On the Fly (8 page)

“
Don’t talk to strangers,
Tuck,” the little girl said, retreating toward her own door. I’d
known both kids had Rachel’s hair, but this was the first time I’d
really gotten a good look at their faces. They both had those same
fairy-dust freckles across their cheeks and noses, and the girl had
the same green eyes.

“
He’s not a stranger. Mommy
talked to him the day we getted ice cream.” He craned his neck back
so far I thought his head might fall off and roll across the
hallway like a bowling ball. “So will you knock?”

“
I’ll do even better than
that,” I said. I pulled out my key and stuck it in the lock. “I’ll
just open it and let you in.”

Before I could turn the key, all hell
broke loose.

“
Maddie! The cat!” Rachel
shrieked from inside her apartment, just as an orange ball of fluff
streaked out into the hall.

The girl dropped her bowl at the sound
of her mother’s voice. It shattered, sending bits of fruit and
shards of glass flying.

She started to take a step backward,
but she was wearing socks without shoes.

“
Don’t move!” I shouted at
her. I probably shouted too loud. I wasn’t really used to being
around kids—not since I was a kid myself, and I was thirty
now.

Tuck started crying and pulled his
plate in toward his chest. “Pumpkin,” he sobbed, but I had no idea
what he was talking about. The plate tipped up, and pancakes and
sausage links all mashed against him before they, too, fell to the
floor.

At least he held onto the plate. He
was barefoot, too. I really didn’t need both of them surrounded by
broken glass.

The door to my apartment flew open
just as Rachel made it to her doorway holding a tray of glasses
filled with orange juice. Babs looked at me, then at the crying
boy, then across to where Rachel and Maddie were still standing in
their doorway.

“
Sheesh, what’d you do,
Soupy?”

All I’d done was come home. Now wasn’t
time to argue my innocence, though. I had to sort out what needed
to be done first because everyone was just standing around crying
and no one was taking control of the situation.

“
Go get a broom and dustpan
so we can clean this up,” I grumbled at him.

“
I can do that,” Rachel
said. But she didn’t have any shoes on, either. Hell, now that I
looked around,
no one
had shoes on but me.

“
No, go set your tray down
and put some shoes on.”

“
Mommy,” Tuck sobbed,
“Pumpkin runned away.”

Fuck, Pumpkin must be the cat. I’d
already forgotten about the cat.

I must have looked as lost as I felt.
Babs picked up the little boy and tossed him over his shoulder.
“Come on, Ginger Ninja. You and me need to go rescue Pumpkin.” Then
he took off in the direction the cat had gone. By the time they
rounded the corner, the boy’s cries had turned to
giggles.

Rachel had gone back inside, hopefully
to get her shoes on.

I looked back at Maddie, who hadn’t
moved a muscle since I’d shouted at her. A line of red was
streaming down her right leg, starting just below her knee and
ending as it met her sock, which had a growing red spot.

“
Looks like you’ve got a
cut,” I said. I tried to keep my voice calm and smooth. The last
thing I needed was to scare the little girl again. She seemed kind
of skittish and wary, in a way that made me think of Dana. At least
of how Dana was until last spring.

Maddie nodded, her eyes wide, but she
didn’t say anything.

I took a few steps closer, closing the
distance between us a little at a time. “Does it hurt?”

She nodded again.

“
Okay. I’m gonna move you
away from the glass. I’ll just pick you up—”

I hadn’t closed the distance to her
yet when Rachel darted back out into the hall and picked her
daughter up, then carried her into her condo.

She left a trail of bloody footprints
in her wake.

“
Damn it,” I muttered under
my breath. Rachel hadn’t put her shoes on. Now instead of just
having one little girl with cuts to deal with, her mother’s feet
were all torn to shreds, too. A trip to the emergency room hadn’t
been in my plans for today.

I set Maddie
down on the dining room table and knelt in front
of her to examine the cut. It didn’t look too bad, all things
considered. Probably more scary looking than it was serious.
Definitely not bad enough to call 9-1-1 or rush her off to a
doctor.

I felt Brenden coming in behind me
before I heard him. My intuition was just wired that way these
days. “Can you get me a washcloth from the kitchen sink?” I asked
him as I gingerly felt Maddie’s cut with the tip of my finger. She
sucked in a breath, but I didn’t feel anything sticking out. That
was good. That meant I shouldn’t have to dig around in there with
tweezers to pull out a piece of glass.

The faucet came on for a minute, and
then Brenden came up behind me. “You need to sit in a chair and let
me look at your feet.”

“
Her feet are fine,” I
said, exasperation edging my voice. I reached behind me and grabbed
the washcloth. At least he’d thought to use warm water. I dabbed it
against Maddie’s cut and then pulled it away for another look.
“Maddie didn’t move, even though you shouted at her loud enough to
wake the dead.”

“
He means
your
feet,
Mommy.”

My feet were fine. A lot more fine
than he would have been if he’d dared to lay a finger on my baby
girl.

If I allowed myself to think
rationally, I knew he only meant to help. I knew he wasn’t going to
do anything to hurt her. But there was nothing rational left in my
mind, not after what Jason had done to her. He’d stolen the part of
me that could trust people with my kids as much as he’d stolen
Maddie’s childhood. I couldn’t stop myself from panicking at the
thought that some man I didn’t know was going to pick Maddie up.
That his hands would be on her. That she didn’t know him at all,
and he was going to touch her, even if he only meant to help
her.

