“It’s messy but beautiful.” Chloe, a self-taught spiritual guru with a huge online following, has already had one blockbuster bestseller and is writing another, not to mention cultivating several membership-based subscription businesses online. She lifts her chin toward the boat. “How’s she running?”
“Great. Another one to check off the list.”
Chloe shakes her head. “I’ve never met anyone who works harder than you do.”
“I know exactly how hard you work.” This is a common argument among the three of us—we all think the others work harder than we do. “Go on, get out of here. Don’t keep your students from their torture.”
I shut down the boat and secure her in the slip, then pick up all my tools and start toward the shed. My cell rings while my hands are full, and I barely pick it up before it goes to voicemail. I don’t have time to look at the screen, but I’m hoping it’s Laiyla inviting me to have dinner with her and Levi. I’m starving, and I haven’t made it to the store recently.
I dump my tools on a workbench. “Hello.”
“KT? It’s Violet.”
“Hey, there.” My mind veers toward Ben. I haven’t seen or heard from him since he and I were right where I am now, kissing. And that was entirely too long ago. I’ve just about given up hope we’ll ever get past first base. “What’s up?”
“Um, well, our toilet is overflowing, and my babysitter doesn’t know how to stop it.”
“Dad’s at work?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Be right there.” My stomach is not happy with me, but it will have to wait. I grab my snake and a few other tools and head to their house.
Violet greets me at the door and waves me in. “It’s the downstairs one.”
A young woman is sitting on the sofa, her nose in her phone. When she looks at me, I see she’s more of a teenager than a young woman.
“Hi, I’m KT.”
Instead of responding to me, she frowns at Violet. “You shouldn’t just let people into the house.”
“I called her to help with the toilet,” Violet says.
The babysitter doesn’t seem to care either way.
Two young girls who could only be Poppy and Jazz lie on the floor in front of cartoons that are, in my opinion, inappropriate for their age.
I follow Violet into the bathroom and find water covering the floor of a half bath, the toilet bowl filled to the brim. But what is most puzzling is that the water is clean. And what annoys me most is that the babysitter is just letting water soak the floor and seep into the neighboring carpet of a bedroom. “Violet, grab me some towels.”
I take off the top of the tank and inspect the parts, which all look fine. Violet returns, and we lay down the towels to soak up most of the water.
“Daddy!” the two younger girls say in unison.
“Hey, munchkins.” Ben’s rich voice reaches my ears and makes my stomach squeeze in anticipation.
“Daddy’s home.” Violet’s smile is a little too bright, her eyes a little too wide.
I’ve learned to read her pretty well over the last week and something’s not quite right. She had to cut her time short at the marina today because she had homework to get done, and now I see this situation as staged a little too well.
She leaves the bathroom, and I move the towels around with my boot to continue soaking up the water. I hear Violet tell him about the toilet overflowing, and her story doesn’t hold up for me. Especially when she goes overboard about how I came to help. I’m also hearing the babysitter act concerned when she was anything but.
I’m smiling by the time he steps into the doorway. My stomach squeezes at the sight of him. That messy dark-blond hair, the scruffy jaw, those deep blue eyes. He’s wearing scrubs, his ID tag still hanging from the waistband of his pants. He’s frowning, hands on hips, and all three girls are crowded around him like ducklings.
“Hey,” he says to me, clearly concerned. “I’m so sorry she called you.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind.”
He looks at his girls. “What happened here?”
They all profess ignorance, and by the look on his face, he’s as skeptical as I am.
“Go relax,” I tell him. “I have a feeling this will be an easy fix.”
“Girls,” he says, “get more towels from upstairs.”
He crouches and pulls up a soaked towel, then steps into the room and tosses it into the sink. His body heat wraps around me, his masculine scent filling my head like helium.
“Ben, you just got home.” I follow his lead and drop another towel, heavy with water, onto the other in the sink. “Go sit down for a minute.”
He shakes his head, still frowning. “Do you see anything wrong with this scenario?”
“As a matter of fact, I see several things.”
Another towel hits the sink, and then we’re just waiting for more dry towels. “She wasn’t happy when I told her she could only spend a couple of hours with you today.”
The girls all return with towels in their arms. Once we have a new layer laid down, I reach for my snake.
“Okay,” I say, glancing at the girls. “Let’s see what we’ve got in here.”
Ben’s scowling, arms crossed.
I pick up my industrial snake and feed the flexible end into the bowl. When I hit the block, I turn the handle to catch whatever is blocking the drain with the hook on the end of the snake. It takes a couple of tries, but I finally pull out the problem—a Barbie-type doll in a mermaid outfit with lots of red hair.
Ben lets out a huff and covers his eyes with one hand, rubbing at his closed lids before pinching the bridge of his nose.
I unhook it from the snake, lay it on the floor, and put the snake back in to make sure the toilet is cleared.
“Girls—” he starts.
“Wait,” I say. “There’s something else.” This something else takes longer to pull out, but I end up dislodging it from the drain, and out pops a blue fish with a big smile, floating in the bowl.
I have to pull my lips between my teeth and hold them there to keep myself from laughing.
“What in the heck happened?” Ben asks, looking down at his girls.
Jazz is the first to speak. “I was just setting Ariel and Nemo free. They wanted to go back to the ocean.”
A laugh pops out of me. I can’t help it. I press the back of my hand to my mouth to keep the rest inside, but it’s damn difficult.
Jazz looks at Violet, pleased with herself. “Did I do it right?”
“Jazz,” Violet says in that shut-up tone, her eyes wide.
“That’s what I was supposed to say, right?”
Ben rubs his face with both hands and growls. “Rooms. Now.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Poppy says.
“Rooms,” he repeats with patient determination. “I’ll call you when dinner’s ready.”
“KT can stay, right?” Violet says, hopeful. “I mean, she should stay for dinner for helping us with the toilet, right, Daddy?”
“Don’t make me say it again,” Ben says.
Violet darts a worried look at me before Ben herds them out of the bathroom, and I barely keep my shit together until they hit the stairs. Then I double over, laughing, one hand on my mouth, the other arm across my stomach. And I laugh harder and longer than I have in a long damn time.