castle.”
“It’s big,” she assured him.
His phone began to ring, and Dax stood up, pulled the phone from his pocket. “Maybe later, Ruby Coconuts. I’ve gotta work. Now get out of here.” He winked at her and answered his phone without looking. “Hello.”
“Hey, stranger!”
Jesus, it was Heather. Dax had said he’d call her and hadn’t yet. “Hi, Heather.” A stranger? He’d seen her yesterday.
“I was just wondering about you,” she said. “I was in Black Springs this morning and ran into an old friend. She told me about a new jazz club that opened there, and I thought, I know who would like that.”
“Who?” Dax asked.
She laughed. “You, silly! What would you think of trying it out sometime?”
What would he think of checking out a jazz club? That he’d rather stick hot needles in his eyes. Why was she calling him, anyway? He was supposed to call her. Weren’t there any rules to dating anymore? A guy was the first to call, everyone knew that. A guy calls three times, and then it’s open season.
“Well, I—”
“I probably caught you off guard,” she said before he could answer. “Just think about it and give me a call. Are you having a good day?”
“So far.”
“Great! Listen, I really enjoyed our lunch.”
Somewhere in the distance, Dax heard Otto barking. “Ah . . . yep,” he said.
“And I . . . I look forward to hearing from you,” she said quite cheerfully.
What was Otto into now? The damn dog wouldn’t stop barking.
“Right,” he said. He wasn’t sure how to end this call, but he was pretty desperate to do it. He wasn’t ready for Heather yet. He had to gear up, get his game face on.
“Okay, well . . . talk to you later?” she asked.
He was relieved she was going to end this call for them. “You bet. Bye for now.” He clicked off the phone and stuffed it in his pocket. What was he doing, again? Right, he was almost finished with that car, but first he had to get Otto out of Mrs. McCauley’s garden. But when he turned toward the Victorian house on the hill, he realized that Otto’s barking was coming from the lake, not the McCauley house. He turned around, moved from in front of Kyra’s car, scanning the lake in search of his dog.
He spotted him—Otto was on a rock, his butt in the air, his tail wagging furiously. And there, next to him, was Ruby Coconuts. She was crouched down, and it looked like she wa
s holding a stick.
Dax scanned the lakeshore. No one around but Otto and Ruby. He glanced back at Number Three. Through the open screen door, he could hear the TV. He jogged over to tell the woman that Ruby was down at the lake, but when he walked up on the porch, he saw the old bag in a reclining chair, fast asleep while some game show blared.
“Hey!” he shouted. The woman startled awake. “Your kid is outside,” he said and pointed toward the lake. He glanced back and his heart seized—Otto was crouched down on the rock, his head over the side of it, pointed toward the lake, and Ruby was nowhere to be seen.
Dax leapt off the porch and ran, his stride as long as he could make it. It seemed to take forever to cover the roughly fifty yards between the cottages and the lake, and by the time he reached the rock, Otto had gained his feet and was barking again. Dax raced around the rock, saw Ruby flailing in the water.
He jumped in—thank God the water was really shallow here—and grabbed her up, holding her tightly to him, her head against his shoulder, his arms firmly around her body. She wrapped her legs and arms around him and started to cry.
His heart was beating as wildly as hers. He clung to her in relief as he climbed out of the water. He paused to give Otto a scratch behind the ears and a “good boy.” When he was on the beach again, he caressed Ruby’s crown and asked, “What were you doing down there, Coconut?”
“It was a dragonfly,” she sobbed.
“Ah, a dragonfly,” he said, still caressing her head, still swallowing to get his heart to stop pounding. He continued on, walking up the shore with her, trying vainly to catch his breath. He kept picturing what he might have found had he not been out front—a little girl floating facedown in the lake. The vision made him feel sick.
The babysitter had managed to get off her butt and was hurrying toward them as fast as Dax supposed she could go, considering her girth. She stopped running when she saw Dax carrying Ruby up from the lake, and braced a hand against her knee to catch her breath. “She’s not supposed to be out there,” she said between pants.
Dax walked past her, hardly able to look at her. “Get me some clothes for her,” he said curtly. He wasn’t going to say any more, because he thought he might take her head off if he did.
“What are you going to do?” the babysitter asked as she hurried to keep up with him.
She had not even asked how Ruby was, had not tried to comfort her, and Dax was a boiling egg about to explode. “Ruby’s going to hang out with me today.”
“What? You can’t do that!”
“Sure I can.” He paused on the drive in front of Number Three. “If you have a problem, I’ll give Kyra a call.”
The woman frowned. “Carrie ain’t going to fire me. She doesn’t have another option.”
That remark infuriated him. The old bag showed absolutely no remorse for what had nearly happened. Ruby could have drowned. “Okay. Then maybe I’ll call the police,” he said.
“No, don’t call the police!” Ruby wailed. “I don’t want to get in trouble!”
“Just get me some clothes for her,” Dax said angrily.
The woman pressed her lips together and marched into Number Three. She returned a few minutes later and thrust some clothes at Dax. He caught them with his free hand.
“You haven’t heard the end of this, buster,” she said.
“Are you kidding me?” Dax asked incredulously. He turned around and walked away from her. She was the second woman in his life he’d wanted to punch in the mouth.
He, Ruby, and Otto crowded into his cottage. Ruby was still whimpering. Dax set her down then squatted in front of her. “Look, Coconut, you’re okay. Stop crying.”
She nodded and sniffed.
“Go in there and put these on,” he said, pointing at his bedroom door. “You can put on your clothes, can’t you?”
