Head Start (Cedar Tree #7) (38 page)

“Oh my God,” I exclaim when I take in the completely new layout of what seems to be a much bigger bathroom than before. A lush corner tub is installed in the far left corner and straight ahead is a glass enclosed shower stall. To my right is the connecting door to the master and immediately on my left, against the wall, a new vanity with two sinks and mirrors. “How?” I manage, a little confused at the decidedly larger bathroom.

“Moved the door a little and took out the small closet in the spare. Come look,” he says, putting his arm around my shoulders. The spare bedroom only holds a small desk, what looks to be my double bed, and in front of where the closet used to be stands a shelving unit. “There’s room for a dresser,” Neil assures me before turning us around and heading for the master bedroom. The only thing that’s changed in here is the bed. Neil’s bigger, and admittedly more comfortable one sits against the far wall. But when he opens the walk-in closet, I’m surprised to see both our clothes hanging neatly on hangers. A million questions run through my head but before I can formulate even one, Neil sinks on his knees in front of me. “Emma packed,” he explains. “And the guys moved everything over.” Suddenly he’s on his feet, swearing under his breath as he stalks to the door. “Stay put, I forgot something,” he says before disappearing downstairs.

I hear the opening and closing of a door and then very familiar nails clicking up the stairs. “Chaos!” I call the big black lug of a dog who comes barreling through the doorway. With one, rather uncoordinated leap, he lands on the bed with his legs up in the air for a belly rub. Neil follows slower and watches us from the doorway, a small smile on his face as I indulge our dog and scratch his belly.

“Forgot Gus left him outside,” he says as he walks toward the bed and sits down on the edge. “Now where was I?”

“You were about to tell me how you pulled off this amazing surprise,” I tell him, abandoning the dog and sneaking up behind Neil, draping myself over his shoulders, my arms around his neck. He twists in the bed so his back can lean against the headboard before pulling me onto his lap.

“Just a bit of help from our friends and some planning.”

“Uh-huh. And what about the bathroom? The downstairs, my God...why would they go to such lengths for a rental place?” I see a small muscle twitch in his cheek. “Neil?”

“It’s not exactly a rental place anymore,” he confesses and it doesn’t take long for me to clue in.

“You didn’t,” I whisper, pushing myself off his lap.

“There’s room for us to build further to the back, and we have the basement we can utilize,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken.

N
eil

Oh man.

I’m pretty sure I fucked the toaster on this one. Her face is a mask of disbelief and I don’t know what else to do but to push ahead and lay it all out.

“I was looking for something anyway, Pup, when you moved here. And I loved this house so much. Then I finally had my shot with you... It seemed perfect. If you don’t like it, I can—”

“Shut up,” she says softly and repeats louder. “Shut up.”

Taken aback, I sit back and wait for the blow out. I watch her bend her head and release a few deep breaths before she looks up again, tears pooling in her eyes.

“It’s perfect,” she whispers as she climbs back on my lap. “I’ve run the gamut of emotions today, honey. Nervous about my appointment, nervous about how you were doing. I was worried you might not be at the hospital in time and I really wanted you there, except I didn’t want you to miss your session. I’ve been all over the place. Then thinking you were wanting to slow us down, just as I started catching up and then the house. My God, Neil, the house... It’s perfect.”

I hold her as I feel all the pieces of my life sliding home. 

-

N
ot sure how long we’ve been sitting like this, Kendra cuddled against my chest and the dog—who crawled closer to us on the bed, with his head on my leg—when I hear a knock and the front door opening.

“Hello! Anybody home?”

“Mom?” Kendra mumbles as she sits up and Chaos jumps down to check out the visitor.

“Surprise!” That’s Emma’s voice, and I remember she’d mentioned something about coming by after we’ve had a chance to settle in. Make that
visitors
then.

“Told you they’d prefer to celebrate by themselves, Peach.” Gus’s deep voice can be heard scolding his wife.

“Nonsense,” Elsa pipes up, and I feel Kendra’s body shaking in my lap. She’s laughing.

“Fuck me,” I mutter, shaking my head.

“Why’s everyone standing in the doorway? The rest of us would like to come in too. Move!” And that is Arlene. By the sound of it, Emma has rounded up just about the entire population of Cedar Tree and beyond. Kendra just sits in my lap, giggling her ass off.

“We should go downstairs.” She hiccups. “Before they send Arlene up as reconnaissance. Or worse, my mother.”

I groan getting off the bed. “Fine. Sooner we get this shindig over with, the sooner we can crawl back in our peaceful bubble.”

Still on her knees on the bed, Kendra reaches up and pulls me down by the neck. “Don’t be grumpy. I promise to make it up to you later,” she says, her lips brushing mine.

“Gonna keep you to that,” I mumble, my mouth already slanting to fit over hers. My tongue slides between her lips and instantly the kiss turns heated with Kendra’s hands slipping under my shirt and clawing at my back. My girl is needy.

“They’re up here!” Arlene hollers down from the bedroom door before turning just her eyes on us. “And they’re getting a head start on christening their new home!”

“Arlene!” Seb’s voice sounds from the bottom of the stairs. “Get your ass back down here, Spot. They’ll show up when they’re good and ready.”

Arlene huffs loudly but turns around and stomps down the stairs. We can just hear her say,
“party-pooper”
sending both Kendra and I into fits of laughter.

