“Wait. What are you doing?” came the hesitant question.
Slam!
“Maybe we should talk about this?
Slam!
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Oh, my god, I’m sorry!” the little demon screamed when the door finally gave way with a satisfying crack.
Shoving the broken door aside, he stepped inside the pantry and took in the small muddy mess plastering herself against the shelves, noting the scrawny little brat that had been nothing more than knobby knees, pointy elbows, and ink-stained fingertips was gone and in her place was this small frumpy woman, who barely came up to his shoulder, an overabundance of curves that put her on the plump side, messy, mud-caked hair, crystal blue eyes, and plump pink lips that were working soundlessly as she struggled to come up with some bullshit excuse to get her out of the spanking that she deserved. Deciding that he’d waited long enough, he grabbed the little brat and dragged her out of the pantry and headed for the old kitchen table where he’d learned how to read and write, pulled out a chair, sat down and-
“Wait! We can talk about this!”
-yanked the little brat down across his lap, raised his hand and-
“You promised!” she shouted somewhat hysterically as she tried to wiggle her way free as her words slammed into him and when they did, he shoved her off his lap with a curse.
“Goddamn it!” he bit out, shoving to his feet and knocking the chair back in the process.
“So, ummm, since we have that settled then, I’ll be calling it a night,” the little brat mumbled nervously with a nod as she got to her feet, nodded again, opened her mouth to say something else that would probably piss him off, closed it, nodded again, mumbled, “Right then,” and moved to make her escape.
But there would be no escaping him, and they both knew it, and it was all thanks to the promise that he never should have made. Not that he’d had a choice, he reminded himself as he grabbed the little brat before she could make things more difficult, threw her over his shoulder, and headed for the door.
“Where are we going?” she asked, but since he was in no mood to talk to her, he simply carried her out the door. As he set the alarm, he made a mental note to come back tomorrow and replace the glass before locking up on his way out.
“Why are we heading to the woods?” she asked, shifting nervously over his shoulder before pointing out, “You know that it’s almost impossible to successfully hide a body these days, right? Reed?”
Still, he said nothing as he headed for the old path in the woods that connected their properties, thinking about the day that he’d stupidly promised to watch over the little brat. If it had been anyone else, he would have told her no and laughed it off, but he couldn’t say no to Mrs. Lawson, not after everything she’d done for him. She’d watched him when his was little, taken care of him when his mother was put on bed rest when she was pregnant with Matt, helped him with his homework, and always made sure that there was a spot at her table for him, which he’d always appreciated since his mother couldn’t cook to save her life. She’d always been there for him, so when she’d asked him to watch over the little brat if anything ever happened to her, he’d forced himself to say yes, knowing damn well that he would regret it.
*-*-*-*
“So, how are your parents?” the little demon asked conversationally as she glanced around the large first floor bathroom, shifting her attention here and there, which of course resulted in her feet threatening to go out from under her every few seconds thanks to the large puddle that she was creating on the tiled bathroom floor.
“What the hell are you doing here, Joey?” he asked, rubbing his hands roughly down his face and still unable to believe that this was really Joey, the annoying little pain in the ass that had done her best to give him a heart attack when they were kids.
“Came home,” she said with a shrug as she took in the floor to ceiling cabinets that his grandfather built for his grandmother before shifting her attention to the large shower stall that he’d installed last year.
“I see,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief because he honestly never thought that he would see her again. “So, you flew home and-”
“Oh no, I drove here. It took five hours longer than it should have, but that probably had something to do with the incident at the drive-thru,” she explained with a shrug and that smile that he couldn’t help but find adorable on the mud-caked demon even as he asked, “Drive-thru?”
She pursed her lips up, looking thoughtful. “Now that I think about it, the manager was probably right about the clown.”
“The clown?” he found himself asking against his better judgment.
“The clown at the drive thru. When I didn’t hear anything, I decided to use the call button,” she said with a shrug.
“Sounds reasonable,” he murmured, not really sure that he wanted to know where this was going.
“I thought so, too,” she said, nodding in agreement. “But I couldn’t reach it through the window. So, I opened my door and ended up accidentally hitting the clown, but the fireman said the fire would have happened anyway. Faulty wiring and all that,” she mumbled quickly with a helpless shrug.
