How About No (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 3)

My husband started to chuckle. That chuckle quickly died off his face when we arrived at the daycare and saw how dark it was outside.

“What’s up with the lighting?” he asked, sounding suspicious.

“The last storm we had fried ‘em,” I explained. “I keep meaning to get them replaced, but since the sun’s like ten minutes away, and we don’t open for another twenty, it hasn’t bothered me enough to make me actually remember to make the call.”

“I don’t like you opening this place up in the dark,” he growled.

I rolled my eyes heavenward, praying for patience.

“Wade, seriously. I swear to God,” I growled. “Tell me what’s going on!”

He grunted and got out of the truck, rounding the hood to come to my side and help me out.

I rolled my eyes and took his hand.

“I’m going to have to leave around mid-morning to run to the house and let Capo out before my therapy appointment,” he said as he walked us to the door. Once there, he unlocked it with keys from his own pocket and easily input the alarm code before flicking on the lights. From that point he left me where I stood to go check out the various rooms, clearing them of anything bad.

It wasn’t until he came back and gave me a funny look that I frowned.

“What?”

“The lights are out in the back play area, too?”

I nodded. “They are. The electrician said it was most likely that they were all on the same breaker. He offered to fix it…for a lot of money. I wasn’t going to use ten grand to replace lights when I don’t actually have that much readily available.”

He narrowed his eyes. “He gave you a price of ten grand?”

I nodded. “He did.”

He growled. “Who did you use?”

After telling him, I went about getting the rooms ready for the day and then made my way to the front largest room where all the early arrivals would hang out until the teachers started to arrive at eight.

For the first two hours of the day, they were all mine, and that was why I started to stuff my face full of my donuts so I didn’t have to share.

All the while Wade watched me.

“If you’re going to stare at me like I’m in danger, you need to tell me why,” I pushed. “Because all it’s really doing is pissing me off.”

His lips twitched. “I know how to smooth down your hackles, darlin’.”

I rolled my eyes.

He did, but that wasn’t the point now, was it?

“I’ll tell you…after I have more information.” He paused. “After the incident happened last year…was anything said?”

The ‘incident’ he was referring to was nearly a tragedy.

The definition of a tragedy is an event that has caused great suffering.

And that was the perfect word to describe that hellish day last year.

It’d been the one and only time since we’d divorced that I’d wished that I could have slept in Wade’s arms.

That morning, I’d come to work as per my usual. One of my first babies that arrived—or should have arrived—didn’t show. Her sister did, though. At the same time, I’d had a new mother who was dropping off her three-year-old triplets that were starting that day, so I hadn’t thought to question why the sister had arrived, but the baby sister hadn’t. Automatically assuming that she was sick, I’d gone about my business until about two o’clock when the dad came to pick the babies up.

Except, there was only one baby to pick up.

The other, I’d explained to him, had never been brought in.

After having a pretty good freak-out on me, so much so that I’d been forced to call the cops—which was when Wade showed up on the scene—it was discovered that the mother didn’t bring the baby after viewing the tapes from the state-of-the-art camera system that Wade had recommended I get.

And thank God I did, or that baby would’ve been in her mother’s car even longer.

Because it came out later that the mother had been flustered. Her older daughter had thrown a fit, and when the little sister—who was eighteen months—would’ve normally followed them inside, she’d instead taken a detour to the back of the car. Then, when she realized her mother’s car door was still open, she’d climbed back inside the car and curled up on the floor and fallen back to sleep.

All the while, I thought the little girl was with mom, and the mom thought the little girl was with me.

Meanwhile, the little girl was in a covered parking garage, but still in quite a bit of heat.

The girl had lived, but she’d suffered minor brain damage from the incident.

“What do you mean was anything said?” I asked.

He gave me a look that I knew meant he was getting irritated. “Was anything said by the mother?”

Oh.

“Well, yes,” I replied. “She was quite justifiably upset, and she did say some pretty mean things to me. She started to harass the daycare. Leaving bad reviews on the daycare’s Facebook page and stuff like that. Bad Yelp reviews. But, since this town is on the smaller side, everyone knew what happened. And, since you told me to release the video camera footage, it wasn’t like she could refute me.”