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  “Can I get some pictures?”

  Fred had been the head chef at Kevin’s Place for almost two decades, but by head chef, we mean the only person who’s ever gonna tolerate how that kitchen is set up. He always complained about not having working stoves and oven tops and all that shit. Then, he’d come into work day in and day out and somehow churn out food that wasn’t half bad with one working stove and a tabletop griddle. Working Mondays were the best at this place because Fred always had wild stories from his weekends of the guys he took home and the girls he ate out in the clubs he went to. Fred loved everyone, appreciated every bodily form he came across, and always had a good sex story in his pocket no matter the cause.

  “When I can take them, sure,” Angie said, giggling.

  “Well, he seems to make you happy, so I’m happy for you,” I said.

  “How’s your sister?” she asked.

  “You know, still doing her hair thing. She’s excited because of something to do with millennials and funky colors. I don’t really get it.”

  “Oh, yeah. Everyone I know has some weird haircut with rainbow colors. I thought about it once, and then, I realized how much money it would take to upkeep the color. I told them to suck it.”

  “Yeah, she was excited about the monetary opportunity, so that’s probably why,” I said.

  I thought about the conversation I’d had with Bri a few days ago, and then, I took a look at Angie. Her jet-black hair flowed around her face in ringlet curls, and her thin lips always seemed to stay a natural shade of healthy pink. Her chubby cheeks went well with the rest of her curves, and the way she sashayed her hips with confidence every time she walked turned the heads of many customers in this diner. She oozed confidence and sex appeal, so it wasn’t a shocker that she had a new fling every month, and part of me wondered if I should ask her for help.

  She obviously had a knack for this dating thing, and maybe Bri had been right. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to dip my toe back into the waters to see how it felt. If I didn’t like it—if it didn’t feel right—I could always tell Bri I tried.

  “Hey, Angie. Could I ask you something?”

  “Depends. Who’s takin’ that crowd of people?”

  I looked behind me where a large group of eight people pushed through the door. They seemed pleased that the place was relatively empty, but all I could do was bite back my groan before I chugged the rest of my coffee. Whatever moment of temporary insanity I’d had would have to wait because I was taking care of the part of the diner that had the tables you could push together.

  “Hey there, everyone. Just eight today, or are we waiting on more people?”

  I led them to their seats and took their drink orders. For the first time since David had passed, I found a pair of eyes I thought were pretty. The young man sitting at the far end of the table had mesmerizing hazel eyes, a stark contrast to David’s deep brown ones. He shined his maximum wattage smile at me before beckoning me over with his finger, and when I dipped down beside him to answer a few questions about the menu, I could tell he was trying to sniff my hair.

  Maybe I wasn’t as far removed from the game as I thought I was.

  Chapter Four

  Jason

  “And this cozy little nook over here would be perfect for your beautiful daughter to play in.”

  “Do you know anything about the plumbing in the house?” I asked.

  “Just replaced, though the ground pipes going out to the street are still cast iron, so be careful with what you flush. They have claws after all that water erosion.”

  The owner of the home was showing me around this small two-bedroom house I’d seen for rent on my way into work. I figured it couldn’t hurt to stop in, seeing as it was in a nice enough neighborhood, and the two bedrooms would give Jenna and me exactly what we needed. The house wasn’t as small as it looked from the outside, but it still needed a lot of work. The walls were painted weird colors, and every room had a different one, which meant different coats of paint to try and even it all out. The crown molding was deformed in some places, so that would have to be replaced, and the kitchen sink was slowly leaking the entire time she was showing me around the kitchen.

  I knew I could use all these as a bargaining tool for rent, especially if it was going to land on my shoulders to fix all this stuff.

  “The master bath has a jet tub, by the way,” the owner said. “So, you and the missus can take some nice baths together while the little one’s asleep.”

  “There’s no missus,” I said.

  “Well, I’m sure you date,” she said.

  “Not really.”

  I could tell she was uncomfortable, but I didn’t care. The house looked safe enough for us to live in, and Jenna needed a decent roof over her head. She was running up and down the hallway that had both bedrooms in it, and when I finally found her, she was squealing and spinning around in circles in her new room.

  And that’s all it took to convince me this was the place.

  “She looks like she loves it,” the owner said.

  “One question: are some of these leaks and imperfections going to be fixed by you, or will I do them? I don’t care either way, but I figure if I’m gonna do them, a drop in a couple hundred every month for rent will give me the money I need to fix ‘em.”

  “Well. I, um...”

  “I could move in ASAP and start puttin’ rent money in your pocket if ya just want me to fix the issues.”

  “The deposit will have to stay at the agreed-upon amount,” she said. “I can drop rent to five hundred dollars, but the seven-hundred-dollar deposit can’t budge.”

  “Deal. When’s the soonest we could move in?” I asked.

  “If you wrote me the deposit check now, you could move in today.”

