“I’m not a stranger. I’m your neighbor. How about if I promise not to offer you any candy, would you get in then?”
She stopped, mid-step, staring down the length of the long muddy road that would continue like this for another two and a half miles before turning onto half a mile of pavement leading to main street. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I really am okay. You don’t need to worry about me. You for sure don’t need to drop what you’re doing to drive me around. I knew it was going to be hard here. Starting over usually is. I’ll be fine.” Finally, she looked at him. “I promise. Okay?”
Only a stubborn asshole would listen to that, completely disregard her wishes and continue to push his own. Brock rubbed his mouth, fighting his instincts hard to keep from becoming that kind of person. But when his only alternative was to drive away from her and let her discover on her own just how miserable this walk to town could be, especially if it started snowing before she got there, the need to protest overwhelmed him.
“I don’t mean to be rude, either,” he countered, “but if it’s not snowing before you get there, it will definitely be snowing before you get home. That hoodie isn’t going to keep you warm. You’ve got a giant hole in the side of your sneaker. I can see how wet your sock is, and frostbite is still a thing. If your only reason not to get in my car is because you’re embarrassed that I know you’re going through a rough patch, then suck it up, buttercup. You’ve got a baby. You don’t get to be stubborn about anything right now.”
She glared at him, though he could tell her frustration was aimed more toward herself. Looking down at her shoes, shethen stared down the road. Her shoulders sagged. “Okay,” she reluctantly agreed.
Making sure he couldn’t see any other cars either before or behind him, he shifted into park and got out. “Does that stroller convert into a car seat, or do you want to go back to the house to get one?”
“It’s a car seat,” she said, and bent to show him how it came apart. Three minutes later, Lily was buckled safely into the backseat and Stace was in the front, pretending not to notice when he adjusted the car’s heater to blow on her feet as well as her middle. Yeah, she was a prickly one for doing things on her own, but it was hard to feel badly about strong-arming her to accept a little help. Especially when, no sooner had he started the engine up, than did he start seeing a smattering of light snowflakes drifting down around them.
She sighed.
He kept his “I told you so” to himself. “Where you heading to?”
“The electric company.”
“You’ll probably want to turn the water and gas back on too,” he surmised. He barely caught the glimpse of tension that tugged her frown deeper right before she looked out the window.
“Right,” she said, her shoulders sinking even more.
He wasn’t sure what that meant, but he was pretty sure she wasn’t going to appreciate his prying, no matter how well intentioned it might be. The Daddy in him took exactly half a second to disregard that. Feelings did not outweigh the physical probability of her and her child freezing throughout the course of the night, especially when temperatures for the last week had been dropping into the teens.
“I’ll pop over later tonight”—once he was done with the interviews—”and chop some wood for you. This is hot hearth weather—”
“No,” she said, and he’d be damned if that lilt in her voice wasn’t that of a Little pulling her stubbornness in tight around her.
Brock checked the rearview mirror before pulling partway over onto the grass, making room for the dark car he already knew had to be Miss Brown’s coming up the road behind him. Parking, he turned in his seat, one twitching palm coming to rest on his own thigh as he gave her a stern look.
“Yes,” he corrected her firmly. “Not because I don’t think you can’t cut your own wood, but because I don’t know if you’ve ever handled an axe before. And because I’m not comfortable standing by while you juggle what to do with your daughter while you’re swinging an axe capable of cutting your leg off. Now, you’ve been pretty clear that you want to be self-sufficient to the point of martyrdom, but if you tell me no again when it’s yours and your daughter’s safety in the balance, I swear, I will put you over my knee and bust your little backside. Now, am I clear?”
Her eyes were huge. She sat frozen in her seat, her hands caught motionless mid-wring, and a touch of pink filling up the apples of her too pale cheeks. Her jaw dropped, but she didn’t answer.
“I said,” he repeated. She’d had a hard day—from the sounds of it, a hard life here lately—so he was willing to be patient, but she was right on the edge of provoking him into pulling her out into the open where he had all the swinging room his arm needed to paint her backside a very sorry shade of red, “am I clear?”
She closed her mouth. Her eyes were still huge and her cheeks a slightly darker shade of pink when she nodded in tiny jerks of her head.
He caught himself before correcting her again, this time with a sternly worded, “When you’re in trouble, little girl, you say Yes, Sir, or No, Sir. Got it?”
She nodded again. “Y-yes, Sir.”
“Good.” Because he wasn’t her Daddy, and they weren’t in a relationship.
That was fine, he told himself. As soon as he was dating again, he was going to find himself a Little who needed him every bit as much as he did her, and maybe he’d find a way to apologize to Stace. He just needed to wait until she wasn’t triggering his inner Daddy Dom with every word she said and every uncertain blink of her way too green eyes.
Chapter 5
“The guys are fixing a line,” the receptionist at the electric department told her, once she’d paid her deposit and filled out her paperwork. “They’ll be able to get to you right after that.”
“The earliest availability we have to turn your water back on is...” the clerk at the water department said as she checked her schedule, once she’d filled out that application and paid that down payment, “...uh, looks like tomorrow. And we’ll need someone to be home when we do it. Trust me, you’ll want to be there if there’s a busted pipe or something.”
Or something. Stace had painted on a smile of agreement. “I’ll be there,” she promised.
The second-hand store wasn’t closed, but it didn’t have much of a winter coat selection either. She bought the heaviest thing that would fit her, which wasn’t much but which she hoped was water proof, and a pair of sneakers that were a little too big for her, but which didn’t have holes in them. Then she got back into the stifling silence of Brock’s car, casting him an uncertain look as he drove her over to the natural gas company.
“We can put you on the schedule for Monday,” they told her as she signed up for that too, paid yet another down payment on the off chance that she might not pay her bills on time. “Will that be all right?”
