Page 85 of Wife Number One

I shoved the toilet brush around the porcelain. “So you can smile, huh?”

The grin instantly dropped from her face.

I shook my head at her. “Nuh-uh. Too late. I already saw it.”

It crept back across her mouth, and a sense of satisfaction settled over me. Her smile was really damn similar to Kara’s.

Not that Kara was going to be smiling at me anytime soon.

Without me providing any guidance, Hayley Jade found a garbage bag in the cleaning caddy I’d brought down from the clubhouse and with nimble fingers, she shook it out and circled the cabin, collecting empty beer bottles and open chip bags as she went.

I watched her for a second, wondering if I should stop her, but hell, she was doing a good job, and she was smiling for the first time since they’d arrived, so who was I to stop her?

We cleaned quietly, both of us working in the same space, me filling the silence with whatever random bullshit popped into my brain. “Did you know that the country of Australia is wider than the moon?”

Hayley Jade’s eyes got big over that, and she paused in her cleaning to look at me, so I offered another useless fact. “You know shrimp? Their hearts are in their heads. Weird, huh?”

She mulled that over for a while as she brought me the bag full of trash.

“You need me to tie that up for you?”

She nodded.

I took it and twisted the end into knots. “There you go.”

“Thank—”

Her eyes went huge, and she covered her mouth with her hand, terror suddenly filling her eyes.

Not wanting to make it worse, when talking clearly freaked her out, I pretended I hadn’t heard. “Did you know sloths can hold their breaths longer than dolphins?”

A tiny breath of relief slipped out of her, and she carried the bag to the cabin’s front porch.

I watched her small frame struggle along with the heavy bag. Her not talking wasn’t normal. I didn’t need to know much about kids to know that. Rebel’s and Bliss’s kids talked nonstop, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The constant babble was endless and drove me insane.

Except Hayley Jade’s silence was worse. It was unnerving.

But she’d spoken to me.

Maybe I could get her to speak some more.

By the time I had the bathroom and kitchen shining, Hayley Jade had pretty much completed clearing the living and bedroom area of trash and had wiped off the surfaces. I leaned against the wall and surveyed the room. Then held my hand out to her. “High five. You did a good job.”

She grinned up at me but didn’t tap her palm against mine.

I frowned at her. “You gonna leave me hanging? No high five?”

She cocked her head to one side, then shook it in confusion.

“Jesus,” I muttered. “They clearly taught you how to clean but not how to high five? Well, that’s fucking depressing.”

She hid a giggle at my swearing.

I picked up her hand and tapped it against mine. “That’s a high five. It means ‘good job.’”

She beamed at me.

Well, fuck. That was about the cutest thing I’d ever seen.

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