Page 13 of Clean Sweep
As requested, lemon lay heavy on the air.
Slowly, I walked through each room. I hadn’t even cleaned up the stuff on the counters to make it easier for him, but Tanner had figured it out. No, he’d more than figured it out.
He’dorganized.
The cereal boxes were closed, lined up, and alphabetized in the small pantry off the kitchen. Fridge had been wiped clean, veggies organized into various trays, and the lunch meat separated from the cheese and bologna that Blake loved so much.
Oh . . . this was a step beyond the pale. The man had removed the moldy dish on the bottom shelf. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that it didn’t even wait in the sink.
No. The dishwasher purred. He’dfixedit. No more ugly cranking sounds.
Cripes.
This man hadn’t just cleaned—he’d made a statement.
“Hey!” I called up the vacuumed stairs. “Blakester! Take a look at all of this. Isn’t it wild? Like, we have white walls. Did you know that?”
Blake replied with something unintelligible, but I wasn’t listening anyway. I’d already moved on to my room. The bed was made, the corners mitered, and the windows gleamed. The man had cleaned mywindows.
Whaaaat?
Dazed, I wandered through the rest of my swept, mopped, and vacuumed floors. Dusted knickknacks, streak-free windows, no errant shoes laying around. For a while, I didn’t want to sit down and mar anything. Then I noticed a piece of paper out of place on the table.
A note waited there.
Hope the lemon smell is strong enough.
—T
I blinked.
“Well,” I murmured as I lowered into a kitchen chair, still a bit dazed. “Now Ihaveto meet Tanner Beck.”
MY CHILDREN HAD NEVER MADEme nervous.
Okay, maybe the time I found one of them on top of the roof, ready to jump into a pile of leaves. Or when eight-year-old Max tried to write and sing a song of true love to the fifteen-year-old neighbor girl. Or any assortment of the medical procedures and surgeries that we had to go through. Seeing my boys had almost always brought me true joy and excitement.
Except for the next day, Saturday, when dread lived like a low burn deep in my stomach.
With my house miraculously still clean and BBQ chicken shredded in the slow cooker, my hands fluttered around to find something to do. Landon and Starla would show up any moment now. Blake played a game in his room while he talked to a girl on his headset, and I didn’t even have work tasks to occupy me. Maverick had stopped sending incessant text messages about his upcoming family reunion because, for now, everything was on track.
Lizbeth popped into my mind, but I dismissed her. She’d sent me some new books to read by an author named Jess, but I didn’t have the mental bandwidth for romance right now.
Or . . . ever, really.
The books remained unread in the dresser drawer of my nightstand, where they’d stay until Lizbeth descended on me with threats and fire. At which point we’d debate about romance again, her incessant optimism would drive me to roll my eyes, and we’d agree to disagree after I waved my just-had-a-divorce flag in front of her face.
She usually backed down at that point.
From romance, I turned my thoughts. Unbidden, they found their way back to Tanner. The weirdness of having a total stranger like Tanner not only clean my house—but also organize it—made me walk around and stare at everything as if I’d never seen it before.
What did he think of me now? Did he see me as harried? Inept? Desperate?
A bad Mom?
I shook my head. Wait. No. My house was no reflection on my parenting, thank you very much.
The upcoming Thanksgiving holiday didn’t spur a large desire in me to decorate, but I’d pulled out a few of the longtime favorites. A cornucopia overspilling with different colors of pumpkins. Burnt orange and red leafed wreaths on the door. Mellow yellow lights draped behind some ivy outside, giving a gently-decorated glow. The autumn leaves scented candle did the rest of the work.