Instead of letting Kendra struggle down the steps, I end up carrying her down, her crutches in her hand. The place is packed with people. Clint is showing Beth around the kitchen, getting shoved out of the way when Emma and Seb start spreading out food on the new kitchen bar. Fox and Joe come walking in carrying crates of beer, and Naomi follows behind with a potted plant.

“You knew too?” Kendra accuses her when she spots the plant. Naomi just smiles and shrugs walking to the coffee table and setting the plant in the middle.

I set Kendra on the couch next to Kim, and she’s instantly absorbed by the baby bundle Mal’s wife places in her arms. Elsa slips beside Kendra on her other side, shoving me out of the way. Dismissed. I just shake my head and accept the beer Malachi hands me with a big smile on his face.

“What did you think?” he asks with an eyebrow raised. “Saying okay to any of these women when they propose briefly
popping in,
is like consenting to a mosh pit in your living room.”

“I heard that,” Kim’s head pops up from the baby-huddle on the couch.

“You know I’m not lying,
Nizhóní,
” her husband shoots back. Kim just rolls her eyes and dives back into the cluster of women around Kendra.

“I’ve got the meat,” Caleb’s voice sounds from the door. He’s behind Katie who is trying to hang on to their son Mattias. The little guy has spotted his favorite two people in the universe next to his parents: his uncles.

“Uncanee!!” The kid produces a volume that such a little body shouldn’t be able to produce, as he yanks his arm free from his mom’s grasp and toddles in high gear toward me. 

“Hey, little guy.” I smile as I bend down and pick him up, setting him on my hip. “Did you see the dog yet?”

“Doggie?” the little tyke bellows when his mom walks up.

“Matty, use your inside voice, baby,” Katie says gently.

“Shhhh,” is the toddler’s response, accompanied by a little index finger pressed to his lips and a gush of spittle spraying me.

“Sorry.” Katie winces.

A soft chuckle catches my attention, and when I turn I see Kendra’s eyes sparkling with amusement at my expense. Her face is soft and she looks as relaxed as I’ve ever seen her. My heart does a little flip in my chest until a certain pint-sized town cryer slaps his little hands on my face.

“Doggie!” he yells in my face.

“Yes, kid. Doggie. Let’s go find him.” I swing Mattias up and onto my shoulders. Instinctively, his little fists clutch in my hair, and with one last look at a laughing Kendra, I take the boy to see a dog.

K
endra

Best night ever.

I look over at the alarm clock to see it’s almost midnight. Seb finally managed to coax Arlene to go home after Emma and Gus had taken Mom home. She’s apparently staying in the guesthouse for the weekend. Neil laughed at that, said that that guesthouse had never been vacant. Not since they had it built many moons ago.

Chaos is snoring beside the bed, tired from trying to avoid a hyperactive little boy all night, and Neil is brushing his teeth in the bathroom. At his own sink. A smile steals over my face as I let my eyes wander around the room. I can’t quite believe I’m living in this gorgeous house. For keeps.

“What are you smiling at, Pup?” Neil’s warm voice comes from the bathroom doorway where he is leaning against the post, his arms crossed over his naked chest.

“This,” I confess, waving my arms to include everything. “Tonight. Our friends. This house. Everything.”

Neil smiles as he stalks the bed and climbs up from the bottom, stopping at my ankle which he strokes lightly with a finger. “How’s the foot?”

“Good.” I smile back as that finger slowly travels up my calf to the back of my knee.

“Happy?” he asks, his lips following the path of his finger, lightly kissing the inside of my leg.

“Blissfully. You?”

“Sweetheart, I was happy from the first time I got to taste your lips, and you went from a distant dream to a perfect reality. I had a head start.”

K
endra

“Are you ready?”

I grab her outstretched hand. Both of us are facedown on tables side by side in Durango’s best-rated tattoo shop. I had some skin grafts done two years ago, taking care of the raised patches on my back. The feathers. The deeper grooves along my spine and marking the outlines had filled in but had been too deep to attempt to fix. Franka had opted to do the same, but started a year later, and hers took several surgeries. Our markings were eerily similar. I don’t know how we got onto the subject of tattoos, but Franka showed me one she had on her thigh which was intricate like a henna painting. She mentioned always having wanted more, but visible tattoos were still often frowned upon in her line of work, dealing with mostly an older generation, so she never got any more. Then something Emma once told me about claiming those marks, making them mine, popped in my head. Franka had loved the idea but at the time was still healing from her final surgery.

Now, six months after that conversation, the two of us are ready to reclaim what was ours to begin with.

The sensation of the needles piercing the mangled flesh on my back feels like a purging of sorts. Out with the bad and in with the good. The cherry blossoms to me have always symbolized spring—the start of a new growing season. Spring is also when I started falling for Neil, finally letting down my guard and entering a new phase in my life. It has taken me a long time to learn not to allow the dark side of that spring to overshadow or even dull the beauty of my life right now. Another reason for the cherry blossoms is that they are the most beautiful things I can imagine. The dual hum of the tattoo needles is the white noise that allows my mind to drift, even as my scars disappear under the intricate artwork that is being applied to my back.

I turn my eyes to look at Franka who is looking back at me and we both smile.

-

“H
ow was Durango?” Neil asks as he walks in the door later that night. All he knows is that I was going for a girl’s day, maybe to visit a spa with Franka, who had relocated to Durango for work this past year.

“Good. We had a good time,” I tell him, stirring the soup made with vegetables from our own garden.