  I took out the checkbook I’d shoved into my pocket and began scrawling her a check. Jenna was still giggling and laughing in her new room, and the first thing I needed to do was get some decent furniture in this place. We’d been hotel hopping for months, tryin’ to find a place that Jenna enjoyed, and this was the first place we’d come to where she seemed to be happy. Maybe it was just that time of year, or maybe it was how quiet it was compared to where we were livin’, but when she ran out of the room and clung to my leg before taking off again, I knew I was making the right choice.

  Danielle had made right choices, too, like the life insurance policy she took out when we first got married. She’d wanted me to get one, and I thought she was crazy for needing one of them. I kept telling her it was a waste of money. She’d watched some baby documentary that threw numbers or some shit at her that scared her, and she kept rattling off how many women died in childbirth or from infection complications and all that crap. I kept telling her to shut up about it because I didn't wanna hear it. I didn't wanna think about losing her that way.

  The love of my life.

  She told me if I didn’t wanna think about it that way, then to think about it as taking care of our child. She had taken out an insurance policy that ended up providing for the funeral, paying for Jenna’s college fund, and getting us a house. We weren’t loaded by any means, but it had been her decision and her stubbornness on making that decision that helped me do for Jenna what I was doing now.

  She had been a hell of a woman, and I missed her every fuckin’ day.

  “Here’s the key to the front door. It also unlocks the back. Here’s the garage door opener in case you wanna use it, and that’s that. I’ll get you an official lease to sign with the amounts we’ve agreed upon. Trash and recycling comes every Friday, and when you wheel the bins back in, they’ve gotta stay on the side of the house.”

  “Any homeowners’ stuff I should know about?” I asked.

  “Nope. Nothing like that around here.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” I said.

  I put Jenna into the car, and we took off for the hotel. I was excited about the idea of checkin’ us outta that place, and I was thankful my new boss had given me the da
y off to get this done. Apparently, he was a single dad who got the whole transition thing, and he was adamant on me taking the day and not comin’ back ‘til I’d found us a home.

  Honestly? I didn’t see us settlin’ down in this type of town. It was small, which meant everyone would be in everyone else’s business. I’d been lucky enough to snag the job I had purely by accident, and I guess that sort of spiraled everything. Jenna seemed to love the town, even though she struck me as the kind of girl who would want to move to the city someday. However, I could see the appeal of raising her in a small town with people who could come to care for her.

  I guess, in a way, I tried to avoid small towns. Danielle loved small towns, and everywhere I looked she was always there. She was there in the way the air blew through the trees or the way everyone smiled at each other. Somedays, they all seemed to have her smile, and it made me sick just to walk outside.

  But I’d never be able to deny my little girl what she wanted, and at this very moment, she wanted that little house that backed up to the sprawling apple orchard.

  “You like your new room?” I asked.

  “Yes, Daddy. The carpet’s soft.”

  “Do you wanna paint your walls a different color?”

  “No, I like the yellow.”

  “Then we can keep it yellow,” I said, smiling. “You wanna get a new bed today?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Do you wanna pick out a new blanket for your bed?” I asked.

  “Can it have princesses?”

  “It can have whatever you want, princess.”

  “Princess bed, please.”

  “And now you’ll have a place to put all your toys. You’ll have your very own play space along with your very own bedroom,” I said.

  “Play space! Play space! Play space!”

  I was lucky to have found that place so quickly because we still had the entire day to shop for a few things. I’d sold most of what we had before we hit the road, which meant we would have to order and expedite furniture to our house over the weekend. But for now, the blowup mattresses I had for us would do. I could make it like a little camp ground. I could set up my laptop and pull up a crackling fire, and Jenna and I could cuddle in the main living space of the house. I could tell her stories and order in pizza, and she’d be as content doing that as she was when we were staying in all these hotels.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart?”

  “Is your room close to mine?”

  “Right across the hall,” I said.

  “Okay.”

  “You alright, princess?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  “I like sleeping with you. I can’t do that in my room,” she said.

  My heart broke a little bit, and that’s when I knew I was doing something right by her. If I was giving her what she needed, and she was that happy to be close to me, then it meant I was doing something to deserve the love of my daughter. The moment she’d started to talk, she reminded me of her mother, but then she had these moments that were so unlike her. Moments of vulnerability I never saw in her mother’s eyes and moments of confusion when she was trying something new.

  Every time I looked at my little girl, there was something new to see. A new strand of hair that was growing or a new tooth that was breaking through. Sometimes she was carrying a new flower from somewhere she had explored or was asking new questions about a bug she had seen. She was fearless, and yet so full of curiosity. She was brave, and yet clung to me whenever a stranger walked by. She was creative, and yet always questioned which color she could use when painting in her watercolor book.

  That’s how I knew she was my little girl that I needed to protect.

  “Daddy?” she asked.

  “Yes, princess?”

  “Does this mean we have people living beside us?”

