AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Because I’ll kill her too. Whoever she is, however skilled she is in bed, I’ll maim the bitch.
“It’s nine o’clock!” Mia counters with a giggle. “Breakfast was hourrrrrs ago.”
“What?” Surprised, I glance to the clock on the wall.
I haven’t changed the time since my move from New York, but I long ago learned how to translate. The clock says it’s a few minutes past noon, which means, here in Copeland, it is, in fact, a few minutes past nine.
“Geez.” I shake my head, like that’ll somehow bring sense to my day. “Nine?”
“We had muesli for breakfast,” Mia singsongs. “Daddy wouldn’t let me have a hotdog on a stick ‘cos it’s still early. But he said we could maybe have them for dinner.”
Her eyes grow wider with what she considers a brilliant idea. “Do you wanna have dinner wif us, Minka? We’re probably having hotdogs on a stick.”
“Um…” At the end of the hall, the sound of my bedroom door opening, then the bathroom door closing, has my heart skipping a beat. “Sure,” I answer. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Her eyes are big and round and emotional, like a fat bunny rabbit’s begging for love. “Only maybe?”
“Probably,” I amend as the sound of the shower goes on, and Fletch’s chuckle penetrates my mind somewhere behind the thought of Archer undressing in the bathroom. “Uncle Arch and I will probably have dinner with you. So long as we don’t have to work.”
“Okay!” She wriggles to be put down, then the second her feet touch the floor, she dashes back to terrorize the cat.
“You seem a little…” Fletch sniggers. “Distracted.”
“You know exactly what you interrupted.” Cranky, I move into the kitchen and snatch the coffee straight from his hands. If he wants another, he can make the damn thing. “You know what time Archer got in this morning. Nine a.m. isn’t that much of a sleep-in, considering.”
“But you weren’t sleeping.” He pauses then taunts, “Were you?”
I step away from the man who makes me feel a littlestabby, then stopping in front of the sink, I turn back to lean. To stare at my husband’s best friend. To plot his death and think up fun ways to drag his tongue out through the bottom of his jaw.
“Not up to talking?” Grabbing a fresh mug from the cabinet, he moves to the machine and pours another coffee. “I get it. I can take a hint.”
“Can you?” I seethe. “Can you really?”
“I hear the frustration in your voice, Delicious. Yet I lack sympathy for your predicament.” He sets the coffeepot down and faces away so I don’t see too much of his goading grin. “I haven’t‘slept in’,” he does the finger quotes, “in weeks. That’s practically a lifetime for me. Being a single dad hampers that kinda stuff, ya know?”
“Oh, boo-freakin’-hoo.” I roll my eyes and sip a little more caffeine. “That sounds like a you problem, Charlie Fletcher. I assure you,I’mnot the reason you’re missing out.”
“Well… no.”
“Butyou’rethe reason I’m here, and not in the bedroom with my husband.”
“Sometimes, duty calls,” he sniggers. “It’s practically the middle of the day, Delicious. We’ve got places to be.”
At his back, my apartment door opens again, then in walks Aubree in a short denim skirt that borders on ‘I’m going to Woodstock’. She wears a puffy jacket to keep her warm, but leaves her legs bare so her glinting chain is on parade for us all to see.
“Oh, hey.” Stopping in the doorway, her eyes flicker from me to a smirking Fletch. Then she lifts one hand in the universal signal forstop. “About yesterday morning…”
With that alone, Fletch’s grin grows larger.
“No.”
“You sly girl,” he drawls.
“No,” she repeats. “I didn’t. We didn’t. You’re wrong. I’m innocent.” She looks across the room and smiles for Mia. “Hey there, Moo. I’m so happy to see your face! It’s been a hot minute since we’ve hung out, now that you spend your time with Penny.”
“Fletch and Penny broke up,” I murmur just for the adults. “That’s why Mia’s here now.”
Fletch rolls his eyes skyward. “Not true.”
