Dirty Daddies(30)

She takes a step forward. “Michael tried to help me. I had nowhere to go.” She pauses. “It’s not his fault. He doesn’t know about the crow, I was just trying to save it.”

I’m rarely lost for words, but she has me stumped. I don’t know whether to march her off my property or laugh insanely at this whole fucking spectacle.

“I’ll clean up,” she says, and I cover my face with my hands in disbelief.

“You’ll clean up?!”

“Yeah,” she tells me. “I will.”

I point to the smashed frames on the mantelpiece. “And what about the damage? What about the fact I’ve got a total fucking stranger on my property? In my house?”

She’s quiet while she thinks, chewing on her bottom lip like she wants to draw blood. “I’ll pay for it.”

“Do you have any money?” I look her up and down. It’s a marvel that her beauty shines through the state of her tattered, filthy clothes. Her boots are grubby and old, and I can see a flash of pink sock through a hole in the toe.

She shakes her head. “Not yet, but I can earn it. When I get a job I’ll pay you back.”

I can’t stand to look at the living room anymore so I step out and close the door behind me. The hall is also covered in boot prints and so is the kitchen. I dare to peek into the dining room and groan in disbelief to see the rainbow shards of what used to be my prized glass sculpture.

I hear her footsteps behind me. “I’ll pay for that, too.”

I swear under my breath. That sculpture was almost ten grand, a stupidly extravagant purchase at an auction house down in London.

I should order her to fuck off out of my house and never fucking come back. I can’t believe she’s even still here, following me around while I uncover more and more of her fucking catastrophe.

But Michael.

Even now, knowing that the stupid sonofabitch invited a whirlwind of trouble into my empty house without my knowledge, I can’t bring myself to send her running. He’d only fucking follow.

“How long have you been here?” I ask her.

“Two nights.”

My shoes crunch on broken glass. “Two nights?” The shock is numbing me to the anger. “Just as well I didn’t stay away another fucking week.”

“He was trying to help,” she says again. “Michael, I mean. He found me on the road.” She holds up her foot. “I sprained my ankle, couldn’t walk.”

“So he brought you here?”

She shrugs. “Someone called Pam lives in his block. He said he couldn’t take me there.”

“Pam Clowes,” I say absentmindedly. “Yes. She’d have his job for it.”

“It was only for a few days, he said. Just until we sort something else.”

I can’t help but register her word choice. We sort something else. I wonder what the fuck’s really been going on here. Are they physical? Has this midlife crisis become more than a crazy pissing pipe dream?

I want to ask her but I don’t. I’ll ask him instead, just as soon as he fucking gets here.

“I’m sure he’ll be here as soon as he can,” she says, as though she’s a mind reader. I wonder if the gypsy rumours are true. Maybe she’s got some weird psychic gift in that pretty head of hers. I feel uncharacteristically self-conscious, because despite all this – despite the shit-storm of chaos around me, and the cold, hard horror of finding an intruder in my house – I’m thinking how much prettier she is sober and in the daylight. I’m thinking how glossy her hair is and how it ripples as she moves. I’m thinking that her eyes are more fey than human, and her freckles look surprisingly cute when she’s angry.

I’m thinking that I can see why a girl like Carrie Wells has sent a man like Michael Warren fucking crazy.

“Can I wait for him?” she asks, as though she suddenly needs my permission for shit.

“You better had,” I say. “You both owe me one fuck of an explanation.”

She shrugs. “I told you what happened. I didn’t have anywhere to go, Michael brought me here. I went out for a walk and found a crow in your busted fence, tried to help it and you let it go.”

I sigh. “And you trashed my whole fucking house in the process, yes?”

She shrugs again. “Not the upstairs. It didn’t go up there.”

But she did.

I wonder if she’s been sleeping in my fucking bed, too. Like bastard Goldilocks.

I wonder if they’ve both been in there.

The thought of her splayed out in my bed makes my mouth water, and I don’t get it. I really don’t fucking get it.

“I didn’t mean to trash anything,” she tells me. “You should take better care of your fences.”