Chapter 7

 

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“Stella? You okay?”

Have fun with her, Annie had said.

I had valued that advice, woken up this morning with that very thought in mind.

Sandcastles. Of course! I was an engineering major at West Point. I know the serenity that comes from using my hands and actually creating something. That’s just what Stella needs.

And it had been fun this morning on Mauna Kea Beach with Stella. A blast, actually. I’d pictured having to put her on a leash to keep her out of the deep water today; my brothers and I had been hard to tame at her age.

Yet Stella did exactly as she was told—a little Soldier actually, taking orders better than most of the troops I’d had in my Rifle Company.

But now… this.

“Are you okay in there, Stella?” I repeat my question, my heart thumping in my chest as though I’m in a firefight.

I’m standing outside the women’s restroom. Our condo is only a short walk from this beach, and I’d assumed that if Stella had needed the bathroom, we could have made it back to my place.

But I’m learning now that when a four-year-old has got to go, she’s gotta go.

“Stella?”

There’s something terrifying about having a kid out of your sight for even a moment, and I’m wondering how parents ever get the nerve to drop their kids off at kindergarten.

Ten… nine… If she doesn’t answer in ten seconds, I’m bolting in there no matter what the sign on the entry says. I should have just shielded her eyes and smuggled her into the men’s restroom. But she seemed pretty capable of taking care of business on her own at home, and too many guys use these beach restrooms as though they’re their own personal locker room, changing from their street clothes into swim trunks after work.

Four… three… two…

“I’m fine,” comes Stella’s faint, belated reply.

Thank God.

A tall blonde in a scant bikini strides out of the restroom, eyeing me curiously when she sees me. “Is that little girl in there yours?” she asks.

If I weren’t so stressed about Stella being out of my sight right now, I’d be insanely aroused by this woman. Her suit—what there is of it—is pretty much painted on. “Kind of. She belongs to a friend of mine who’s deployed.”

Her gaze sparks with interest as it drifts from my face… to my pecs… to my abs… to that part of me that’s already feeling deprived since a kid’s come into my life. “She’s adorable,” she adds when her eyes make the trek back to my face. “And she’s doing great in there, by the way.”

“Is there anyone else in there?”

“Nope. It was just me and her.”

It says a lot about me that I’m more interested in what’s going on in that bathroom than in finding out whether this woman has any tan lines beneath that suit.

“Do you have a phone with you?” she asks.

My gut seizes up.

A phone? Shit. What’s going on in there that I’d need a phone for? Did Stella slip and fall? Does she need an ambulance?

I immediately reach into my pocket, and she takes my iPhone from me the moment it’s in her sights.

“Let me punch in my number,” she purrs. “You might need some advice along the way.”

She sucks in her lower lip and it glistens with moisture as it curves into a smile. I might be stressed right now, but I’m not blind.

She’s totally wanting me right now.

“If you ever get a babysitter, maybe we can go out sometime,” she suggests.

I force a smile, more out of courtesy than interest, because the Ranger in me has a laser-sharp focus on the mission at hand—keeping Stella safe from any hostiles that she might encounter in a public restroom (even if the hostiles are more likely killed by a good dose of Lysol rather than an assault weapon).

 “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.” I try to not look indifferent as she hands my phone back to me. But this isn’t even surprising anymore. This has happened to me four times this morning since we arrived on the beach.

Strangely, I’ve discovered that having Stella with me is like walking around the beach with a high-powered chick magnet. Who would have thought? If my brothers catch wind of this, they’ll probably be fighting for time with Stella just to attract the opposite sex. It’s not that any of us have had trouble in that department before. But this—this is just bat-shit crazy.

As the blonde walks away, I take note of how perfectly her ass cheeks are showcased in that bikini. But then I can’t help thinking that I hope Stella never wears a bathing suit like that when she’d older because she’s likely to attract the wrong kind of guys.

Guys like me.

What the hell is happening to me?

“How’s it going in there, Stella?” I ask.

I hear a flush in response and I can finally feel a smile return to my face. Progress.

God, this is tough. I wonder how the hell Lancaster’s managed to survive these past years raising a daughter on his own. If he’d had a son, at least he could do the bathroom thing without feeling like he’s sending his kid off to do battle alone.

“I’m washing.” Her tone is sing-songy, like the way the kids talk on that syrupy sweet kids’ show she watched this morning while she ate breakfast, the same annoying show that had my brothers high-tailing it for the door before they even had their morning coffee.

 “Atta girl.”

Stella is a kid of few words, I’ve discovered. Lancaster warned me that she’s not very chatty when she’s in uncomfortable situations, and I like that about her. In my book, it means she’s smart, taking it all in. There was a kid behind me on my flight to Hawai‘i whose mouth literally never stopped moving for the entire flight. It was cute at first, and I could understand his excitement. But toward the middle of the flight, I couldn’t resist offering to buy his parents a drink.

