Chapter Three
The next morning, with his latest creations secured in the bed of his truck, Dax backed down the drive of Number Two. He glanced at Number Three as he turned onto the main road. There was no pickup this morning, no slamming of doors. The Subaru was sitting in the drive, the loose books he’d placed on its hood still there. There was no sign of life in that cottage, which, in the short time the Coconuts had been there, seemed unusual. Dax wondered if he ought to be concerned, then thought the better of it. If he was concerned, he’d need to have a look. If he had a look, either Ruby Coconuts or her unacceptably attractive mother would come to the door, and there would go his day.
So Dax drove on to East Beach and to the Green Bean coffee shop, where he had a morning joe and a bear claw as he perused the local paper. To say there wasn’t much happening in East Beach would be an understatement. This town was supposed to be the place to be in the summer. There were a lot of summer people milling about, but it was Deadsville. And that was just the way Dax liked it. He didn’t like traffic or festivals or anything else that brought people down to his beach to leave their trash lying around.
When he finished his breakfast, he headed over to John Beverly Home Interiors and Landscape Design on the main drag. He pulled around back to the service entrance, hopped out of his truck, and rang the bell.
A moment later the door opened and Wallace Pogue appeared. Wallace liked to dress in trendy outfits. Today, he’d rolled his pants up to showcase his bare ankles and wore boat shoes that looked as if he might have found them in the trash heap, dusted them off, and donned them. His pants were so tight and rode so low on his hips it was a wonder he’d managed to tuck in the floral shirt he was wearing. He’d turned the cuffs of the sleeves of said shirt in perfect symmetry, just below the elbows.
“Well, well, well, if it isn’t my favorite tall drink of water,” Wallace purred and leaned up against the door frame, his arms folded, smiling saucily through red rectangular glasses like Dax was an ice cream sundae.
“Hi, Wallace.”
“What do you have for us today, darling?” he asked and pushed away from the door to walk out and peer into the back of Dax’s truck.
“End tables,” Dax said. He unleashed them, then set them carefully on the drive for Wallace to inspect. He’d made them from wood reclaimed from a demolished train depot and the twisted wrought iron he’d found at a salvage yard.
“Spec-tacular,” Wallace said, nodding approvingly. “You never cease to amaze me.” He winked at Dax, imbuing more meaning into that remark than was necessary.
“Cut it out, Wallace,” Dax said dispassionately. They both understood that Wallace had earned the right to flirt with him—and he didn’t seem to care that Dax didn’t lean that way—because Wallace had almost single-handedly brought him into the custom furniture business.
“You’re such a square, Dax,” Wallace complained. “You never let me have any fun.”
“Square? What is this, the fifties?”
“If anyone is stuck in the fifties, it’s you. Whoever would have guessed there were so many black T-shirts to be had on the East Coast?”
Dax glanced down at his T-shirt.
“All right, stand aside, let me have a look,” Wallace said, waving his hand at Dax to step back. He squatted down to examine the tables.
Making custom furniture was not an occupation to which Dax had ever aspired. It had been a hobby of his, nothing more. But after his wife had confessed she was leaving him for someone else, and Dax hadn’t known how to process that stunning bit of news, he’d turned to his hobby with a vengeance, filling long, bleak hours by making unique pieces. It did not take the pain away, but it did restore his world to an upright and locked position.
Eventually he’d made so many items that he began to show up at weekend craft shows around the tristate area. He’d hoped to unload some of the stuff he’d made and make room for more. And it was something to do on the endless weekends. It kept him out of the house, away from reminders of Ashley and everything that had been between them for twelve long years.
He’d been surprised when his pieces sold quickly. He thought maybe he wasn’t charging enough, and upped the prices. They still sold quickly. He began to get requests. Dax had resisted at first—he was a full-time paramedic and didn’t have time to make custom orders.
But then he’d met Wallace.
He hadn’t known at the time that Wallace was a designer of some repute, working on high-end vacation homes around Lake Haven and tony Manhattan apartments. He was just a guy in a pink blazer who had gushed over a dresser Dax had built, distressed, and painted.
Wallace began to seek him out at those weekend craft shows, always looking for a piece to accent his showcase designs, showing him pictures of luxury penthouses where he’d placed something Dax had made. Dax was kind of blown away by it—he’d never imagined anyone would really like the things he made.
