Page 51 of Tied Over

“Oh yeah,” he said, grinning at Bodhi but offering me his hand. “Thank you so much, Jed, for looking out for my kids. I really appreciate you.”

“You’re so welcome,” I said, clasping the offered hand.

He went after his kids then, and I could hear their happy shouts of Daddy because they hadn’t noticed him when they ran by.

“Everything’s gonna be all right,” I assured Angie.

“Thank you,” she said, taking a deep breath so she wouldn’t cry.

Once I was sitting, Angie asked me about the severity of my injury, and I told her it wasn’t that bad as Bodhi cleared his throat. Before she could ask him a question, the kids came back, ready to rush by me.

“Oh no, no, no,” I told them. “Line up so I can check you out.”

Quickly, they got in a row with Stella first.

“Show me the face,” I ordered.

She leaned in close, pushed her curly hair back from her eyes, turned her head left and right, and then waited. They had all had showers after the pool, so they were basically clean. I just wanted any chocolate off, along with the popcorn remnants.

“Blow on my face. I’m checking breath.”

She did, and then I asked her to smile for me, which she did, crazily, cracking me up.

“Fine, you pass,” I grumbled, and she clapped her hands and took the seat beside me.

“Honey, do you want to come upstairs and watch a movie with me?” her father asked hopefully. “That’d be fun, huh? And that way you’d already be in bed if you fell asleep.”

“No,” she said flatly like little kids did, not worried about your feelings at all, just spitting out their answer. “I wanna stay here with everyone else and Jed and Bodhi.”

“Yes, but Bodhi has to go back and help his team and—”

“No he doesn’t. He’ll stay here with Jed, and Jed won’t leave me.”

The insinuation was clear. And it was probably a bit of him going out on the lake earlier with Vanessa, and had even more to do with her parents’ divorce and that she lived with her mother and saw her father so seldom. I had to wonder who left whom. If I had joint custody of a child, I would have never let them go out of state.

Earlier, after a long talk with Stella and then with Meredith, it was decided that instead of Keith flying his daughter home, where he would spend the rest of their vacation together, with him staying in a hotel in the city, that Meredith would fly out that evening and would be there the following morning. She would stay here with him and his parents and Stella. The little girl wanted to remain at the house and have fun with her cousins and swim and show everyone what a champ she was at hide-and-seek when she wasn’t too scared to play. The thing was, she wanted both her parents, and while normally that wasn’t possible, at the moment no one was going to say no to her. Apparently, she was already seeing a therapist because of the divorce, and now the situation with Stoker would be added. But all of it, her whole life, was being processed by a little girl whose base security had been shaken. And her father, who was not the villain, was being cast in the role of an uncaring parent, which was not the case. He’d been distracted, not indifferent. But Stella was seven. She didn’t process like an adult. Me and Bodhi, to her, equaled safety. Until her mother showed up tomorrow, we were it.

“Okay, then,” Keith agreed, looking a bit bereft, and left.

“I’m ready,” Thomas demanded, sounding annoyed since he’d been kept waiting.

This kid. “You call that clean?”

“I’m squeaky,” he assured me.

He passed, and then went and took a seat next to Bodhi. Brandon’s breath was not good, so he had a do-over. Margo did a good job, but her right eye was red.

“Sir,” I said to Zach, “this child has soap in her eye. Would you please remedy that and then return this person so they may be reinspected?”

“Yessir,” he said, chuckling, scooping up his daughter and tickling her, which made her squeal with delight as he carried her out of the room.

“How many kids do you have, Jed?” Angie asked me, returning with Brandon, who, she reported, had in fact brushed his teeth that time.

“What? None.”

“You have no kids?”

I shook my head.