Page 21
Hero
JESS
Tell me. Someone needs to tell me how a person who spends his days in bespoke suits, with an obscenely expensive watch adorning his wrist, can be so unbelievably nonchalant over a nope-rope apparently taking up residence in my garden.
In. My. Garden.
Everything about that is a hard no for me.
Sure, those fuckers are not exactly uncommon in gardens, around raspberry brambles and such, but in my yard? Where I like to walk barefoot in the grass and dig my toes into the fresh loamy dirt? Absolutely not.
Evie pushes against my chest, twisting in my arms in an attempt to break out of air-jail. It’s cute, but not happening until her father searches every inch of my yard.
“May all those slimy bastards go crunch.” Under his big, prophetic, hand-cut English oxfords. Predictive. Divinatory… sibylline? No, none of those are quite right.
“You know they keep the pests away,” Eddie retorts, flashing a rare smile over his shoulder. It lingers for a handful of seconds—probably directed toward his daughter.
Though I’m more than happy to slip into my fictionally motivated mind and rewrite this scene to include me because honestly, how can he resist?
“And they’re not at all slimy; they feel more like”—his lush lips purse as he searches for the consummate adjective, or maybe I’m projecting—“a basketball? I don’t know. You’re much better at finding precise descriptors than I am. How would you describe this?” Eddie extends his arm toward me, a black serpent of death held carefully between his fingers as its body loops around his wrist.
Me? I do the only rational thing in a moment such as this and scream. I clutch Evie protectively against my chest and take off for the house, slamming the door and locking it behind us.
I may have traumatized the sweet little girl, but only to keep her safe.
My heart is in the right place.
That has to count for something, right?
I sway and soothe her while watching as Eddie steps through the gate and relocates the evil being.
After he’s presented his hands to me for inspection through the window in the door, I unlock the deadbolt and allow him admittance. The ass immediately reaches for his daughter, but I twist, selflessly putting myself in the path of his contaminated meat hooks.
“No, sir. Wash your hands before you touch the precious baby; you have reptile juice on you.”
The look he gives me is pure exasperation.
The sigh he releases is nothing short of licentious.
Titillating.
Elegiacal.
But his warm breath skates across my cheek as he leans in to kiss Evie’s forehead before stalking to the sink and flipping the tap—to hot. And he uses a full three pumps of soap, doing a very thorough job of scrubbing as if he knows I’m judging his cleansing methodology.
It’s not until he’s drying his hands, that he addresses the very-much-not-an-elephant. “Not slimy. Not evil. Not… juicy. Where the f—hell did that come from?” He uses the paper towel in his hand to wipe down the faucet and soap dispenser, before tossing it in the trash.
Only then do I allow him to take his daughter from my arms. He buries his face in her neck, smooching loudly, and then promptly sets her on her feet.
Evie, the little badass traitor, heads straight for the door. She reaches up, standing on her tiptoes, and pats the doorknob saying, “’Nake? Ebie hab ’nake?”
I stare at her dumbfounded.
“You ruined her. She was absolutely perfect, but somehow, you’ve ruined her forever.” I spin on Eddie and shove my finger into his chest. “What if she picks one up? She’s too young to know the difference between the deadly ones and the slightly less evil ones. Venom would either attack her little nervous system or have her bleeding out. She could die.”
I haven’t been called dramatic a time or two for nothing. But my gilding of this particular lily has the desired effect, and Eddie’s face goes a pale.
Very pale.
