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Dax
“Badger, calm down beforeyou hurt yourself,” I said, going toward the door to see what him had so riled up. I had glitter everywhere from the pictures Bow and I were making sparkly. The kid would glitter herself if it were possible.
Hell, I guess it was possible because I always ended up finding glitter in the strangest places. It was like sand—you couldn’t get by without it getting all over the house, but she loved the stuff, so I visited the art section of the local superstore to buy different colors in bulk.
I heard the car approaching the house. Badger’s ears were still good, even though he was getting older and slower. “Good boy.” I said, patting his head and opening the door to find out who was coming down my driveway.
Not many people came out this way from town. I was on the northern side of Sunset Falls, Georgia. It was a cute college town, not too big, but not too small either. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Eagle Wind, my hometown that held too many bad memories for me to ever go back to.
“Daddy.” I turned to see Bow coming toward me, her hands covered in marker, glue, and pink glitter. “Who’s here?”
“I don’t know honey,” I said, shaking my head. “Why don’t you go get washed up? I’ll make dinner after I find out who our visitor is.”
Bow took off down the hall to the only working bathroom in the house. I’ve been slowly renovating the old lighthouse that I’d bought. It was in desperate need of repairs and had been abandoned for years. I bought it because the price was right, and it was a project to keep me busy.
Badger barked again, and I unlocked the door. Nobody was expected today, but there was someone that I was expecting tomorrow. I hadn’t told Bow yet. Hell, I didn’t know how to tell her. She needed a mother, and I needed someone to be with her when I had to travel for football games. I could have just gotten a nanny, but Bow needed someone stable. Taking a wife was the best way to make that happen, and Samantha Hendricks was clean as a whistle. I’d done a background check on her the moment she answered my ad, and I knew that she was running from a betrayal of her own. We had that in common at least.
She was clean and had a degree in economics and business administration that she had been using to help companies that were failing and in danger of going under. I liked that she could look at something and see its value, even with its rough edges. It was part of the reason I bought this place. There was still a lot of work to do on it, but the rooms were livable, the bathroom downstairs was functioning just fine, and the kitchen was completed with all new everything.
I wasn’t expecting Samantha until tomorrow though, so it was a surprise when I saw her get out of the car. There was no mistaking it was her. I’d seen the pictures of her in the paper running out on her own wedding just a few days ago. There was only two reasons a woman would do something like that—one was if the man was a cheating bastard and not who he said he was, and two if she was being forced into the marriage in the first place.
No way would a woman open herself up to that kind of exposure to the magnitude of what Samantha had done for nothing. I could be wrong, but I doubted it.
‘You were wrong before’. My inner thoughts pricked my assessment of Samantha Hendricks. I was wrong before, with Rayne. I had been falling in love with her, and she had been telling me not to from the start. The more she told me not to, the deeper I fell. It all ended up being a facade. Rayne hadn’t been her true self. She’d been a murderer.
I felt my mood quickly souring, so I forced myself to take a deep breath and tried to focus and remember that Samantha wasn’t Rayne, and this marriage wasn’t going to be one of love and affection. We both knew the score going in. She wanted a family and somewhere to belong away from the madness of D.C., and I wanted a mom for Bow and someone to keep the women in town and at the University at bay.
She was my last-ditch effort, my Hail Mary, my desperate measure to give my daughter a mother she could depend on. Bow was my life, and I’d do anything for her happiness and wellbeing, even get an email order bride.
