How About No
Page 31

And thank God I did, or that baby would’ve been in her mother’s car even longer.
Because it came out later that the mother had been flustered. Her older daughter had thrown a fit, and when the little sister—who was eighteen months—would’ve normally followed them inside, she’d instead taken a detour to the back of the car. Then, when she realized her mother’s car door was still open, she’d climbed back inside the car and curled up on the floor and fallen back to sleep.
All the while, I thought the little girl was with mom, and the mom thought the little girl was with me.
Meanwhile, the little girl was in a covered parking garage, but still in quite a bit of heat.
The girl had lived, but she’d suffered minor brain damage from the incident.
“What do you mean was anything said?” I asked.
He gave me a look that I knew meant he was getting irritated. “Was anything said by the mother?”
Oh.
“Well, yes,” I replied. “She was quite justifiably upset, and she did say some pretty mean things to me. She started to harass the daycare. Leaving bad reviews on the daycare’s Facebook page and stuff like that. Bad Yelp reviews. But, since this town is on the smaller side, everyone knew what happened. And, since you told me to release the video camera footage, it wasn’t like she could refute me.”
He grunted. “I’m still pissed about that.”
I was, too.
I was even more pissed that that little girl had suffered so needlessly.
It was so fucking easy for a young child to get lost in the confusion. They were so curious by nature, and their natural instinct was to push the limits—and by doing what she did best, being curious, it had almost cost her her life.
“That day, when that dad pushed you accusing you of losing his kid? I nearly lost my shit,” Wade rumbled. “Then the mother came, screeching in on her little mini-van tires trying to sling accusations at you while their daughter sat in her rear floorboards unconscious? I wanted nothing more than to beat the shit out of both of them.” He paused. “Never wanted to punch a woman before, but then and there? Yeah, I sure the fuck would have if I knew that I would get away with it.”
I snorted.
“But anyway, other than just small stuff—petty little things here and there—I haven’t actually heard from her in well over two months. Which is a record. When the kids need picked up or dropped off, grandma does it,” I explained.
His eyes went wide. “The kids still come here?”
I nodded. “I’m the only daycare in town. Plus, after that happened, both parents decided to get a divorce. I think right now dad is living at grandma’s house, and mom doesn’t have much to do with them except for on her scheduled days.”
“You mean to tell me that dad got custody because mom’s a nutjob.” He snorted. “Seems like the kids would be better off with grandma with both of those people as their parents.”
I smiled.
Just as I was about to reply, my first kiddo arrived.
“Hello there, Darrow!” I sang, holding my hands out.
Darrow’s mother stopped long enough to hand me Darrow’s diaper bag, a half-finished bottle, and a check for this week’s tuition which she was three days late with. “Sorry. Gotta go. Bye.”
With that, she left, and I sighed.
“She’s like twelve minutes early,” Wade pointed out as he watched Darrow’s mother speed away.
“I normally leave the lights off and keep the door locked until six o’clock exactly. With you here, I didn’t remember to do that,” I explained.
He grunted. “Tomorrow we’ll keep the door locked then. What time does Darrow’s mother get here in the afternoon?”
I sighed. “Six, if we’re lucky. Sometimes six-thirty.”
“Fuck,” he rumbled. “What a life to have. I’ll bet he has more of an attachment to you and his teachers than he does his own mother. How old is he?”
“Six months,” I murmured. “And there was this one time that I was holding Darrow and the mom came to pick him up early for some reason. When I went to hand him over, Darrow threw an unholy fit. The mom stormed out, leaving him here, and didn’t come back to pick him up until after closing time.”
He snorted. “What exactly did she expect would happen when she leaves him here for twelve hours a day?”
I shrugged. “Unfortunately, some parents don’t have that luxury. They have to work. I’m here to love them while they’re busy.”
I dropped a kiss on Darrow’s forehead, and then walked him into the main room and placed him on the floor next to some toys.
All the while, I felt Wade’s eyes on me like a hot brand.
When I stood up once more, I turned to find him still staring, totally transfixed.
“What?” I whispered.
His eyes slipped from my ass to my face, and he smiled sadly. “I was just thinking that our babies would’ve been beautiful.”
My heart lurched into my throat. “Yeah.” I looked down at my hands. “They would have.”
***
Twelve hours later I was climbing into Wade’s truck this time after he had switched vehicles after letting Capo out. My heart lurched into my throat when I saw Capo in the back seat, unrestrained, staring at me like I was an interloper that he wanted to deal with.
Capo had come a long way from the first day that I’d met him. He was now able to come out of the cage for extended periods of time as long as Wade was around. Capo was also able to go outside for short walks with a muzzle.
I wasn’t aware that we were quite that far along, though.
I swallowed hard. “Uhhhh, Wade?”
Wade’s smile was quick and only half-hearted.
I sighed and settled into my seat, buckling my seatbelt while I kept my mouth shut.
He’d gotten call after call, text after text, and generally got into a progressively worse mood as the day had gone by.
Needless to say, I wasn’t very happy with the way this day had gone, and Wade wasn’t even apologizing for keeping something from me.
I was so frustrated, in fact, that I didn’t even realize that we weren’t headed home until we pulled up outside Bayou’s house.
And we weren’t the only ones there. All the boys from the club were standing outside, on Bayou’s front lawn, in a loose circle. All of them wore their cuts—their MC leather vests that declared them Bear Bottom Guardians—and looked intimidating as hell.
My eyes searched the small cul-de-sac that Bayou lived on, and I saw that I wasn’t the only one watching.
Nope, there was a young woman out on her front porch, sitting on her porch swing, drinking what appeared to be sweet tea. She was staring unrepentantly at the group, though her eyes followed Hoax as he split off from the loose circle of men and came out our way.
He winked at me as he opened my door, and it was then I realized that at some point while I’d been staring, Wade had exited the vehicle and gotten Capo out.
“Miss Landry.” He winked.
I smiled at Hoax.
“Do you know why Wade’s mad?” I blurted.
He was literally the only one out of the bunch who was wearing something besides a black t-shirt and blue jeans. He’d changed it up with a red shirt and blue jeans.
His arm flexed as he extended his open palm out to me.
“Can’t say that I do,” he answered. “He called us all here to explain, though, so maybe you’ll only have a little bit longer to wait.”
Lord, I hoped so.
A brooding Wade was an unhappy Wade, and anything other than a happy Wade was hard to be around.
I took Hoax’s hand and dropped down from my husband’s lifted truck.
The moment my feet were on the ground, I pulled away, which gave me a perfect view of the woman on the front porch across the street and her narrowed eyes aimed directly at me.
“You have a fan club,” I told Hoax as I reached back inside the truck for my half-empty water bottle. “Do you know her?”
Hoax hummed in agreement. “She’s the nurse that I saw last week when I went to the ER for something. I didn’t know she lived there, otherwise I might’ve visited Bayou a whole hell of a lot sooner.”