Behind her, he spotted Lily crawling out from around the side of the kitchen cabinets before plopping back in her bottom and sucking her thumb. She’d been changed into clean clothes—green pants, red Christmas shirt, and at least two pairs of fuzzy socks on each foot.
Stace herself, though, was still in the same wet, muddy clothes from before. She’d washed her hands. They were both bright red from the chill of the water.
“I’ve backed up close enough. I’ll pass you stuff from the back of the truck—” He nipped her next protest in the bud, raising his voice to talk over her before she could do more than open her mouth. “—you can be goalie and, you know,” he nodded behind her, “keep the ball from escaping the house.”
Glancing back at her daughter, Stace’s shoulders fell, then she nodded. “Okay.”
He passed her the first box, just to make sure she did what he’d suggested and stayed on the porch. She took it all the way intothe house, stacking it on the floor to the right of the door, and giving him plenty of time to climb up into the truck again.
It took less than five minutes to empty her things from the back, and only because she refused to stack on the porch as he also suggested. She carried it all straight inside, one box or armload at a time. The only things he didn’t let her carry in were the two heavy boxes he really hoped were dishes, otherwise she didn’t have any of those either.
Hopping down, he grabbed one to carry inside, and by the time he’d set it on the counter in the kitchen, she’d grabbed the other. She’d muscled it to the top of the stairs before he’d ventured out to take it from her, but she sidestepped him anyway, and like a stubborn little girl in sore need of a stern word or two, she lugged it in, puffing and panting the whole way.
She only let him take it when she tried to heave it up onto the kitchen counter, but her strength wavered. He caught it before she dropped it, and then he caught himself before he said something he had no business scolding her for. She wasn’t his Little girl. He’d been too long without one, which was probably why each time he looked at her, something tripped his hard-core Daddy Dom trigger—a look, her tone. Right now it was the defeated set in her shoulders as she looked around her utterly empty home.
He scratched his head. “I thought Maggie rented this out fully furnished.”
“She said the last people wrecked some things. She wasn’t going to refurnish until spring, so she could offset the cost.” As if suddenly remembering who she was talking to, she immediately tried to smile. It was strained and just a little too thin for his taste. “Hey, at least we’ve got a house now. That’s better off than we were an hour ago.”
If she said so. He hunched his shoulders, suddenly feeling the cold in the air around them.
“I can get the furnace lit for you,” he offered, but she shook her head.
“I can do it.” She didn’t sound all that certain of herself.
“Are you sure? It’s no problem. I can check out your water heater too.”
“I can do it,” she said again, this time with more than a hint of stubbornness creeping into her voice, which promptly triggered the Daddy Dom part of him. He fought the urge to fix her with a stern look and, in an even sterner voice, inform her that when it comes to appliances that can burn down a house if you don’t know what you’re doing, Daddy will always take care of it.
Except, he wasn’t her Daddy, and maybe she did know what she was doing. Just because she had one of those voices that triggered his protective inner bear, that didn’t mean he needed to react that way towards her. He definitely didn’t need to make himself out to be the town jerk.
He made himself back up a step. “I’m right next door if you need anything.”
He said nothing about the interview they had scheduled, the whole reason she had shown up at his house in the first place. She really wasn’t what he’d had in mind when he decided to hire someone to watch over his dad while he was out.
She walked him to the door, holding it for him while he crossed the threshold. “Thank you,” she said once he was outside. “For… you know… everything.”
He nodded, and then because he didn’t trust himself to open his mouth and not say some sage, wholly inappropriate Daddy-ish thing back, he waved and headed for home. Where, hopefully, he’d be able to relax and stop thinking about her in this house, alone with her baby… trying to fiddle her furnace and hot water heater back on.
He looked back once, this time to gauge how much chopped wood he could see stacked up on the side porch.
There wasn’t more than an evening’s worth. Maybe. If that.
You’re not her Daddy,his brain told him.
“No, I’m not,” he agreed out loud. By the looks of it, nobody was.
And that was definitely a problem.
Chapter 4
While Lily contented herself with crawling the floorboards, Stace wandered from room to room, trying her best not to fall apart.
So much for her job interview. Admittedly, she hadn’t had a lot of high hopes with that one, but it would have been convenient.
It would have been more than convenient. It would have been the thing that saved her bacon, and she had no idea just how many of her hopes she’d pinned on getting that job until now. It would have given her an income, something to keep her afloat through the winter until the spring tourists started arrivin and jobs opened up. Not having a car wouldn’t have been such a problem so long as she could walk to work. She even had a whole speech ready to help convince him that she could take care of his dad and Lily at the same time. But, that whole ruckus outside his house between her and the trucker had pretty well killed her chances. No one wanted an employee that brought drama into their home.
So now, here she was. No car, no real job prospects, a couple thousand in her purse but nowhere near enough to get through the winter comfortably.
