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“Where are we going?” I let her tow me away from the badgers, even turning back to wiggle my fingers at the stupid, stripped things, and swore one of the babies waved a paw back in my direction.
This is insanity.
And insanity felt damn good.
Sienna led me into the kitchen, flicking on a small bulb and rummaging in the cupboards. A few pots made it to the white enamel standalone stove, and she chopped a double handful of vegetables with the skill of an expert.
“Ah, my cooking skills lack,” I murmured when she held a chopping board out my way. She shrugged, though some of her energy dissipated. I hated seeing that look on her, like I sucked half her life away with careless words. “But I saw the door needsa rehang, and a few other things...” Like several dozensmall fixes, but I’d start with the door. “Where does your dad keep his tools?”
She pointed through the window at a ramshackle barn. I followed the direction with a quick kiss to her cheek that left me instantly craving more of her. I traipsed through the long grass, keeping my eyes to the ground and rounded a corner to find her father waiting for me.
“Quiet little thing, isn’t she?”
I snorted. “Yeah. Think she got some of your stalker tendencies, old man. Lurking around corners and all.” I gave him a quick grin I knew he couldn’t see, and headed for a work bench at the far back corner, passing what looked like a dismantled kiln. “What did you used to work here?”
“Glass.”
“That’s right.” He had said that before. Yeah, the old man was as special as his daughter, that was for sure.
“For gift shops, or the window pane sort?” I rummaged in a rusted toolbox that once was bright and red and shiny.
“The sort traders like you crossed the country for. Flowers, Trader Kyle. I made long stemmed roses that would never die. Lilies for funerals as a sign of remembrance. And for Sienna’s mother I made irises to match her maiden name.”
“You did, huh?’ I paused in my ransacking, found the collection of screwdrivers I sought and packed everything back in a little neater than before. “That’s...”
“Not what you expected. This place does that to a man. The women seem to understand it better than we do.”
That was the understatement of the century.
“Sienna understands.” I said the words with a certain degree of sudden clarity.
“That she does.”
I tossed a screwdriver in my hand and ballsed up. “How are you surviving out here? There’s no crops, no chickens or a vegetable patch. I didn’t see a vehicle anywhere.” And no livestock of any sort, bar the few head of cattle at the front of the unkempt property. “Sure you’re not using badgers as go-betweens?” I kept my voice light.
Brendan held his silence for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all. I sighed and grabbed a pack of screws that looked like it had never been opened, taking a metal inventory of what was missing from the tool bench and what I had in my truck that might fit.
“We have our resources. We’re not without...help.”
I swivelled back on my heel. “The sort that earns your daughter bruises?” I wasn’t sure her father realised.
His chin jerked up. “She plays in the forest, climbs a lot. Of course she’ll have bruises.”
I took a step closer, knowing I was about to cross a line I hadn't done in a long damn time. “The sort the shape of a man’s hand? She’s not a child anymore, Mister Andrews. She’s what, twenty?’
“A good few years younger than you, by accounts. Twenty-one last month.”
So that made her a full six years younger than me. He was right. Fuck. I swallowed hard. My feet carried me to the entrance of the barn, where Brendan waited. I tried to come up with something to fill the awkward silence that filled the stilled air after that bomb-drop, but I came up blank.
"Are you gonna take my girl away from here?"
I stopped at the corner of the barn, where Brendan stood, curling his fingers at the wall to his side, shuffling forward. I brushed his elbow with my fingertips to let him know I was there, but didn't want to push. He lifted the elbow a little bit, and I gave him a hand as we slowly crossed back towards the house.
"I got nowhere to take her Mr Andrews." I said softly, the old admission clenching my heart.
Too many times around the age Sienna was now I'd had fathers rip me over the coals for not having a place to take a girl to go home to. After that, I just gave up and never bothered.
Never wanted anyone permanent.