Wallace had even suggested to Dax how to improve his custom designs. “Too big,” he’d say, shaking his head. “The average New York apartment needs that very thing but on a much smaller scale. Aren’t you from New York?”
“New Jersey,” he’d said. That wasn’t entirely true. That was the last place Dax had lived, but he’d come out of the army by way of Arizona. He had no particular affinity for Arizona, either—that just happened to be the place his family had ended up after years of relocating, following his father’s corporate promotions for a national company. Ashley was the one who’d wanted to move to New York—she’d had that dream since she’d been a kid, had fond memories of visiting an aunt there. But the rents in New York City were out of the question for them—they couldn’t afford a closet in that town. Teaneck was a quiet part of a bustling New Jersey, just across the George Washington Bridge from Harlem, where Dax had gotten a job as a paramedic. Ashley had found work at a health food shop. They’d stumbled into a great deal on a single-family, four-bedroom, two-bath house with a detached garage and an unfinished basement. It had plenty of room for swing sets and sandboxes.
Everything had looked rosy as far as Dax was concerned. He was ready to start a family, ready to be a father. More than ready—he’d wanted children in the worst way. Squads of them. Ashley wasn’t up for squads of them, but she was open to at least one, and once they’d felt settled, they’d begun to try for their one. When the natural way didn’t work, they’d started the long, grueling process of in vitro fertilization.
What was that saying about the best-laid plans?
Anyway, Wallace was the one who’d suggested that maybe Dax ought to consider moving to East Beach and making furniture full-time. “Trust me, I have clients up and down the East Coast who adore this kind of thing,” he’d said when he’d bought a hutch Dax had made. “I could keep you busy year-round.”
“East Beach,” Dax had repeated.
“Oh, honey, surely you’ve heard of Lake Haven,” Wallace had said and had hitched his arm around the waist of the young man in his company who stood so loosely that Dax kept waiting for him to slide onto the ground.
“Heard of it,” Dax had said with an insouciant shrug. “But I’m not that kind of person.”
“Excuse me? And what kind of person would that be?” Wallace had asked, getting all prickly on him. “And before you answer, please keep in mind that I call East Beach home.”
“Rich,” Dax had clarified. “I’m not rich.”
Wallace had blinked. And then he’d laughed with delight. “The people who live year-round in East Beach aren’t rich, darling. It’s the summer people who come out to their lake houses to sip mimosas on their decks who are rich, and trust me, your chances of mixing with them are quite slim.”
Dax hadn’t been sure how to take that. He’d shrugged again. “Nah,” he’d said. He’d had enough going on in his life without thinking of a move.
“Well, think about it. We could put your pieces in the shop. God knows Beverly could use some quality custom pieces,” he’d said with a roll of his eyes, and his companion had laughed. Dax had wondered if he was supposed to know who Beverly was.
“I’m not kidding around here,” Wallace had said. “The things you make? They’d sell like hotcakes. You’d not believe the sort of money those rich bitches will spend on their lake houses.” He’d handed Dax his card and said, “Call me,” using his little finger and thumb to mimic a phone at his ear.
Well, Dax had thought about it. He’d believed there was no way in hell he’d leave Teaneck to move to East Beach. But then the undercurrent at work had begun to eat at him.
It was a vibe he couldn’t quite get a handle on, couldn’t quite figure out how to combat . . . until he began to understand that he’d become the laughingstock to a bunch of guys he’d once considered his closest friends. It boiled down to a couple of unwritten rules in the guy code: when someone’s wife left him for another man, everyone sympathized. The wife was always the guilty party in that scenario—a slut, a no-good woman who deserved what she got. But when a man’s wife left him for another woman, which Ashley had done, it got a little stickier. And when a man’s wife left him for another woman who just happened to be a fellow paramedic and coworker, the one person on the team Dax had never really gotten on with, somehow Dax became the problem.
More guy code: if a guy lost his wife to a woman, then there was obviously something wrong with him.
Dax didn’t buy into that. He’d tried to understand Ashley’s point of view, to understand how she had slept with him for all those years when supposedly she’d wanted a completely different set of equipment. He didn’t understand it, and he sure as hell wished that she’d landed on some other woman besides Stephanie. Ashley’s lover, if you wanted to put a word to it. The sharp-tongued prickly pear in his unit.
