Kris Fletcher - Picket Fence Surprise

And if he’d had other possibilities in the back of his mind when he had asked Heather to come over—because yeah, for a few minutes there he had given in to Saturday night wildness—well, he’d come to his senses since then. There would be no checking her out. No discussion of anything more suggestive than experience and education. If his gut didn’t like it, then tough.

Because somewhere between last night and this morning—probably when he had stepped into Cady’s room to check on her before he went to bed—he had remembered why Heather was doing this. She wasn’t coming over for him. She was doing this for Millie.

All he had to do was crank the volume on the baby monitor he’d brought outside with him to remind himself that kids came first. Always.

She turned into the driveway, braked and hopped off the bike. He broke his vow just long enough to check. She wasn’t wearing the shorts from the party.

Thank God.

He pushed off the step and ambled down to the driveway. “Doing your part to reduce your carbon footprint?”

“That, and exercise, and I spend enough time in my car already. I wasn’t going to let a gorgeous day go to waste.”

She took off her neon blue helmet, shook her head and sent her short blond hair swirling around her face like a halo.

He dragged his gaze away. “Yeah,” he said. “Gorgeous things shouldn’t be wasted.”

“Is Cady asleep?”

“Probably. She went down a few minutes ago.” He tapped one of the smaller rust spots on the handlebars of her bike. “Family heirloom?”

“What can I say? I value function and frugality over fashion.”

“Yeah, but is it worth it when you have to have a tetanus shot every time you ride it?”

“Don’t insult Johnny.” She ran a hand over the duct tape holding the seat together. “We’ve had a lot of good times together.”

“Johnny?” He stepped back and eyed the bike, taking in the pink paint, the wicker basket in front and what looked like fading silver sparkles on the bars. “You named this Johnny?”

“For Johnny Cash.”

“Oh yeah. I see the resemblance.”

“It’s not because of the way it looks, okay?” Her lips twitched. “It’s because the first few times I rode it, I felt like I was sitting on a ring of fire.”

He burst into laughter. She joined in, so free and joyful that he snorted all the harder, sending himself into a coughing fit that had him bent over with his hands on his knees.

“Careful.” She patted his back, once, twice. “Breathe, okay? It wasn’t that funny.”

“I’m fine. Really.”

“Good.” She delivered another whack on his back. “Because honestly, you’re no good to me if you’re dead.”

He wheezed again before glancing up and sideways to catch her eye. He’d meant to simply nod to let her know that he was fine.

Instead, he caught her watching him with something that most definitely wasn’t concern.

And for the briefest of seconds, she ceased pounding his back. Instead, her hand flattened, her palm warming his skin through his T-shirt.

For an even briefer moment, he gave thanks that he was already crouched over.

She jumped back. He thumped his chest and straightened.

“Well,” she said. “Why don’t we get this résumé done so I can, you know, get out of your hair before I use up all of naptime?”

She’s here for Millie. Not you.

“Yeah. Right.” He rested a hand on the bike. “Do you have a lock for Johnny? Or do you want to put it in the garage?”

“Somehow, I don’t think this is high on anyone’s must-have list.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want anything to happen on my watch.” He hefted the bike and nodded toward the door at the side of the garage. “Can you get that?”

She scooted ahead of him, opened the door and stepped back. He deposited the bike beside his car and returned to the sunshine.

“Okay,” he said, brushing his hands together. “Let’s go.”

Ten minutes later, after he’d finished spouting the résumé knowledge bullshit he’d used as an excuse to invite her over, he realized he’d gone through the entire schpiel on autopilot. His body was at the kitchen table, but his mind was stuck outside at that moment when he’d caught her looking.

It didn’t help that she was as unfocused as he was. She kept repeating herself, shaking her head and stopping midsentence. Like she was trying to work up the nerve to say something, but couldn’t quite do it.

He knew the feeling.

Come on, Xander. Résumé. Job. Focus.

He pulled his laptop closer and opened the alternate version he’d created, because yeah, he did have a few recommendations. “What I’d suggest is that you switch things around, set it up like this. See how much cleaner this one looks?”

“Oh, I like that. That font is crisper, and the way you’ve abbreviated the headings—that’s good. You’ve given it a really fresh feel.”

“The other thing is that these days, you have to assume someone is going to end up reading it on their phone.” He grabbed his phone and accessed both her original and his revision. “Check it out. See the difference?”

She leaned his way—so close that if he wanted, he could reach an arm around her and tuck his hand at her waist. Not that he was going to do it, but still.

“You’re right. It’s much cleaner now.” She swiped between the two versions, back and forth, back and forth.

The play of her fingers on the screen was almost hypnotic. He couldn’t look away from the length of her fingers and the careful simplicity of the rounded nails. There was something about them...some anomaly flashing in and out of his vision...

There it was. One nail—the left pinky—bore a faint coat of the palest pink.

“What’s that?” He asked before thinking, his own finger hovering over the nail in question but not quite touching.

“What’s what?”

“You have nail polish on only one nail. I was curious.”

For a moment, she seemed to pull in on herself, like a turtle retreating into its shell. The only sound was a soft sigh from Lulu, asleep in the patch of sunshine coming through the window.

Heather lifted her chin. “That’s something I started with Millie, when I was away. It’s so I always had something on me that I could look at and think of her.” She curled her hand in, running over the nail in question with her thumb. “Not that I needed the reminder,” she said softly. “But Millie loved seeing it on me.”

So why did you leave her?

The question burned on his tongue. It made no sense. Heather was obviously head over heels for Millie, and while he knew that jobs could be hard to find, he doubted that she had needed to go to the other side of the second-largest country in the world to find something.

But along with patience, prison had taught him the value of keeping his questions to himself.

He settled for a light tap on the nail. “That’s a good idea. Kind of makes me wish I could do something like that for Cady. Not that we have the long separations like you had. But sometimes...”

“Sometimes it feels like, even though you’re her parent, you’re still on the fringes of her life?”

Yeah. Heather got it. “Like she’s the Earth,” he said softly. “And I’m a satellite.”

She said nothing. Her dipped head, and the way she held her pinkie told him that they were in complete understanding.

It hit him that at some point over the conversation, one or both of them had scooted their chair closer. They were now sitting at the table, the tiniest width of the corner separating them. It would be so easy to slide his leg forward and bump her knee, so very easy to let his hand move from her fingernail to her hand and then make a slow ascent up her arm. He wouldn’t even have to stretch.