Page 31 of Rescued by the Single Dad

“Eight-twenty-three, please.”

“Let’s hope it’s a good one for that price.”

Her brows scrunched as he paid with his card. Then she knocked on the watermelon and spun it around. “I think it will be. I’m pretty good at picking melons out.”

“You’ll have to teach me how to pick out a melon one day,” he said, accepting his receipt.

Her smile got bigger and her cheeks grew darker. “I’d be happy to.”

Clint grabbed his watermelon off the counter, nodded at Jordana, then headed for the door. But it wasn’t just Jordana’s eyes on him that he felt.

People would be talking about why Clint McEvoy was down in the clothing section of the Town Center Grocery Store and looking at women’s bras.

Fuck.

He’d just give Brooke his phone and tell her to order whatever she needed. It’d be there in two days. But like hell was he going to give the island anymore gossip fodder. Because next, more locals would show up to the pub. Eager to catch a glimpse of the woman Clint was “supposedly” seeing. They’d venture up the hill, or peek into the kitchen.

He loved living on the island and the safe community feel, but sometimes the lack of privacy, and the fact that his business became everybody’s business wasn’t something he’d ever get used to.

It didn’t help that his current business involved harboring a believed-to-be dead woman so they could find her murderer.

He glanced at the damp and crumpled list in his palm and sighed. “Sorry, Brooke,” he murmured to himself. “You’ll just have to pick out your own bras and underwear.”

Then it became impossible to visualize Brooke in anything but a bra and underwear as he walked back to his truck. And by the time he climbed into the hot vehicle, he had an erection and an even bigger problem.

He liked the mermaid starlet.

And he had no idea what to do about it.

CHAPTER SIX

Brooke was exhausted.

After lunch, she and the three little girls took off up into the hillside behind the houses to go pick wildflowers.

“We’re free range,” Talia said when Brooke asked her why she wasn’t wearing any shoes. “Or at least that’s what Dad calls us.”

“Like chickens?” Brooke asked with a chuckle.

Talia merely shrugged. “I guess. We only wear shoes when we leave the property or if it’s cold out. Otherwise, we don’t have to.”

“I guess that’s one way to get callouses and boost your immunity,” Brooke said. “Don’t the rocks hurt, though?”

Talia frowned and shook her head. “Naw. I’m tough.” Then she flexed her muscles. “I’m free range.”

Before too long, Talia, Emerson, Aya and Brooke were joined by the girls’ cousins, Silas and Griffin who were six and Jake who was eight.

At first, she wasn’t sure she could handle all six kids on her own, but they didn’t really seem to need her.

This was apparently the norm. They had free rein to be “free range” on the property and could come and go as they liked. They knew where their dads were, how to get help if they needed it, and each house had a snack cupboard the kids could raid if they were hungry.

So she didn’t feel too terrible leaving the children to their own devices and heading into the house to lie down for a bit. Her muscles were fatigued, and her feet still really hurt. The bandages and ointment helped, but since she wore nothing more than Clint’s over-sized sandals, and socks that nearly reached her knees as she climbed the hillside, she was limping by the time she got to the front yard.

And that was about the time the gravel crunched up the hill and Clint, in his white pickup truck, came into view. He had on sunglasses and what appeared to be a scowl on his face.

She hobbled to the front porch.

“Hey!” Clint called, his truck door slamming behind him. “What’s going on?”

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