  Oh, shit. I didn’t even think to ask that woman what our neighbors were like. Fuck! For all I knew, they were a bunch of drug dealers whose houses were about to explode from lethal chemical concoctions. Every time I turned on the news, something like that was going down. And it always seemed to happen in small towns. Houses would be rented from unsuspecting elderly people who believed the best in everyone. Then, one day, the house goes up in smoke, or a water heater shoots out of the roof, and that’s when the entire neighborhood realizes an international meth ring’s headquarters was sitting right on their block.

  I made a mental note to introduce myself to our neighbors whenever Jenna was sleeping so I could get a feel for what they were like.

  “You think they’d wanna play?” Jenna asked.

  “Who, honey?”

  “The people that live beside us.”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to introduce ourselves and ask them,” I said.

  “What’s in-too-duce?”

  “It’s when you go up to someone and tell them your name. Then, you ask them for theirs.”

  “Like you’re Daddy and I’m Princess.”

  “Exactly, sweetheart.”

  “No. Princess,” she said.

  “Exactly, princess.”

  That would be my luck, to get a couple of neighbors who couldn’t keep their noses out of other people’s business. The last thing I wanted was some old woman staking out her porch, trying to catch me getting the newspaper in my boxers. Or the crazy, horny woman up the road who was always coming around and giving my kid candy to get in my good graces. Or the old geezer who kept yelling at Jenna to get off his lawn.

  Why couldn’t I get the hot neighbor? The one you hear about sometimes who keeps to herself, never puts effort into looking as beautiful as she is, and is eager to sit on my dick every second of every day? That would make for some good stories with Mike, and it would make my pussy hunt a bit easier.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, princess?”

  “Can we get pizza tonight?” she asked.

  “That was the plan,” I said.

  “Yay!”

  Nope. No pussy just yet. These years with Jenna would only come once, and I still had to set up the house for us to live in it. The thought of screwing around faded from my mind when we pulled up into the furniture store, and Jenna was all too anxious to get out of her seat.

  “I get to pick my sheets!” she squealed.

  And I scooped her up into my arms and planted a kiss right onto her cheek. No neighbor was going to take away from what I was doing with Jenna. No neighbor would rip from me the joy I was watching her experience right now with this new adventure.

  Nothing could rip my attention away from the one woman in my life who mattered most.

  Chapter Five

  Lucy

  I was so done with that diner by the time I walked out. Thank God Kevin let me off earlier than I was expecting. Busy days like this were great because my apron would be full of wads of cash in tips, but my feet ached, and I was ready to soak them in a tub full of hot water and bath salts. I never did ask Angie about the dating world she lived in, nor did I try anything else with the good-looking man with hazel eyes. I figured I would know when I was ready to date and that no one, not even my own sister, should pressure me into something like that.

  Sighing with relief, I pulled into the driveway of my little one-bedroom home. It wasn’t much to shake a stick at, but it held wonderful memories for me and had a beautiful backyard view. I noticed something different, though. There was someone unloading a car into the house next to mine.

  It’d been vacant for a few months after the owners moved, and I’d talked to them when they had decided to rent it. I told them I was wary about having strangers in and out of that house all the time, especially since I was living alone now. They understood and told me they’d take into consideration applicants before they put someone next to a single woman, and boy, did they ever keep their promise.

  The man unloading the truck was very nice to look at. He had dark hair painted to his face with sw
eat, and his stature was tall and broad. I watched his arms flex their strength whenever he’d pick up a box, but when a little girl darted from the house to grab something from the back, I couldn’t help but giggle. Her beautiful black curls were flying everywhere because of the wind, and I decided to get out and introduce myself.

  I mean, who wouldn’t be curious as to what the new neighbors were like? Obviously, the little girl was full of spunk and attitude. She kept shoving past the man’s leg, and he’d just look down and smile at her. She couldn’t have been any older than three or four, and as I walked across the lawn, his eyes raised up and hooked onto me.

  The sweat from hauling boxes had caused his T-shirt to cling to his muscles, displaying every ripple and divot the fabric clung to. His chiseled abdomen flexed with a small laugh when the little girl pushed by again, but his deep blue eyes sizzled with secrets and salaciousness. His large hands clamped down onto another box, and he took it inside quickly before he came back out with the little girl.

  “Hi!” she said.

  “Well, hello there,” I said, smiling.

  “I’m Jenna. What’s your name?”

  “Lucy,” I said. “It’s very nice to meet you, Jenna.”

  “Daddy, I did the in-too-duce.”

  “Yes, you did, princess. Good job.” His voice was deep and smooth, like melted dark chocolate running over the skin of your stomach. His smile gleamed when he looked at his daughter, and their relation was without doubt. They had the same eyes and style of hair. The sweat was drying on his forehead, curling his hair back onto itself, and something in my gut urged me to reach out and touch it. His strong jaw showcased the beautiful smile that followed his daughter all the way back into the house, and as he turned to watch her, he revealed the sculpted muscles of his strong, rippling back.

  He was an incredibly handsome man, and he was going to be my neighbor.

  “I’m Jason,” he said.

  “Lucy.”

  “I know,” he said with a grin, “and it’s a beautiful name.”

  “Thanks. So, what brings you to this small Washington town?” I asked.