The worst of it was that Stephanie kept working beside him. They worked accident scenes and suicides and gunshot wounds, and Dax was so flummoxed by this, so flabbergasted that Steph had no shame, that he didn’t know what to do. Had it been another man, he would have known how to settle it—he’d have decked the asshole. But it was Steph, and he couldn’t very well haul off and hit her, no matter how desperately she deserved it.
Their awkward working situation soon had guys drifting away from Dax. Some of them sniggered behind his back. A few called him a pussy for continuing to work alongside Stephanie and then proceeded to treat him like one.
And yet Dax stayed strong. He’d given up his wife, but he wasn’t giving up his job, too, and they could all go fuck themselves if they thought Ashley and Stephanie could chase him out of town.
But then his poor old heart splatted right at rock bottom the day Ashley called to tell him she was pregnant. She’d continued her in vitro appointments, she’d said. She still wanted one. And she and Stephanie were going to be parents to—surprise!—a baby she’d made with his goddamn sperm.
Ashley knew how badly he wanted children. She knew how hard it had been for him to go into some plain office and produce sperm so they could try to have a baby. She knew he would not be happy that she’d left him and was taking that part of him with her.
And really, what was he supposed to do with that? Dax didn’t know, but he couldn’t look at Stephanie’s face one more day, couldn’t bear the thought that she’d be sitting in for him when his baby was born.
Dax had called Wallace one night half-drunk, wholly miserable, nearly crying in his beer.
“Sweetie, you come to East Beach. I know where you can rent some space.” So yeah, Wallace had earned the right to touch Dax’s shirt buttons every once in a while and call him darling.
And Dax?
He’d been a grump ever since.
He couldn’t seem to shake his disgust and disappointment with the world. All he wanted to do was make furniture and take his dog down to the lake for a swim. He didn’t want people complicating his existence. He wanted to be left the hell alone.
“This is divine,” Wallace said, running his fingers over the artfully twisted wrought iron legs that Dax had fashioned into a tripod. “I honestly don’t know how you do it, Dax. We’ll take them.” He stood up, dusting his hands together. “Well, come in, love of my life, and I’ll write a check. Oh, and by the way, I’ve got a custom design job if you’re interested.”
“I’m interested,” Dax said and followed him inside.
“It’s a dining table,” Wallace was saying over his shoulder. “They want a farm table with carved legs. They have the wood, too. Naturally, it comes from a barn on the property that was quite historic, but in the way of the pool they had to have, even though there is a lake not one hundred feet from their door. What better way to preserve history than to destroy it and make it into a table?” he drawled. “Summer people,” he added with a shake of his head. “Anyway, it must seat twelve. Do you have room to build it?”
“Ah . . . I think so.” The McCauleys, the owners of the East Beach Lake Cottages, had been cool with him turning one of the cottage bedrooms into a workshop—with promises he’d restore it when he left—in addition to using the shed out back. They were cool with it because Beverly Sanders, née McCauley, the better half of the John Beverly Home Interiors and Landscape Design shop and Wallace’s business partner, was their daughter. Dax didn’t know where he’d make this table, but Dirk McCauley had a sizable workshop behind the main house where he lived with his wife, Sue. Maybe Dax could strike a deal with him. “I’ll have to speak to Mr. McCauley about it.”
“If you run into any trouble there, let me know,” Wallace said. “Stay here, and for heaven’s sake, don’t touch anything unless you’ve washed your hands. I’ll be back with your check.”
Wallace disappeared into an office.
“Helloooo, Dax.”
Dax closed his eyes and prayed for patience. He turned toward the register where Janet, the part-time help, was sitting. Dax knew Janet—he’d met her at the Green Bean coffee shop when she’d introduced herself, sat at his table without invitation, and begun to chat away as if they were old friends while he tried to read the scores of the Little League baseball tournament. He supposed that sort of uninvited chattiness made her good in a store like this, but when he went for coffee, he didn’t want a lot of chatting. He wanted coffee.
Janet was a divorcée and was working her way through a list of men she met on Match.com. She liked to keep Dax apprised of her progress. More than once she’d urged him to try his hand at online dating. More than once Dax had refused.
