Page 16 of A Package Deal

She grinned up at me with a mouth full of cheesy goodness and red sauce smeared across her cheek. “Fwank oo, Wa-wy!”

I shot the girl a wink and turned to her mama. “Anything else I can take over tonight?”

Em was already shaking her head when we both heard another car in the driveway. The wary frown on her face had me tensing. Remembering the texts and phone calls her ex had been lobbing over, I didn’t exactly trust an unexpected visitor.

“I got this,” I snapped quietly, stepping in front of Em and opening the door.

Em, being as obstinate as Bessie, darted around me and closed the front door so Georgia couldn’t see or hear what was going on. A plain-clothed male approached with a packet of papers in his hands. A sixth sense told me what was coming wasn’t good. Em must have felt the same way because I felt her stiffen beside me.

“Emmerleigh Slaywright?” the man asked.

“Yes?” she answered just as businesslike.

He handed her the papers and she took them. “You’ve been served.” Then the man turned around and headed back for his car.

“What the hell?” Em murmured, staring down at the packet in her hands. She tore it open and took out the stack. The paper began to quiver and more than anything I wanted to grab it out of her hands and fix whatever this was.

Em flipped to the second page and I watched her eyes dart across the page, her breaths coming faster the more she read.

“That motherfucker,” she spat, finally glancing up at me.

“Tell me,” I demanded.

If a person could vibrate with anger, Em was most certainly about to shake right out of her boots. “Cayden has petitioned the court to reinstate parental rights.”

My brain whirled trying to slot all the pieces together. Cayden must be the ex. The same one who’d been harassing her. And if he was petitioning for parental rights, at some point he must have given up his rights as Georgia’s parent, leaving Em to raise the girl all on her own.

Em looked back down at the papers, flipping through them so fast she couldn’t possibly be reading everything. A level of protectiveness I didn’t know I had in me came flooding through my veins. If Cayden had been standing right there, he would have been thrown off this property with his facial features rearranged for even thinking about disrupting that little girl’s life five years after the fact.

Then a noise came from Em’s mouth that I never would have expected from my tough-as-nails general contractor. A sob.

I reacted on instinct. I grabbed Em by the shoulders and pulled her into my body, her face buried in my chest. She’d push me away soon enough, but right now, the woman needed a hug.

And if she asked me to get a shotgun and a shovel to take care of her ex, I’d help her with that too.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Emmerleigh

“We can kill the dummkopf,” Pip offered in between swings of the sledgehammer. She paused, wiping sweat from her prominent brow and flashing me a tight smile that caused more anxiety to flare in my stomach than the damn court summons from last night.

Pip had known something was off the second we started working this morning. I didn’t know her well yet, but I had to talk to someone. And that someone could not be Warrick. Jesus, I’d practically melted in his arms last night, letting him hold me up and rub small circles on my back until I got my shit together enough to go back inside the house and clean the pizza off Georgia’s face. No more hugging. No more talking. Leaning on Warrick was dangerous. I’d like to think I’d learned a thing or two over the years.

“I don’t want to kill him, Pip. I just want him to go away.” I’d spilled everything to her, down to the last hideous detail. She was a surprisingly good listener.

She shrugged her massive shoulders and swung again at the countertop in the primary bathroom. The side of the cabinet fell to the floor. Keeping a close eye on her weapon, I edged closer and pulled the debris out of the way.

“Yes, I know. The best way to disappear someone is to?—”

“I’m not killing him,” I said firmly, interrupting before she could plan out a murder and send us both to prison. She’d survive prison. I probably would not.

Pip patted me on the back and nearly sent me flying into the mirror that still hung on the wall above the half-demolished cabinet. “We would not be caught, Ms. Em. I know people back in the old country. Very discreet.”

She swung again and pieces of the cabinet splintered in all directions. When she leaned the sledgehammer against the wall, we both got busy grabbing the debris and putting it in the buckets and trash bags. As a unit, we exited the bathroom with our hands full to head for the dumpster out front. Warrick was nowhere to be found. He was probably trying to recover from several days of taking care of a five-year-old.

I dusted off my hands after getting everything in the dumpster. “How about we pause for lunch?”

I wasn’t hungry. My appetite probably wouldn’t return until this mess with Cayden was done with. But I did need a break to call a lawyer. It would be expensive, but I wasn’t going to mess around with my baby. Cayden would have to take her from my cold, dead hands before I gave her up willingly.

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