Going Under (Wildfire Lake 2)

“Hey, munchkins.” Ben’s rich voice reaches my ears and makes my stomach squeeze in anticipation.

“Daddy’s home.” Violet’s smile is a little too bright, her eyes a little too wide.

I’ve learned to read her pretty well over the last week and something’s not quite right. She had to cut her time short at the marina today because she had homework to get done, and now I see this situation as staged a little too well.

She leaves the bathroom, and I move the towels around with my boot to continue soaking up the water. I hear Violet tell him about the toilet overflowing, and her story doesn’t hold up for me. Especially when she goes overboard about how I came to help. I’m also hearing the babysitter act concerned when she was anything but.

I’m smiling by the time he steps into the doorway. My stomach squeezes at the sight of him. That messy dark-blond hair, the scruffy jaw, those deep blue eyes. He’s wearing scrubs, his ID tag still hanging from the waistband of his pants. He’s frowning, hands on hips, and all three girls are crowded around him like ducklings.

“Hey,” he says to me, clearly concerned. “I’m so sorry she called you.”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”

He looks at his girls. “What happened here?”

They all profess ignorance, and by the look on his face, he’s as skeptical as I am.

“Go relax,” I tell him. “I have a feeling this will be an easy fix.”

“Girls,” he says, “get more towels from upstairs.”

He crouches and pulls up a soaked towel, then steps into the room and tosses it into the sink. His body heat wraps around me, his masculine scent filling my head like helium.

“Ben, you just got home.” I follow his lead and drop another towel, heavy with water, onto the other in the sink. “Go sit down for a minute.”

He shakes his head, still frowning. “Do you see anything wrong with this scenario?”

“As a matter of fact, I see several things.”

Another towel hits the sink, and then we’re just waiting for more dry towels. “She wasn’t happy when I told her she could only spend a couple of hours with you today.”

The girls all return with towels in their arms. Once we have a new layer laid down, I reach for my snake.

“Okay,” I say, glancing at the girls. “Let’s see what we’ve got in here.”

Ben’s scowling, arms crossed.

I pick up my industrial snake and feed the flexible end into the bowl. When I hit the block, I turn the handle to catch whatever is blocking the drain with the hook on the end of the snake. It takes a couple of tries, but I finally pull out the problem—a Barbie-type doll in a mermaid outfit with lots of red hair.

Ben lets out a huff and covers his eyes with one hand, rubbing at his closed lids before pinching the bridge of his nose.

I unhook it from the snake, lay it on the floor, and put the snake back in to make sure the toilet is cleared.

“Girls—” he starts.

“Wait,” I say. “There’s something else.” This something else takes longer to pull out, but I end up dislodging it from the drain, and out pops a blue fish with a big smile, floating in the bowl.

I have to pull my lips between my teeth and hold them there to keep myself from laughing.

“What in the heck happened?” Ben asks, looking down at his girls.

Jazz is the first to speak. “I was just setting Ariel and Nemo free. They wanted to go back to the ocean.”

A laugh pops out of me. I can’t help it. I press the back of my hand to my mouth to keep the rest inside, but it’s damn difficult.

Jazz looks at Violet, pleased with herself. “Did I do it right?”

“Jazz,” Violet says in that shut-up tone, her eyes wide.