“You are just the person I wanted to see,” she said, coming out from behind the register. She had to be in her fifties, but she wore the shortest skirts Dax had ever seen. At one time he’d thought them tennis skirts. He’d found out one morning that they weren’t tennis skirts when she’d bent over to pick something up and had flashed her thong panties at him. She had skinny, tanned legs and a big chest that featured prominently in her clothing choices.
The door opened, the bell tinkling to alert the shop that a customer had entered.
“Good morning!” Janet called, switching from predator mode to shop clerk. “Is there something I can help you find?”
“Ah . . . no, we’re just looking,” came a voice from somewhere near the soaps.
Janet turned her attention back to Dax. “I have a proposition for you,” she said in a singsongy voice.
“No,” he said instantly.
Janet laughed and flipped the tail of her hair extensions over her shoulder. “You don’t even know what I’m going to say!”
“I know that when a woman says she’s got a proposition, it’s rarely a good one.”
“Just hear me out,” she said, lifting her hands and her ring-laden fingers, as if she were trying to talk him out of jumping off a ledge. “I have a friend—”
“No,” he said, feeling a slight tic of panic. “For God’s sake, Janet.”
“Her name is Heather,” Janet said as if he hadn’t spoken. “She’s probably about your age, she has blonde hair, and she’s a doll.”
“I’m not interested. When are you going to accept that?”
“So, what, you’re a monk? Anyway, she works at the library and she’s had the worst luck meeting guys her age. There are just too many retirees in East Beach. And she is like you—she refuses, simply refuses, to get on Tinder or Match. But she’s really great, and she deserves a great guy, so I told her about you.”
“You what?” he sputtered. “Why? I’ve told you not to do that,” he said irritably, pointing at her. What did Janet not get about no and hell no?
“I know you’ve said it, but I can’t bear the thought of you all alone out there in those cottage rentals. You’re too cute, Dax, in that sourpuss way of yours, and I don’t believe you can be okay with no contact with the outside world.”
“First, I am not cute.” He could feel his face begin to flame. He was a grown man, for God’s sake. He was thirty-seven years old. He didn’t need her fixing him up. If he wanted to date, and he assumed maybe he would someday, he’d figure it out himself. But today was definitely not that day. He trusted women about as much as he trusted mice to stay out of the pantry. “I like being alone.”
“Dax,” she said, shaking her head, looking at him like he was a raging alcoholic who couldn’t admit he was drunk again. “I get that you’re a loner, but everybody needs companionship. Haven’t you heard of those studies that say you’ll die years before your time if you don’t have meaningful relationships?”
“Good.”
“And you will love Heather.”
“If Heather’s so great, why does she need someone to set her up?” he asked and pointed at her again, proud of himself for acknowledging the obvious.
Janet didn’t bite. “That’s so funny! She wondered the very same thing about you.”
“Ah . . . excuse me?”
Dax glanced over his shoulder at the interruption, and to his abject horror, he saw his new neighbor and her little girl standing there. Mrs. Coconuts was wearing faded jeans with holes in the knees, a long-sleeved, black T-shirt tied around her waist—he’d be sure and point out to Wallace that there were still some black T-shirts available if he’d like to get in on the fad—and a camisole. Her dark hair was tied in a long tail down her back.
“Hi, Dax!” said Ruby Coconuts.
Dax grunted a greeting that sounded a little like shello, a cross between shit and hello.
“Oh, do you know each other?” Janet asked, lighting up.
“We’ve met,” Mrs. Coconuts said. She looked flushed. She lifted her hand. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he growled.
“Where’s Otto?” Ruby Coconuts asked.
“At home,” Dax said gruffly. Did she think dogs were welcome everywhere? “Right where he Otto be.”
The kid blinked those big blue eyes at his subtle little jest, then giggled. She was a smart little troublemaker.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” said her mother, “but do you have any bath toys?”
“We sure do, hon. Right over here.” Janet gave Dax a pointed look. “Don’t you go running away on me, sugar.”
Not until he got his check, he wasn’t. What was taking Wallace so long? How hard was it to slap a couple of zeroes into place and sign his name?
Janet led the Coconuts to a section, and there ensued a lot of discussion about bath toys.
