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She just grins over her shoulder and quietly replies, “Well, there might have been a few quarters recently dropped out here.”
“Recently?”
“Like…within the last five minutes?” she laughs.
“I found something!” Max shrieks, pulling our attention to where he holds something high above his head and jumps up and down.
“What did you find?” Kate asks, watching intently as Max holds out his palm and displays the grimy, yet somewhat still shiny treasure. “Oh, it’s a quarter!”
“Can I keep it? Like a pirate?” Max asks, turning wide eyes to the woman beside him.
I’m just about to open my mouth and tell him it’s not appropriate, when Kate says, “Of course, you can, Just Max. All good pirates get to keep their booty.”
I can’t help it. I snicker.
She glances my way, her delicate eyebrows arching toward the heaven. “Really?”
Now, I’m laughing hard, but only because of the exasperated look on her face. “You said booty.”
She rolls her eyes. “You haven’t changed at all.”
I take in her somewhat dusty and wrinkly clothing, the dirt now coating her manicured nails and smudged on her cheeks, and the wild strands of blonde hair spilling from the clip at the nape of her head, and I can’t help notice beneath all of that, she’s still the same Kate. “Neither have you.”
We spend the next twenty minutes digging in the dirt together until Max finds four quarters. He’s extremely pleased with his loot, but promises Kate he’ll take them home and put them in his piggy bank. The entire time, she was right there, helping sift through the earth and find the treasures she haphazardly dropped in the dirt. With a smile from ear to ear from my four-year-old, Kate leads Max to the hose over by the garage where us workers have been cleaning up our hands at the end of the day. She helps him scrub up his hands before doing the same to hers. My hands are surprisingly clean, considering all I did was hold the discovered treasures as he was finding them, but I go ahead and wash the soil from them too.
“Well, that was fun. Thank you, Just Max, for helping me clear the buried treasure out of my yard.”
“You’re welcome, Kate. If you need more help, just call my daddy and I’ll come help!”
She glances my way, a warm smile playing on her lips as she replies, “Deal. I’ll be sure to call your daddy if I need more assistance.”
Max seems very pleased by this, even though I’m not so sure about it. I mean, I know Kate is being wonderful with Max and he seems to be eating up the extra attention she’s giving him, but I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. At the end of the day, she’s a client. A client whom I have a very deep-rooted past with, and I’m just not sure it’s wise to let Max get too close.
Getting close to Kate again isn’t in the cards, but there’s also no denying this strong magnetic pull I feel every time she’s near. Considering it’s only been a handful of times, something tells me I’m in serious trouble where she’s concerned. I’m not the person I was twelve years ago, but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to fight it either.
And if the look on my son’s face is any indication, he’s already in too deep.
