Just in case anyone wanted to know, when it happened, it’d be unlikely I’d die in a normal, routine way. I’d be a National Enquirer story. A statistic they’d never encountered before with a tally of ‘1’ beside it. People would laugh at my funeral because they couldn’t help it. And it was for that last reason that, when I’d written my own will last year, I’d added: get the minister to read out my cause of death during my funeral service.
Regardless of my possible imminent death, I was still freaking intrigued about what Naomi was thinking about, though.
Wiping her leg off with a grimace, Naomi sighed and leaned over to pat me on the back. I’m not sure if that’d ever helped anyone choking on water before, but she gave it her best as she thumped away until I held my hand up for her to stop.
“What’s going on?” a deep voice asked from the doorway as I was mid-lung-hack.
Looking up, I took in Carter standing there through the tears, with Naomi’s niece, Shanti, wrapped around his leg.
“Jacinda inhaled some water. Do you think I need to do CPR?”
That got Shanti’s excitement all the way to one hundred.
“I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” she squealed, bouncing with her hand in the air now.
Kids were like tornadoes. I swear, they’d be in one place one second, and before you could even blink, they’d moved about ten feet away from it. How did they do that? I had a lot of energy, but even I had to expend effort to get up off the couch or walk to the door.
“Let’s not,” Carter drawled, picking her up and putting her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
My ovaries. I feel that’s all that needed to be said as I watched him with her.
“Yo, everyone okay?”
My ovaries went back to sleep. In fact, they went into hibernation, but only because I demanded it. There was no way I could give in to this man.
“Hey, Canon,” Naomi greeted. “How are you doing?”
“Doing good, babe. What happened to the shining beam of light and joy in my life?” I didn’t need to look up to know he was talking about me, given that it was all said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
“We were talking about her furnace.”
A strangled noise burst out of me, and when I wheezed and looked over at her, Naomi gave me a wink.
“Want me to take a look at it?”
That did it. I was done for. I was pretty sure I’d cleared all of the water out of my lungs a few hacking coughs ago, so why I couldn’t catch my breath and was still coughing, I didn’t know.
This time, when a hand landed on my back, it wasn’t the rib-breaking pounding Naomi had been giving me. It was firm, soothing sweeps up and down, and damn it… it was helping. Freakin’ Canon Klein and his magic hands.
Sucking in a deep breath of air, I nodded my head and held my hand up, and croaked, “I’m good.”
“That you are, trouble. Next time, just swallow.”
I didn’t look at him after he said it, knowing full well his filthy brain was just being dirty. I mean, I didn’t hate that about him, but I also didn’t want to encourage him to keep going. Then again, everything seemed to encourage him, even when I was choking on water, spit, and air. There was something wrong with the man, I was sure of it.
Taking pity on me, Naomi earned her friend stripes back. “I didn’t realize you were coming over today, Canon. Are you looking for Carter?”
“I am. He had a question about his dad’s car, and Jarrod sent me over to explain it to him.”
My head snapped around to look at him. “You know how to fix cars?”
One side of his mouth tipped up in a smile. “Sure do, but only old ones. The newer ones confuse me with the computers and technology shit in them nowadays.”
The mental image of this god-like man with coveralls tied around his waist, shirtless, maybe slightly sweaty—but not the stinky kind—and with oil smears on his torso was too much. I had to dig my heels into the ground to stop myself from sliding off the couch.
“He’s out in the garage with Shanti. That’s why we’re at his place instead of ours because his dad’s car’s here. I don’t know about that girl, you know.” Naomi frowned and looked between us. “She loves pink, and she loves anything that sparkles, but now she loves getting dirty and greasy while she tinkers around with car engines and tools. Is that normal?”
“I think it’s more that she likes spending time with Carter and is taking an interest in the car because of that,” Canon explained.
“I agree. Shanti loves spending time with him and having his attention, so she’s learning about something he likes. I mean, look at all of the fish tanks she’s got. She spends time with him cleaning them and researching the fish and what’s best for them. It’s seriously cute.”