Wallace finally appeared, waving the check in his hand as if he’d written it with quill and ink. “Did Janet tell you about Heather?” he asked, waggling his brows at Dax.
“Not now,” Dax said low.
“Oh come on, Dax. As much as I despise her matchmaking attempts, I have to agree about Heather. She is the one woman in this pretentious little village who’s not trying to get her hands on a rich man.” He handed Dax the check. “That makes her perfect for you.”
“Thanks,” Dax said. He folded the check and slipped it into his wallet.
“I like this one, Mommy!” Ruby Coconuts said.
“Not that one, sweetie,” her mother said. “It’s too expensive.”
Dax couldn’t help himself—he looked back to see the kid holding what looked like a purple octopus.
“Thank you, but I don’t see what we’re looking for here,” Mrs. Coconuts said.
“There’s a Walmart in Black Springs,” Janet suggested.
“Right. Thanks,” Mrs. Coconuts said and began to hustle her kid to the front door. “Thank you,” she said and glanced at Dax, her gaze flicking over him just before she disappeared through the door.
As soon as she went through the door, Janet whirled around. Dax started moving. “Don’t run off!” she shouted at him.
He quickened his pace, headed for the back door.
“At least consider it!” Janet begged him.
Jesus, there would be no end to this. Janet was going to come after him every time he stepped foot in this store. “I’ll think about it,” he said, hedging his bets.
“Well, don’t think too long, baby—you don’t want important body parts shriveling up and falling off,” Janet said saucily, and she and Wallace laughed like a pair of hyenas.
Dax’s face burned. His body parts were all functioning very well, thank you very much, and it wasn’t any concern of these two. He made it out the door, but before he could disappear from their sight, Wallace called after him, “Don’t be such a crab!”
Impossible.
He got into his truck and sat a minute. He was humiliated that his neighbor had heard those two trying to hook him up with a woman. Like he needed their help. He was going to tell Wallace that he wouldn’t make any more furniture for them if they didn’t knock it off with the dating thing.
Yeah, that’s what he’d do. He could go back to craft shows.
Dax went by the bank, then headed home. When he pulled in the drive, the Subaru was not parked in front of Number Three. Maybe they’d gone on to Black Springs after all. Curiously, the books he’d placed on the hood of her car, per her request, were now scattered in the drive, as if they’d fallen when she’d backed down the drive. How could she miss them? He got out of his truck and stared at the books.
It wasn’t any of his business.
He was not responsible for her books.
What kind of person left books in the drive, their pages curling against the gravel? “It better not be like this all the time,” he muttered as he stalked across the lawn to collect the books.
He gathered them up, noting that two of them had something to do with real estate. The other one was a romance novel. Personally, he liked a good thriller on those days when he couldn’t get much work done. Something with a lot of blood and death.
Dax stacked the books neatly on one of the porch steps, went into his shed to check what materials he had on hand to finish his hutch.
He was in the middle of pounding out some metal inlays when he heard a car pulling into the drive. He glanced out the open door of the shed as the Subaru rolled to a stop. Ruby Coconuts leapt out of the backseat. She had a balloon animal twisted around her head and was holding two round balloons filled with helium. She ran, leaping and twirling, the balloons floating behind her. Otto took notice, too, lifting his head from between his paws and thumping his tail against the floor of the shed, kicking up a lot of dust.
“Stay,” Dax commanded.
Otto whined about it, but for once, he did as he was told.
Mrs. Coconuts emerged from the driver’s side. “Ruby!” she called, and then whatever else she said, Dax couldn’t make out. She opened the hatch of the Subaru and grabbed bags of groceries.
All of them.
The woman was determined to drop something. That was too many to carry; she could hardly wrap her hands around the handles. What was wrong with making two trips? Why was everyone in such a hurry?
He watched as she and Ruby went into Number Three, the screen door slamming behind them. Hardly a moment later, Ruby emerged again with a bang of the door, hopping off the porch and admiring her sparkles, then running to the car to fetch some forgotten item. She returned to the cottage with another bang.
Dax sighed as he continued to sort through a box of scrap metal.
He spent an hour or more in the shed, then returned to his cottage, feeling hungry. It was a fine summer day; he had the windows and screen door open so that the breeze from the lake wafted through his space. He was making a sandwich when he heard the unmistakable sound of pink cowboy boots on his front porch. He leaned backward and turned his head to look across the living room and saw the kid, her face pressed against his screen door, her hands cupped around her eyes, staring into his house.