“I have to put my clothes on every day.”
“Okay. Well, you can understand my confusion, since you never have your boots on the right feet.”
She looked down.
He gestured for a foot. She lifted it, and he yanked off the boot, grimacing as water spilled on his clean floor. He took off the other one and stood up, holding the boots in one hand. “Go put the dry clothes on, then bring me your wet clothes.”
“What are you going to do with them?”
“I’m going to put them in a sandwich and eat them.”
She looked at him very studiously. “You can’t eat clothes.”
“No?”
Ruby shook her head.
“Then I guess I’ll hang them out to dry. And then I’m putting you to work, Coconut. You’re going to be my helper.”
She gasped. “Yay!” she said, and just like that, her blues were banished. She took the clothes from him and ran into his bedroom to change.
“Yeah, you think it’s all cookies and cream right now, but just wait ’til I’m through with you,” he called after her.
“Awesome!” she shouted back.
Dax walked out onto the porch to deposit the boots, then put his hand against the porch railing and drew a deep breath. He wished he could banish the blues as easily as that little girl could, but his heart was still trying to jackhammer out of his chest and his belly still churned with the nausea of imagining what might have happened if he hadn’t been close by.
He didn’t know quite what to make of her mother, but Dax wasn’t going to let the coconut out of his sight anytime soon.
Chapter Ten
As far as bad days went, this one ranked near the top, and God knew several had already crowded up there. Add the awkwardness of having kissed Dax—what sort of temporary insanity was that?—to her humiliation in having to accept his offer to fix her car because she was, as usual, broke, and now the news that Deenie’s friend Phil had passed on the offer of meeting Kyra, she was batting a thousand.
Talk about feeling like the scourge of society.
“He doesn’t want to even meet me?” Kyra asked Deenie again, just to make sure she understood correctly.
“It’s not that he doesn’t want to meet you,” Deenie said, although she’d said, He said thanks, but he’d rather not meet you. “It’s just not a good time for him.”
“Wow,” Kyra said. “Wow.” She was sort of hoping. Actually, hoping was too soft a word. Since last night, she was praying for any alternative that would keep her from doing things like banging on Dax’s door after midnight and then kissing him like a desperate head case who hadn’t had sex in about . . . forever.
But Dax was seeing someone else. She had waited on them, for God’s sake.
“What’s the matter, he doesn’t like children?” Megan asked, her elephant ears having overheard the conversation.
“It’s not that, either,” Deenie said, squirming a little. “It’s just not an ideal dating situation for him.”
“Ah,” Kyra said. “You mean because I am a single mother.”
“That is such bullshit,” Megan said, and pointed a giant spoon at Deenie, who instantly threw up her hands as if she were being held at gunpoint. “So are single mothers not allowed to date?” she demanded. “Is that it? And what kind of cretin doesn’t like children?”
“You’re taking this way too hard, Megan,” Deenie said. “Phil likes children. It’s just . . .” She sighed, then glanced sheepishly at Kyra. “He doesn’t want that complication in his dating life right now.”
“By ‘that complication,’ I take it you mean Ruby. He doesn’t want an adorable six-year-old in his life right now,” Kyra said bitterly.
“Well?” Deenie asked. “Can you blame him?”
“Yes! I can blame him! Six-year-olds are a lot of fun, and now I feel like an idiot, and it was your idea, Deenie,” Kyra reminded her.
She was deflated by this news, and it made her feel a little unlovable, but she was definitely not surprised. She already knew that there weren’t a lot of hot guys out there dying to get in the pants of a single mom with a bit of a paunch and Barbie do
lls strewn all over the backseat of her piece-of-shit car. She knew that, so why was she mad at Deenie? Because Deenie had to go and mention the dude to begin with and get Kyra’s hopes up.
“It’s ridiculous,” Megan said and angrily began to stir something in a big metal pot. “I have a friend who has three-year-old twins, and every time she starts dating a guy, it’s like they spend one Sunday with them and they’re like no, I’m out, I can’t with this kid thing. It’s disgusting.”
“Okay, to be fair, in that case it could be the three-year-old twins,” Kyra said.
Megan gave her a sharp look. “Children are the purest, most wonderful creatures on God’s earth. I would think you’d be on my side, Kyra.”
“I am on your side. But Ruby was a handful at three years old. I can’t imagine two of her and trying to date. I’m just saying.”
“I don’t think you should just accept this lying down, Kyra,” Megan added as she dumped a creamy liquid into the pot.
“You’re right,” Kyra said as she tied on her apron. “I’ll hunt him down and demand he date me or else.”
“Why not?” Megan asked pointedly. “How else will he know what he’s doing is so, so wrong?”
“Maybe I can tell him,” Deenie suggested. “I’ll text him—”
“God, please don’t,” Kyra said. She picked up her tray. “The only thing worse than being rejected, sight unseen, is to have your friend call and beg for you.” She went through the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room and went to work. Phil or no Phil, she needed to earn some money.
They had decent traffic for lunch, thank God, because that car repair was going to put a serious dent in Kyra’s bank account. When her shift was over, Kyra bought supper for her and Ruby from the bistro—pizza, another nutritional fail, and if she wasn’t sure of it, Megan mentioned it—then bummed a ride home from Deenie. They drove by the bank on the way to the cottages so Kyra could get the money to pay Dax for her car repair.
When they arrived at Kyra’s cottage, her car was sitting in the same place she’d left it this morning.
“Is it fixed?” Deenie asked as Kyra gathered her things.