“I see,” he said softly as childhood memory after childhood memory hit him, leaving him standing there seriously wondering how she was still alive.
Granted, he’d been wondering that since the day he’d stumbled across her at the playground down the street, barely two-years-old and already pissing off all the other kids. He’d been forced to step in when the rest of the toddlers tried to bury her alive in the sandbox. He still wasn’t sure what she’d done to piss them off, but from that day on it had become his job to keep the little pain in the ass out of trouble. He’d lost count of how many times he’d had to step in over the years to save her ass and this time it seemed, wouldn’t be any different.
“My insurance is covering the repairs. The manager said the restaurant should be open again in a week at the latest and thankfully no one got hurt. Well, except for Johnny that is.”
“Johnny?” he said, not really sure that he wanted to hear this.
She waved it away, unconcerned. “Johnny, the burger clown.”
His lips twitched despite the fact that he still wanted to throttle the little brat. “I see.”
“It’s fine. I have really good insurance,” she added absently only to frown as she glanced down at the large muddy puddle that she was creating. “I should probably go back home now,” she mumbled thoughtfully, and as much as he would love to show her to the door and save himself from the nightmare that was Joey Lawson, he didn’t have a choice.
He had to keep the little brat out of trouble.
“Jackson shut the water off years ago,” he said, wondering if he should give her brother a call only to immediately dismiss the idea since he didn’t want to get dragged into the middle of whatever mess the little hellion had gotten herself into.
“Oh,” she said with an adorable frown as she looked back up. “What about the heat?”
Once their grandparents passed away, Jackson stopped staying at the old house and started crashing with him or with whatever bar bunny he’d picked up for the night. Reed couldn’t even remember the last time that Jackson checked on the old place. Between the taxes and the insurance, the old house just wasn’t worth keeping, but every time Reed suggested that he sell it, Jackson would just shrug it off and tell him that he would think about it.
“Broken,” he said, wondering why she really came back here.
Nodding absently, she mumbled, “I see,” as she reached up and pushed her mud-caked
hair back before releasing a heavy sigh. “I guess I’ll stay at a hotel until I get it fixed. Is there still a Marriot on Chase Street?”
“You can stay with me,” he found himself saying because he couldn’t send Jackson’s little sister to a hotel.
“Oh,” she said, worrying her bottom lip as she turned to take another look around and somehow managed to trip over her own two feet in the process. She would have fallen on her ass if he hadn’t caught her.
“That must be some insurance,” he said as he dragged her back up to her feet.
“The best.”
Chapter 5
“My mother left some clothes in the closet, take a shower, stay out of trouble, and try not to burn the place down. I’ll be in my office upstairs if you need anything,” and with that, the man that she never thought that she would see again was gone and she found herself standing in the middle of the admittedly beautiful bathroom, dripping mud all over the floor.
“All right then,” she mumbled to herself as she continued to stand there, trying to figure out where she went wrong.
Since there were just too many possibilities to choose from, she reluctantly closed the bathroom door. For a moment, she considered trying to sneak back out the front door and heading next door, but since she was covered in mud, freezing, and wasn’t really a big fan of “roughing” it, she decided that she would take Reed up on his generous offer and stay the night. Decision made, she struggled for the next ten minutes to tear her water-logged clothes off and once she was free, she climbed into the large shower, turned the water on, closed her eyes, and let everything go, the stress, the worries, everything that she couldn’t do anything about at the moment. It was something that she’d been doing since she was a kid and the only thing that had allowed her to survive this long without developing an ulcer.
Twenty minutes later when she started to feel human again, she reluctantly turned the water off, grabbed a towel and walked over to the large closet where she found his mother’s clothes on a shelf next to the dryer. When she spotted the size small on the label, she put them back on the shelf, because this just wouldn’t do. After a slight hesitation, she turned her attention to the dryer and helped herself to some of Reed’s clothes. After grabbing one of his tee shirts and a pair of his boxers, she threw her clothes in the washer along with the clothes she’d found in the hamper, started a load, and cleaned the floor. Once that was done, she decided to kill some time by exploring the old house that she’d been banned from since she was three.