I was still shaking, just thinking
about it.

“
I’ll worry about my feet
when I’m done taking care of my daughter,” I said. I wiped the
cloth over the stream of blood down Maddie’s leg, but there weren’t
any cuts other than that one at the top. I held the washrag in
place, putting pressure on the wound. “Can you get my first aid
kit? It’s in the front bathroom.”

“
I’m worried about your
feet
now
, because
it looks like a crime scene in here,” he grumbled. Then he picked
me up by the waist and spun me around. He put me down in one of my
dining room chairs, ignoring my huff of indignation.

I finally let myself look at the
floor. He was right. There was blood everywhere—bloody footprints
traveling the path I’d taken carrying Maddie to the table and a big
pool of it below me. I must have stepped in a lot of the glass to
make that sort of mess, but I hadn’t felt a thing. Not really.
Maybe a pinch or two, but my mind had only been on getting to my
little girl and making sure she was all right.

He took the washcloth from me and
handed it to Maddie. “Can you hold that tight against your leg
while I take care of your mom?”

She nodded with big eyes.

“
Put a lot of pressure on
it, okay?”

“
Mmmhmm,” Maddie
whimpered.

His attention had already left her,
though. He wasn’t looking to be sure she did it right, because he’d
raised my feet and was holding them in front of his
face.

I tried to twist myself around so I
could check on her, but Brenden had a firm grip on my ankles—both
of them in one of his hands—and he didn’t let me move a
muscle.

“
Keep it tight over the
cut,” I said to her, scowling at him.

Brenden scowled right back at me. “I
already told her to do that.” He had another wet cloth in his free
hand, and he dabbed it against the soles of my feet.

I sucked in a breath at the stinging
pain and tried to jerk back from him, but he kept a firm grip on me
so he could keep tending my wounds. No wonder it looked like a
crime scene in my dining room. I must have done a real number on my
feet without knowing it.

He grimaced, but I was pretty sure it
had more to do with my struggling against him than what he saw on
my feet. At least he didn’t seem squeamish. “You’ve got glass in
here still. Quite a bit of it. I need tweezers to get it
out.”

I heard Tuck’s giggles coming from
down the hall, along with Pumpkin’s growls. Pumpkin was good about
putting up a vocal argument when he wasn’t happy, but it was all
talk. He’d never bitten anyone, and he only ever used his claws
accidentally. He definitely wouldn’t hurt Tuck, and I was pretty
sure Jamie should be fine, too. I wasn’t worried. They disappeared
into the apartment across the hall—most likely to get shoes for
Jamie. Probably a good plan. I tried not to worry about Tuck being
alone with him, but my worry-o-meter had been going haywire for
about six months now.

Brenden’s focus remained on my feet.
“Tweezers?” he urged me again.

“
In the front bathroom.
Right next to the first aid kit.”

Jamie poked his head through the open
doorway, holding Tuck in one arm and a very flat-eared,
perturbed-looking Pumpkin in the other as he skirted around the
mess on the floor. I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been
holding once they came into view.

“
I’ll get them,” Jamie
said. “I’ll just put these two in Tuck’s room for now so they can
play.”

“
I wanna help!” Tuck
squealed, but it was a happy squeal. At least
he
was okay.

Jamie was already carting my son and
my cat down the hall. “You can help by keeping Pumpkin safe. Okay?
Make sure your ninja moves are better than his so he doesn’t cut
his paws on the glass.”

Tuck started giggling again. Even
after Jamie had deposited him in his room with Pumpkin and shut the
door to be sure they stayed there, my son’s laughter rang through
our apartment.

A second later, Jamie came back out
with tweezers and the first aid kit, tossing them over to Brenden.
“You got this, Soupy? I’ll clean up.”

My kids were the ones who’d made the
mess, though, and it was my blood all over the floor. I didn’t want
him cleaning up after me any more than I wanted him to feel like he
had to help me unload my car or put together my furniture. And I
really wanted Brenden Campbell to let go of my ankles so I could
take care of my own feet. I tried to tug them free again. “You
don’t have to—”

Brenden tightened his grip on me, and
his eyes flashed up to meet mine briefly. Gorgeous eyes. They were
a rich, chocolate brown and had these deep-gold flecks near the
pupils. Eyes I could melt into, if he wasn’t glaring at
me.

Good thing he was glaring.

“
Be still so I don’t push
any of this glass in deeper.”

I huffed so hard that my bangs flew up
in the air. That would have made me laugh if I wasn’t so
frustrated. But he was right—the last thing I needed was to send
any of those shards deeper into my feet than they already were. It
was only after he’d started to tend to my feet at all that I’d
realized how badly I was hurt. Adrenaline can get you through some
crazy things, especially if your kids are involved.

After a few minutes, Jamie had cleaned
up the food and glass, both in my apartment and out in the hallway,
and Brenden had removed all the glass from my feet. He methodically
cleaned the cuts and spread antibiotic ointment all over before
wrapping gauze around them both.

He was still wrapping me up when Jamie
was ready to clean up the blood covering the floor between my
doorway and my dining room table. “Where’s your mop, Rach?” Jamie
asked.

“
Hall closet,” I hissed
out. Even just the tiniest bit of pressure Brenden was putting on
the bottoms of my feet felt excruciating. The next several days
would be miserable, until they started to heal. With my luck, then
they’d itch.