They even took me up on it.

Stella emerges triumphant from the bathroom and I want to do a fist pump. Success. It’s the little victories that seem to have me glowing these days.

We head back to the beach at her request, and build our second sandcastle of the day.

“Having fun?” I ask her.

“Yesss!” She draws the s out like a hiss, like I’ve noticed she always does. She looks so serious when she’s saying it, as though she’s uttering the most important word in the English language. When she gets older and starts dating, I’ll advise Lancaster to make sure that she has just as much reverence for the word no.

“Me, too,” I agree, surprised that it’s the truth. Though I’ll admit if I can get on that babysitter’s schedule and get a few hours to myself, I’ll be in dire need of a stiff drink.

I’ve wanted to text Annie back all day, but I’m reluctant to deal with the distraction of a phone while I’m taking care of Stella. I’m sure parents are remarkably skilled at multi-tasking while they’re juggling kids. But I’m just an amateur.

The alarm on my watch beeps.

“What’s that?” Stella asks.

“Time to reapply your sunscreen,” I tell her and pull it from my beach bag.

“I’m hungry,” she says.

“Want to go back home?” I ask it almost gleefully. Fun as it’s been making sandcastles and wading through the water, I’d love to corral this kid for a little while so I can let down my guard.

“Yesss.” Again with the sss, making me smile. Just one day with her, and I’m growing accustomed to her little idiosyncrasies.

“How about we take a picture of your castles that we can send to your dad?” I feel sorry for him just then. Sorry as hell.

A glimmer of sadness creeps into her eyes and I’m immediately kicking myself for bringing up the thought of her dad.

“Okay.” Her quiet voice can barely be heard over the roar of the ocean waves.

I have her stand in between the two we built, and if I might brag, I’d say both of them eclipse anything my brothers and I made when we were young. After snapping the photo, I text it off to Lancaster.

Then, thrusting a juice box in her hand (I’ve spent enough time in the desert to know how dangerous dehydration can be), we start our short trek back to the condo. My brothers have evacuated the premises and likely won’t return till after dark, each muttering something about being needed at work. Amazing how having a kid around the house has turned them into workaholics.

Not so for me. I’ve got a backlog of website maintenance, and a voicemail from the Dancing Coconut saying that one of their other bartenders needs to fly to the mainland in a couple days for some distant aunt’s funeral, which coincidentally coincides with the Star Trek convention he’s been talking about for the past year.

Funeral, my ass.

So now they want me to pick up a few of his shifts, even though I’m supposed to have the week off.

As I smear peanut butter on bread, I think about the schedule that Annie sent me last night.

“Hey, Stella. Did you like the woman who was over last night?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to have her come over again to watch you while I go to work this week?”

I’m mildly flattered that she chews on my question for a moment, feeling like maybe I didn’t do such a bad job of watching her this morning if she’s not so anxious to depart my company.

“Can I make cookies with her again?” she chirps.

“Of course.”

“Then… yesss.”

She’s so spare in her words that each one seems a little like a gift.

I pick up my phone and my finger hovers over the display for a moment until I pull up the photo from the beach this morning. I send it to Annie along with a text.

“Had fun with her this morning. Good advice,” I add, figuring I should flatter her a bit first. In truth, I’m not sure what I’d do if Annie suddenly found herself booked up. But just to be sure I’m in, I continue, “Saw on your schedule u are free tomorrow night. Was wondering if u could squeeze me in.”

I furrow my brow as I delete that last sentence, seeing the double entendre.

“Wondering if you could watch Stella,” I write instead.

Barely a minute goes by before I hear my phone chime.

“Sure. What time?”

Yesss, I can’t help thinking, drawing out the s in my mind the way Stella does.

“4 till closing, which should be around midnight.” I bite my lip anxiously, uncertain whether babysitters even work such late hours. If I was a babysitter, I’d want to get home early enough so I could nurse a bottle of Scotch to recover.

Silence from my phone has me reaching for the milk in the fridge to busy myself. “Want chocolate in it?” I ask Stella. I’m going to ruin this kid, I know. But life is too short for milk without chocolate.

Stella only nods in response. I reach for the baby carrots so I can toss a few on her plate to balance the scales a little, even though I’m pretty sure she won’t eat them.

“Mustard, please,” she says when she sees the carrots.

I screw up my face. “Mustard?”

She only nods, sucking down her milk through one of the rainbow-striped straws I bought.

When I hand her the mustard, she squirts some on her plate and dips a baby carrot in it. My eyes widen and I suppress a grimace at the food combination. “You like mustard?”

“It’s yellow. Like the sun,” she says, as though that provides me with enough explanation.

“Yeah,” I say as I hear my phone chime. I pull it off the counter and want to jump four feet in the air when I see a single word reply waiting for me from Annie.

“Sure.”

Hot damn.