Page 5 of Speak from the Heart

Rule 2

Hastily said words are a waste of words

[Jess]

“Katie,” I snap out my daughter’s name harder than intended but I’m struck numb by what I witness. It was hard enough watching my daughter fall nearly catatonic when this woman entered our repair shop yesterday. Then she’s in this yard of all yards when I’m working at the Mueller’s, and now, my baby girl is dancing under droplets of water.

I’m both amazed and stung.

My baby hasn’t spoken in two years. Two! No sound. No laughter, no cries, no whines.

Katie hardly smiles at me, her old man, and then here she is, a beautiful wide grin on her lips like she’s ready to burst. Like a noise is just itching to pop out of her, or explode, or something toward a total stranger.

I’d take a squeak, a peep, a snort.

But nothing.

Damn Debbie. Damn her all to hell and back. Whatever she did, she ruined our precious child.

“Katie,” I repeat, softening my tone, but I already have both females’ attention after my first gruff snarl.

That woman.

Emily Post of Chicago.

She keeps introducing herself as though the city is a part of her name. Who cares where you’re from? But I know the city struck a chord with both myself and Katie.

Chicago. The place where her mother ran off.

Considering my daughter hears just fine—and she could be speaking as well—she’s heard a lot of things a child shouldn’t at her tender age.

I stare back at both girls, one of them all woman. She’s a hot mess in a good way. A dangerous way. She’s sexy as fuck, only I’m not interested. She has big city, not staying, just passing through town written all over her, and I don’t need that. Neither does my daughter, who seems to be drawn to this woman for some reason.

Why her?

My mind drifts to the previous day when I met her at the shop. She’d had a haughty attitude toward Tom and me, like we were country bumpkins who wouldn’t be able to fix her grandmother’s radio despite our title as an electronics repair shop. Her eyes had roamed my body as though I was dirt beneath her perfectly pedicured, sandal-wearing toes. Her attire alone had said I’m not from here and I won’t be staying.

The shower she just made has soaked her already thin, sheer shirt, causing the material to cling to the swell of two ripe, beautiful breasts. The weight of the wet material over the black bra underneath leaves nothing to the imagination, and I don’t want to be imagining her. I shouldn’t be thinking about her, but last night, when I couldn’t sleep after hours of tossing and turning, imagine her I did, resulting in a sticky mess.

I’m not a teenager. I’m a thirty-six-year-old single father, and I have to keep it together, not lose myself in a pretty face, a sweet body, and those eyes—innocent and bright blue.

I watched her dancing over here, waving her arms in the air and singing off-key. Noise travels to the top of a roofline, especially once the incessant hammering stops. And even though I had a ringing in my ears, I heard her voice. I couldn’t look away from her swaying hips or her shimmying ass.

She’slike a teenager in the body of a grown woman.

I don’t know what she was thinking when she asked Katie to come into her yard nor what Katie was thinking following every movement of this woman like a lost puppy. Like a forgotten child.

That’s what happened to her.

Damn Debbie. Again.

Debbie Swan was curvier, heftier, and all dark hair with blue eyes that shone like the devil lived in them. She wanted out of this town, and I offered an escape to her without thought. I should have been thinking better.

“Time to go,” I bark out, and Emily drops the hose, the water making a puddle in the grass. She stands, her knees covered in wet grass blades. Her hands have lost some of the dirt from earlier, but now it seems to be on her face. She’s a wreck, and I want to roll in the mud with her.

Jesus.

I lower my head for a second, willing away the thoughts of her in that wet T-shirt and those water-stained shorts. It’s been twenty-four hours and I can’t get her out of my head.