“A butterfly bandage would do it, I think,” L.C. said, coming to lean in the doorway. “I don’t think it needs stitches.”
And how insane did it make her that she was relieved this bad boy had come to flirt with her so the well-meaning seniors couldn’t push in to question her? God, he was hot, slouched there all sexy and interesting.
Interested. She felt his gaze moving over her like a knowing touch, not sweet and warm like sunlight, but firm and possessive. Squeezing her ass. No hesitation. Taking charge.
She let out a subtle breath, hot all over. Sex, she thought, wanting it quite badly for the first time in a while. When had she even dated last? That guy from the coffee shop? Kissing him had left her underwhelmed. Before that, she’d let one of the seniors fix her up with a nephew and he’d been nice, but a little too nice. She carried enough responsibility without driving a relationship, too. Thankfully he lived out of town so things had died a natural death. Maybe if he’d been more assertive about continuing to see her... But he hadn’t.
This guy... She tabled thoughts of L.C. and sex for later.
“What about tetanus?” she managed to ask. “She might have cut it on the nail.” She held a cotton swab to the injury, stemming the sluggish well of blood.
“Tetanus comes from bacteria, not rust. If her shots are up to date, it’s probably fine.”
No nonsense. So refreshing in her world.
Mercedes looked at Dayton. “Have you guys had shots lately?”
“What’re shots?”
Right. Mercedes stifled another curse and peeled a butterfly bandage.
“These aren’t your kids?” L.C. asked. She knew what he was asking.
“My sister’s,” she answered, friendly but not too friendly. Not as friendly as she would have been under different circumstances. Not yet.
She slid a glance his way and noted that he’d heard her, loud and clear. They held the gaze and her blood heated again, until Ayjia said, “He thinks you’re our mom?”
“Pretty silly, huh?” Mercedes smiled and tilted Ayjia’s chin up again to set the bandage.
“Our mom’s on vacation,” Dayton said, leaning into Mercedes’s leg, glancing up to Mercedes for confirmation.
“She is,” Mercedes said in a confident voice, dropping a light get-better kiss on Ayjia’s stained chin and resisting the urge to finger-comb Dayton’s hair with the other. The way he was leaning on her felt nice. She didn’t want to scare him away.
“She was supposed to come back after spring break but she’s playing a April Fools’ joke on us,” Ayjia told L.C.
“Ah.” The look L.C. sent Mercedes held zero amusement and one-hundred percent understanding. “Parents do that sometimes.”
Did you? Mercedes was tempted to ask, but wasn’t sure if she was trying to push him away or whether she really wanted the answer. Actually, she didn’t want to know. She didn’t have time for men, even too-nice, stand-up ones. This one struck her as a serial reprobate. She would only want to save him from himself. That never worked out well for her.
“Everything okay?” Zack came to the door and set her overstuffed beach bag on the floor then straightened, noting L.C.’s attention on her. Apparently he was old enough to sense the sexual undercurrents that were flying past the kids because he snapped a confrontational stare to his father.
Wow. That was a serious challenge. Maybe L.C. had abandoned his son on a few occasions.
L.C. didn’t seem terribly remorseful, just shifted his attention to Zack and met his son’s glare with a flat stare of his own. A silent, What?
Why did she find unapologetic men so attractive? Her ovaries were preparing to conceive a litter over here.
“Thank you,” Mercedes said to Zack, trying to defuse the young man’s animosity. She smiled more than a simple thanks. She wanted to reassure him she would do what she could to help him.
Except not right now. Not with the board gathering in the hall beyond the open door. Mercedes drew Ayjia onto her hip again.
“I need to get Ayjia a tetanus shot. If it’s all right with everyone, perhaps we can try this again tomorrow morning?”
“Oh, Mercedes!” Mrs. Garvey frowned.
“It’ll give me a chance to call my sister,” Mercedes said in a blatant manipulation of everyone’s hopes, including her own. Shouldering her beach bag, she waited for L.C. to move from the doorway.
He turned sideways, still holding Zack’s gaze, forcing her to brush past him.
“Do you mind coming back tomorrow?” she asked, raising her gaze to L.C.’s.
