Chalk Dirty to Me (Madd CrossFit 3)

My nieces, Petra and Ashlie’s faces filled the screen, half of each smiling as they both said, “Uncle Will!”

I grinned at my girls. “Hey, you two. How’s the camping life?”

Even though I’d just spoken with them yesterday, they called me every single day and told me about their adventures. Sometimes it lasted a couple of minutes. Other times an hour. I was hoping today was one of those ‘couple of minutes’ times.

“We caught a snake, and took it into Granny’s RV, and she told us we had to sleep outside in a tent from now on,” Ashlie informed me. “She told me that I was also getting slop for breakfast. What’s slop?”

My mouth hurt from smiling. “Something that she used to threaten me with all the time, but never followed through with.”

“I heard that, Willhelm Schultz!” my mother’s high-pitched voice said. “And let me tell you about what your nieces did today. They brought in a venomous snake. Not just a non-dangerous one. Venomous. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. And your father almost lost the damn thing in the RV. We would’ve had to trade it in, and I literally just found this one.”

My mouth was smiling, but my heart was pounding away. “Holy crap. Girls. Y’all know which snakes are venomous!”

“Actually, we only know the ones that are in Texas,” Petra pointed out. “We don’t know the ones that are dangerous in Nevada. Something in which Gramps said he would be rectifying really quickly. Hey, when we get home…” Petra trailed off. “Ohhh, are you Cannel?”

Cannel, who’d been trying to stay out of the frame, froze with a bite of food in her mouth, and looked at me worriedly.

I rolled my eyes. “They know about you, darlin’. How do you think you got that invite to the Grand Canyon?”

She shrugged, then turned to look at Petra.

“Hello. I am Cannel. And tell me who I’m speaking to? Petra or Ashlie?” Cannel asked sweetly.

Petra pointed at her eyes. “Petra. I have the brown eyes. Ashlie has gray. And, if you could see us both standing, I’m taller.”

Cannel nodded as if she were committing it to memory.

“That’s good to know. Now I’ll always be able to tell y’all apart. At least until I learn your personalities a little better, anyway. You look so much alike. You could almost be twins!” She paused. “It might be best, while you’re with your grandmother, to just not pick up snakes at all. That way she doesn’t have to cut y’all’s vacation short. You know you probably wouldn’t like that very much. And your Uncle Will isn’t anywhere near as interesting as going on a camping trip around the United States would be.”

Petra nodded, then Ashlie was once again in the screen. “You’re very pretty. Did Uncle Will pay you to date him?”

My mouth dropped open. “What?”

Cannel all but fell into my lap laughing, her sweet body and luscious scent teasing me.

Ashlie started to giggle away as she once again fell off-screen.

It wasn’t lost on me that I could hear my father and mother laughing as well.

“I want to see!” I heard my mother call out. “Ohh, yes. You are very pretty. You’ve definitely dated down with Will.”

Cannel burst out laughing all over again. “I’ll have to agree to disagree with you. I find your son quite handsome.”

My mother’s eyes went from me to Cannel and back. “I didn’t say he wasn’t handsome…I just said that you dated down. You’re gorgeous.”

I lifted my hand and placed it on Cannel’s thigh, high up where I knew I was only a few scant inches away from where I’d really like to touch her, causing her to still.

Before I could wonder if I’d made a mistake by touching her without first asking, she placed her hand on mine and clenched her thighs around my fingers to keep me in place.

Together, we spent the next few minutes finalizing plans to see them next week—something in which I’d promised them I’d call them back when I had time, yet they’d ignored—and talking about getting nails done. Something that I would not be doing with my mother and Cannel.

When I finally hung up, I had a headache.

“It seems like I have a constant headache when I talk to those two,” I admitted softly, pressing the heel of my free hand into my forehead in a vain attempt to relieve the pressure.

She snorted and bumped me, reaching for her coffee that was likely cold by now and drinking the rest of it down before stuffing all the food trash into the bag it’d come in and cleaning up.

“I think that it’s because they can reach a higher octave than people having normal conversations,” she teased as she squeezed my hand in a universal sign of ‘I’m getting up, let go.’