“Ruby Coconuts? I told you not to climb over or under that fence.”
“I didn’t climb it, I went around it.”
“Seriously? You’re going to get all literal on me?”
“Guess what? We got a watermelon.”
“I don’t care.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“What does it look like? I’m making a sandwich.”
“It kind of stinks in your house.”
That was because he’d been working with some wood oils yesterday, but he didn’t feel like explaining that to her. “Where is your mother?” he asked as he slapped a piece of bread on top of turkey, cheese, and pickles.
“She’s asleep. She sleeps a lot. Guess what?”
Dax bit into his sandwich, determined to have a couple of bites before he dealt with the pest on his porch.
“GUESS WHAT?” she said again, louder, apparently still unconvinced he wasn’t deaf.
“I heard you.”
“I lost a tooth! The tooth fairy is coming tonight.”
“Great. Maybe you ought to go home and wait on her.”
“It’s a he.”
Dax paused with the sandwich near his mouth and leaned backward again to look at her. Her face was still pressed against his screen. “The tooth fairy is a girl.”
“Uh-uh. It’s a boy.”
Dax moved to the opening to the kitchen. “That’s ridiculous. Fairies are always girls.”
“There’s lots of boy fairies. I saw a movie with boy pixies.”
“Pixies and fairies are not the same thing. How can you not know that?”
That seemed to stump her, and Dax smugly congratulated himself on knowing the difference between a fairy and a pixie. He took another healthy bite of his sandwich and put it down. “Okay, all right,” he said, brushing the crumbs off his hands. “Time to go.” He strode for the door, gesturing her away from the screen. “Time to go home and wake your mother.”
“I’m not supposed to.”
Asleep in the middle of the day with a kid running wild. How many calls had he gone out on where the kid was unsupervised while the mom was smoking meth inside? Well, just two, but still—normal people did not sleep in the middle of the day.
He slowly pushed the screen door open, forcing Ruby back. He tripped over Otto, who squeezed out between his legs to have a good sniff at the kid.
She bent her knees to pet Otto’s head. She was wearing butterfly wings on her back, and her hair, a wavy river of red, spilled down between them. “Come on,” he said.
Ruby glanced up; her glasses were so smudged he couldn’t see her eyes very well. “How can you see?”
“See what?”
He sighed. “Give me those glasses.”
“Do you wear glasses, too?” she asked as she pulled them off her head.
“No. But if I did, I’d clean them once in a while. Wait right here.”
“Can I pet your dog while I’m waiting?” she called after him, although she was already petting the dog.
“No,” he said as he returned to the kitchen.
He had another bite of his sandwich, then went to the sink, put a little soap on the glasses, and washed them under the water. He glanced out the window to Number Three. He could see a bare foot hanging over the edge of the porch hammock. Wasn’t that nice—she was passed out for all to see.
The list of his neighbor’s offenses was getting longer. If he ever had a kid, which, he supposed, he would in a couple of months, he would make sure the damn glasses were clean.
He returned to the porch, fit the glasses on Ruby’s head. She tilted back her head and said, “See?” and hooked her fingers into the sides of her mouth and pulled, revealing a gap between two baby teeth. She looked a little like a loon.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s gone. Come on.”
Ruby whirled away from him, stretched her hands out to each side, and leapt off his porch, barely clearing the last step. “Did my wings move?” she asked.
“Yep,” he said. “Just like a butterfly.” He put a hand to her shoulder, marching her across the lawn while Otto came along, his snout to the ground, his tail high in the air.
When they reached the porch, Ruby clomped right up the steps.
Her mother didn’t move. She was asleep in the hammock, one of her long legs bent at the knee, one arm hanging off the side, her fingers touching the porch. Dax peered at her, curious if she was merely sleeping or dead.
“Mommy,” Ruby said and gave the hammock a slight shove.
Mrs. Coconuts didn’t open her eyes, but she spoke. Alive, then. “Five more minutes, pumpkin. Go watch TV a little, okay?”
