Page 30 of Protecting What's Mine
All three dropped their sticks and came running.
“You get the onion,” he said, dropping it in front of Bryson. “Real men cry. Deal with it.”
“I want the tomato,” Leah said, expressing her desires with gimmie fingers.
“Life is full of disappointments. Here’s the lettuce. I want it finely chopped, not like those giant chunks you did at Fourth of July.”
Samantha waited patiently and smirked when he gave her the tomato. “Thank you, Uncle Linc.”
He took the tomato and replaced it with a block of cheese. “Don’t be a kiss-ass.”
The kids snickered. Sunshine beamed up at him and wiggled closer to Samantha, hoping for a cheese handout.
“Remember knife safety,” he said, strutting behind them like a drill sergeant as the kids picked up their paring knives.
“No stabbing ourselves or anyone else,” they recited.
“Good. Now slice and dice, dorks.”
THEY ATEgrilled meat with clumsily sliced vegetables on paper plates under the sunny afternoon sky and enjoyed each other’s company.
Sunshine wolfed down her hot dog and then made eyes at Kinley until she forked over a generous bite of hamburger.
“Uncle Linc, why don’t you have kids?” Kinley asked out of nowhere.
“Because I haven’t made any yet.” His sisters were almost uncomfortably open with their kids on the baby-making process. And Linc was only just beginning to start considering the possibilities of family life. Someday. If he met the right woman.
“But you practice a lot,” Bryson pointed out.
Linc riffed the bill of his nephew’s cap. “Smartass.”
“Mom says he isn’t ready to settle down,” Samantha insisted knowledgeably.
“Maybe your mom should mind her own beeswax,” Linc said, to the delight of the kids.
“Don’t you want to have kids?”
“He has to find a wife or a husband first, dummy,” Kinley chimed in. “Do you have a preference, Uncle Linc?”
“He doesn’t have to be married,” Leah said. “Our dad says you can have babies and not be married, but we should make sure we’re in a solid ’nancial position before deciding.”
“Financial,” Bryson corrected, disdainfully. “Uncle Linc, do you make a lot of money being a fire chief?”
“No, nephew. No, I do not. But I’m expecting my bath bomb store on Etsy to take off any day now.”
Four pairs of eyes pinned him with stares. Either they didn’t get the joke or didn’t think it was funny.
“So, who’s up for a dart gun war?”
They battled it out for dominion on the summer crispy lawn, Linc firing left-hand in deference to his shoulder injury and burns.
He was up against the fence, Sunshine gleefully chasing Kinley, who was using her psychology tome as a shield to head to higher ground. Bryson, Leah, and Samantha fired and shrieked in kid glee.
He heard a door slide open and closed and took a peek over the fence. The cottage that backed up to his property was a rental, and he’d forgotten the landlord had signed a new lease.
He meant to only glance. Maybe throw up a friendly wave and apologize for the volume of his charges. But when he saw who it was, leaning against the railing of the small, tidy deck, he forgot everything.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
