Bad Boy (Invertary 5)

“No.”

“Kids are no bloody use,” Flynn grumbled.

“That’s a strange balloon.” The kid pointed at something on the grass. “I have rainbow-coloured balloons at my parties. They’re better than your ones.”

Flynn frowned as he looked where she pointed. Hell, someone had dumped a condom on his grass.

“That’s not a balloon, it’s a...” He looked down at her wide-eyed attention and decided there were some things she didn’t need to know. “Why are you still here? Go back to your cage.”

“I came to get you to take you to the naughty step. Yesterday you were badly behaved. You made my Muma cry. It’s not fair you don’t have to sit on the naughty step.”

A stab of pain shot through his chest at the thought of Abby crying. Worse still, the thought of him being responsible for her crying. He didn’t know what to do with the strange emotion, so he buried it deep. “Life isn’t fair, kid. Get over it.”

She folded her arms. “I’m not leaving until you come with me and take your punishment.”

Flynn stared at the sky for a minute. He was being punished, all right. He stared down at his tormentor. She was dressed in a purple dinosaur onesie, silver princess shoes and a tiara. Her cheeks were coloured with bright pink blush, her eyebrows were blue and her lips had red lipstick, applied with a heavy and shaky hand. She looked like a transvestite Barney.

“Has anybody ever told you that eye shadow doesn’t go on your eyebrows?”

“Has anybody ever told you, you smell like baby poo?”

He lifted an arm and sniffed his pit. Okay, he could use a shower. He hadn’t felt much like doing anything since he’d come back to town. Even showering seemed like an onerous chore. “If you don’t like the smell, go back home.”

“Not unless you come and sit on the step.”

Talk about a dog with a bone. This kid had one thought in her head, and he was damned if he knew how to get another one in there to replace it. He let out a sigh. “Fine. What will it take to make you go away?”

She scrunched up her nose. She actually seemed to be thinking about it. She opened her mouth and he held up his hand. “And before you say it again. I’m not sitting on any damn step.”

Her mouth snapped shut, but a calculating gleam appeared in her brown eyes. “You have to come to my tea party.”

“Not happening. Try again. Do you want money? I have money. I’ll give you fifty pounds to leave me alone.”

She stuck her little nose in the air. “You have to come to my tea party. And you have to be nice. And you have to stay there for a long time. Like, seventeen or fourteen minutes.”

“A hundred pounds. Last offer. A hundred pounds will buy a lot of Barbies.”

She licked her lips. “How many Barbies?”

“A gazillion.”

He watched her think it over. At last she nodded. She held out her hand palm up.

“I don’t have my wallet on me.”

“Then you’ll need to come to my tea party.”

It was worse than negotiating his contract with Arsenal. He pointed to the motorhome. “It’s in there. On the bedside table. Go get it.”

She ran off as fast as her sparkly-heel-clad feet would let her. Flynn flopped onto the lounger behind him. It was going to be a long, long day. He needed a beer. With the Ball Babes out for the day, there was no one to fetch him things when he needed them. He opened an eye and stared at the motorhome speculatively. No. He couldn’t ask the kid to fetch him beer. Could he?

Before he could ponder his way through the latest moral dilemma to intrude on his happy place, the kid came running out of the camper wearing last season’

s Arsenal shirt over her dinosaur onesie. It came to her ankles and fell off her shoulders. She held it up in one hand, like a full-grown woman would hold up a ball gown. In her other hand she held his wallet.

“Can I have this T-shirt?” She handed him the wallet.

“No.”