Page 21 of Smitten with the Single Dad

She felt bad that she couldn’t eat more of Wyatt’s delicious smelling breakfast, but she was worried she wouldn’t be able to keep anything down besides yogurt and the delicious iced coffee he made her.

That was one thing she really had to come to terms with once she moved to America—Americans made terrible coffee. So whenever a coworker asked if she wanted to grab a coffee on their lunch break, she politely declined, or went along for the walk and bought a cookie but no coffee. She bought an extremely expensive coffee machine for home, as well as the finest Italian roasted beans from a local import store, and brought enough to last her the day at work.

But Wyatt was too kind for her to refuse, and to her surprise, the coffee was rather good—delicious, in fact.

She gave Brooke and Justine a list for the store, then waited for Officer Bruceand her newly appointed lawyer, Gabrielle Campbell, to arrive.

The events of last night were on a loop in her head though, and even after Justine gave her a high dose of melatonin, she struggled to sleep last night. Her body ached when she woke up, and she refused to look at herself too closely in the mirror.

Sitting on Wyatt’s couch and listening to him argue with his sons upstairs as he asked them to help him with the laundry and strip their beds, she closed her eyes. But that just caused the flashes of last night to whip across her closed lids like an old movie reel.

Track’s hand wrapping around her ponytail and yanking her back. The way he threw her up against the wooden post so hard she thought her skull cracked. Then the hard smack to her face where she almost instantly tasted blood.

Her eyes flew open, and she gasped, touching her lip with her hand on instinct, which made her wince in pain.

Vibrating with delayed shock, she glanced at her long, brown hair curling slightly over her shoulder. Her bottom lip wobbled and she clenched her molars to keep the tears at bay.

She was up off the couch and rummaging through the kitchen drawers before she really knew what she was doing. She found what she was looking for and headed upstairs to the en suite bathroom of the room she was sleeping in.

Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, she found her hair elastic from last night’s ponytail, tied it around her hair at the nape of her neck, then picked up the scissors and cut off her ponytail just beneath the elastic. Nearly ten inches fell to the bathroom floor as Vica stuttered out a breath.

“What are you doing?” came a small, familiar voice. “Did you just cut your hair?”

Those unshed tears still stung the backs of her eyes as she faced Wyatt’s youngest son, Griffon.

His blue-hazel eyes filled with concern. “Are you okay?”

“The man who hurt me pulled my hair. He wrapped his hand around myponytail and yanked it so I couldn’t get away.”

“So you cut your hair so nobody could do that to you again?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

He nodded too. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.” Then he darted out of the bathroom and his father’s room. His little feet echoed like a small elephant’s on the stairs.

Vica merely stared at herself in the mirror, not quite ready to release the elastic and see the damage she’d just inflicted.

Griffon reappeared a moment later carrying a broom and dustpan. “Here, let’s sweep this up,” he said, not bothering to hand it to her, but rather getting to work cleaning it up himself. He glanced up at her as he crouched down to sweep it into the dustpan. “My teacher cut off all her hair last year and donated it for wigs. Is this stuff long enough to do that?”

“Perhaps,” she said, her throat tight.

“Well, I won’t throw it away. Maybe we can send it away and a sick kid can get a wig. That’d be nice. Right?”

“It would be very nice.”

He finished, but didn’t get all the pieces, so she helped him out. His presence was a welcomed distraction from her feelings.

“Can I see your hair now that you’ve cut it?” he asked.

She glanced at him in the mirror. “I know I’ve probably made a mess of things and will need to visit the salon.”

He shrugged. “Until then, I have a hat you can borrow.”

She snorted a laugh, but the smile made her lips hurt. “Thank you.” Then she caught his eyes in the mirror again and dropped to a crouch. “Could you do it for me? I need your help being brave. I’m not feeling too brave right now.”

A determined and serious expression creased his cute little features, and he stepped forward to ever-so-gently removed the hair elastic causing her brown tresses—now in a chin skimming bob—to fall forward and frame her face. Her eyes went wide as she stood up and stared at herself.

“I don’t think it looks too bad, actually,” Griffon said. “I mean, you might need the back fixed, it’s kind of all scrumbled and weird, but you don’t look like a monster with short hair.”

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