Before Ruby could respond, Otto shoved in beside her and touched his snout to Mrs. Coconuts’s face. She shrieked, and Dax couldn’t blame her, having been the unsuspecting recipient of that cold snout more than a few times. She came up with a start and tried to catch herself with one leg and arm to the ground, and knocked her daughter backward in the process. “What the hell?” she sputtered.
“You said a bad word, Mommy!” Ruby accused her.
She righted herself and blinked upward, her gaze landing on Dax. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, managing to get to her feet. “What’s going on?”
He stepped up onto the second porch step. “What is going on here is that your daughter was peering in my front door.”
She gasped and turned a look of mortification to her daughter, who, predictably, was focused on Otto’s ears.
“She climbed over the fence again.”
“No, I went around,” Ruby said unapologetically.
“Around,” he conceded. Next time he would be sure to enumerate all the ways she was not to cross the fence line. Literally enumerate.
“God, Ruby,” Mrs. Coconuts said on a sigh and rubbed her forehead a moment while Dax tried not to check her out. She’d changed from her jeans into cutoffs, and they didn’t cover one inch of her very shapely legs. He had mixed emotions about that. He didn’t want to like looking at her legs, but he was liking it so much he didn’t want her to cover them.
“I told you to stay on the porch, Ruby,” she said wearily, as if she’d said it a thousand times if she’d said it once.
“I had to see if my wings could fly,” Ruby said and bent over to pick up a marker from the floor of the porch. She skipped to an easel and a whiteboard, where someone had drawn a very colorful collection of blobs, some with arms and legs.
“I am so sorry,” Mrs. Coconuts said to Dax. “It’s been a long week, and I’m just so tired.”
What was that smell? It smelled like wine. Dax looked to his left, spotted a mason jar on the railing that looked as if it contained apple juice. Christ, it wasn’t even six o’clock.
She followed his gaze, then squared her shoulders like she was getting ready to give him a one-two knockout punch. “It’s my day off.”
“Apparently.”
Her gaze narrowed. “Not all of us live like a monk,” she said.
Oooh, touché. So she had heard everything Janet had said.
“Ruby!” she said, keeping her gaze on Dax. “Say you’re sorry for bothering Mr. Bishop again so he can go home.”
“Sorry!” Ruby said. She was standing in front of the whiteboard with her legs braced apart, as if she were about to attack it. Dax noticed her cowboy boots were on the wrong feet. “Mommy, we could give him a cupcake so he won’t be mad,” she suggested.
“Nope. Won’t work,” he said gruffly.
“We could give him two cupcakes.”
“No,” Mrs. Coconuts said. “If one isn’t good enough, two is just a waste of good cupcakes. Ruby, you will stay on this side of the fence so Mr. Bishop doesn’t get mad,” she said, folding her arms across her body.
Sounded good to Dax. He glanced at the kid; she had stilled in what she was doing, apparently studying that whiteboard. Or maybe considering what her mother had said, but given Dax’s experience with her thus far, he doubted that very much. She was holding the marker loosely between her fingers and began to flutter them, as if she were trying to dislodge the marker.
“Ruby? Are you listening to me?”
“She is not listening to you,” Dax observed.
“Yes, she is,” Mrs. Coconuts said smartly.
As if she meant to prove she was not, Ruby dropped the marker. But her hand stayed up, her fingers moving as if she were playing an invisible piano.
“Ruby Ellen!”
Ruby glanced at her hand then, noticed the marker was missing, and looked around for it, squatting down to retrieve it.
“Jesus,” Mrs. Coconuts muttered.
“Told you she wasn’t listening,” Dax mumbled.
Mrs. Coconuts jerked her gaze to him. Her eyes were the exact color of teak, his favorite wood. “Excuse me?” she snapped as she pushed a big swath of her dark hair back from her face.
“I’m leaving,” he said and whistled low to take Otto’s attention from a loose pile of toys. Otto dutifully trotted off the porch. Dax had every intention of trotting off the porch, too, but he was having a hard time looking away from Mrs. Coconuts’s eyes now. “Have a good evening.” He wanted to say something about her having a pretty good start on one but thought the better of it. She didn’t look like she was in a laughing mood.
Dax made himself step off that porch.
“So sorry!” she called after him.
Dax didn’t think she sounded the least bit sorry, and in fact, she sounded very unsorry. He muttered something under his breath about sorry being about as useful as a wooden nickel.