“I don’t mind one little bit. What time?” Dark, bedroom eyes delivered a sensual kick low in her abdomen.
“N-nine thirty? Ten?”
“We’ll be here,” Zack said behind her and lifted the bag off her shoulder. “I’ll carry this to the car for you.”
“Thank you.” Ducking her head, sending a breezy wave to the board, Mercedes got the hell out of Dodge.
“Pretty gal, my Mercedes,” a man said.
L.C. dragged his attention off her short blue stewardess skirt and the best landing gear he’d ever seen.
The voice belonged to the barrel-chested old codger who’d taken on the passive-aggressive crone. The crone shot L.C. a mistrustful glare as she scuttled away with the knitter and the pencil pusher.
“My?” L.C. repeated. “You’re her father?”
“Hell, no, son. I’m her boyfriend.”
L.C. snorted. “Oh, you’re my father,” he said, even though his dad’s current live-in was only a decade behind him. The one before that, however, had been younger than L.C. “Consider me warned off,” L.C. drawled, trying to catch another glimpse of the backs of Mercedes’s knees.
Sadly, she was gone, hustled outside by his son.
L.C. turned back, finding the old fart taking his measure with a well-practiced eye. It didn’t bother him too much. He got that look a lot.
“Did I hear your name right? Are you Harrison Michaels, the writer?”
“Guilty.”
That explained the give-no-shits attitude. If the author bio read correctly, the man was an ex-military tank mechanic who had rescued himself from a hostage situation and hiked across a desert to eventual freedom. His characters were always Average Joes caught up in a mess of someone else’s making, surviving on grit and wit, forever falling for women who were out of reach.
“I like your books.”
“Thanks. You a writer?” he asked with a suspicious lower of one brow.
“Oh hell, no,” L.C. snorted. He couldn’t even pass a damned GED and he needed it if he wanted to challenge the millwright exam. He was tired of bumming around, taking whatever work he could find. The good jobs that paid real money required a proper ticket, not just his say-so that he could fix anything. He eyed the old guy, wondering how he had learned where the commas went. “Why? Do you offer classes or something?”
“Hell to the no. If I pandered to every wacko who said they wanted to write a book, I’d never do anything else.”
L.C. shrugged off that idea before it fully formed and chucked his chin toward the door where Mercedes and Zack had left.
“What about Zack? Gonna pander to him?”
“Should we?”
L.C. considered the level of prejudice that had been coming off the preying mantis of a woman in the meeting. The rest seemed okay.
“He’ll talk you into it regardless.” Zack had a lot of his salesman grandfather in him. “But he’s a good kid. Takes after his mother,” he added in an aside.
Harrison smirked, but sobered right away. “We have a lot of kids here right now. We’ll have to wait and see which way the wind blows with yours.”
The line-toeing cow behind the desk at the clinic refused to admit Ayjia.
“Unless you’re her legal guardian, we can’t treat her,” she said to Mercedes. She didn’t add, and certainly didn’t look, ‘sorry.’
“But I’m her aunt, her mom’s sister. Ayjia, who am I?”
“Auntie M,” Ayjia said, grasping the edge of the counter to pull herself up so her nose poked over the edge.
“I just want her to have a tetanus shot,” Mercedes said. “She cut her chin on a nail. I can’t reach her mother right now and I’m the one who will pay for it. Surely—”
“We can’t treat a child on any old say-so. If this were your child, would you want someone else making decisions regarding her medical treatment?”
“If the child was in the care of a blood relative like my sister, sure.” Which was a huge lie. If she were able to have kids, she would never leave them in Porsha’s care longer than a bathroom break. This issue would never come up.
And she would not get maudlin about it right now. She’d done the right thing at the time. Pity parties were for midnight after a lousy date and half a bottle of wine.
“So I don’t have to get a shot, Auntie M?” Ayjia asked.
“Sorry, hon, I’m still trying. I think it’s important. Do you have any suggestions on how I might get around this?” Mercedes asked the lady in the white sweater who could not possibly be a nurse since she was more concerned with rules than health care.
“Sometimes schools have arrangements whereby the school nurse has permission to authorize something like this. You might check with them. Is she old enough to be in school?”