Page 33 of Just Come Over
“Uh... right. Helping Casey with her hair.”
She turned away. He was sorry, and he was glad. Mostly, though, he was sorry. “Come on in and help me with dinner,” she said, “if you have any energy left. And, yeh, you can help her in the bath, or the shower. You’re her dad. It’s all right, and it’s your job. If you’d had her all along, it would be nothing but natural. Although I don’t think Dylan ever gave Isaiah his bath.”
Rhys didn’t want to hear about his brother. He didn’t want tothinkabout his brother, or the chances Dylan had missed all down the road. He especially didn’t want to think about how he’d have done it differently, if all of them had been his. He followed Zora into the kitchen, washed his hands, accepted the plastic wrap and meat mallet from her, and took out his frustrations on three unfortunate chicken breasts. He pounded one all the way through, in fact, ripping it to shreds before he realized he was going too hard and eased off. Zora filled a huge soup kettle with water, but when she went to lift it out of the sink, he stepped over and said, “Let me.”
“I can do it,” she said.
“I know you can. But please let me.”
She did, and he felt obscurely better. She turned the fire on under the kettle, put the lid on, and said, “Pasta with pesto sauce, breaded chicken breasts sliced into strips on top, spinach salad with dried cherries and almonds. Twenty-five minutes. OK?”
“Brilliant,” he said.
“You can bread the chicken, then.”
He did it, following her instructions, while she made salad dressing, and tried not to feel too cozy. He said, though, while he was carefully pressing his extremely well-pounded chicken breasts into a Parmesan-cheese coating, “Thanks for the help with Casey. I want to do it right.”
She could’ve said, “Pity you didn’t think of that six years ago,” but she couldn’t bring herself to. He was thinking of it now, and what good would it do to bring up the past? She said, treading cautiously, “It’s hard to realize what parenting means, all the changes it brings, until you do it for yourself. And you didn’t have the best models.”
“You’re excusing me,” he said. “Don’t.”
His tone was harsh, and she flinched. He said, “Sorry. But she was in foster care for weeks. She’s braver than any kid ought to have to be.”
“I’ll bet she’s not braver than you were.” She was looking down, toasting almonds. That was the only reason she could say it. “Dylan told me how much of the time you took care of him. Here. Put those chicken breasts in the pans.” She waggled the frying pans to swirl the butter around a bit more evenly.
He did it, then took the spatula she handed him. “I was bloody impatient with Dylan, most of the time. Resentful as hell. I don’t want Casey to feel that. That edge, so a kid feels like a nuisance, and like she should tone herself down. She’s got a big personality, the kind that faces the world head-on. It’s a good personality. She should be able to keep it.”
“Confidence,” Zora said. “I think her mother did a good job.”
“So do I.” He sounded grim again. Why?
Zora hesitated, then asked, “How did she die?”
“Suddenly. Hit by a car.”
“Poor thing. And poor Casey.”
“Yeh.”
“Which is why,” she said, “you’re so concerned, obviously.”
“That, and that I like her,” he said, which was so unexpected, she laughed. “What?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just think it’s awesome.” She slid the dried pasta into the pot and stirred. Standing so close to Rhys jangled her nerves, and it felt right at the same time.
She’d had another of those uncomfortable moments when she’d looked in the mirror at him, there in the bath. The size of him, the intensity of his eyes, the unruliness of his dark hair, and the scruff on his hard jaw. The strength of his arms. And then there was that dimple in his chin.
If it had been somebody else standing there, if it had been a movie, he would have put his hand on her jaw, tipped her head up, brushed her hair aside, leaned down, and kissed her. Gently. Tenderly. He’d be tender, she somehow knew, because he knew his strength, and it would thrill him to take it easy with a woman. And if that was devastating in such a rough man—it was no secret that she had a thing for hard men. She may not have known that when she was twenty. She knew it now.
It wasn’t a movie, though. It was her absolutely regular, all-too-real life, and this wasn’t a love story.
“Thirty dollars a day OK?” he asked.
“What?” She stopped stirring pasta. The fraught moment had been on one side only, clearly.
“To pay you to watch her. I looked it up. It could be four hours a day, by the time I get back, and that’s what it costs.” He flipped the chicken. “That looks about right, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. You don’t have to pay me, Rhys.”
