Worth the Wait (Picking up the Pieces #4) (12 page)

Flipping through the channels, there wasn’t really anything on that caught my attention. Not one who handles boredom all that well, I started wandering around the tiny apartment, straightening things up as I went. I tried to put the toys back into the plastic bins that lined one of the living room walls, but no manner of stacking would keep the overflow of stuffed animals and action figures from toppling back onto the floor. The twins really needed some place to stash their loot; those bins just weren’t cutting it.

Giving up on that project, I wandered aimlessly, inspecting everything closely, really trying to get a feel for Kenzie. The apartment was homey, but all of the furniture appeared to be second-hand. The kitchen table was scuffed and scratched on more of the surface than not. The mismatched chairs had wobbly legs. The couch, while comfortable, had definitely seen better days; the fabric was so worn and threadbare in some spots, it was just one plop away from tearing open. The one thing that stood out the most as I walked the space was that everything that belonged to the twins appeared to be brand new. They had new toys, boxes of crayons, coloring books, clothes, racecars, doll houses. You name it, these kids had it. And no way was any of it second-hand.

That spoke volumes about the woman who’d grabbed my interest and refused to let go. She was a proud woman who busted her ass for what she had, and it was clear that any extra she found herself with, she used on her children. I didn’t know what happened in her past, but I had no doubt that everything she did, she did with those kids’ best interests at heart. Strong didn’t even begin to properly describe Mackenzie Webster.

I was pulled from my musings by a high-pitched scream followed by a splash. Rushing down the hall, I felt like my heart was about to beat right out of my chest. Fear gripped my lungs in a tight hold, not allowing any air in or out. As I skidded to a halt in the bathroom doorway, what I saw confirmed one thing.

I was
so
screwed.

“What the hell do you expect us to do?” Trevor asked in astonishment as Luke and Jeremy stood back with their hands over their mouth, trying their hardest not to laugh.

“I don’t know!” I shouted before releasing a string of colorful expletives.

“Uuuuummmm, you said bunches of bad words,” Cameron spoke from his place on top of the toilet. Well, to be accurate, it was more like
inside
the toilet.

I leaned in and ruffled his hair. “Hey bud, you remember about the buddy code, right?” He gave me an exuberant nod. “Yeah, why don’t we put my bad words under the buddy code, yeah? We won’t tell your mommy that I accidentally cussed, and I’ll work really hard not to do it anymore. Deal?” I reached my hand out and he grabbed on with his little one to give it an enthusiastic shake.

“Deal.”

“Can we gets a cookie for not telling?” Callie asked from beside me.

“You bet!”

“Yay!” both kids cheered like nothing was wrong in the world while, internally, I was freaking the ever-loving hell out.

“Hey, ladybug. Can you go look in the fridge and see if your mommy has any butter?”

Callie looked up at me with bright eyes and said, “Mommy said buttews bad for you. We gots mawgwin.”

That’ll work.

“Margarine’s perfect, sweetie. Will you go get that for me?” She bolted from the bathroom and took off down the hall as I released a breath and turned back to Cameron. “All right, buddy. How’d you even get your foot stuck in the toilet anyway?”

“I was tryin’ to flush myself.”

I stood there, momentarily speechless before asking, “Why would you…you know what? Doesn’t matter. Let’s just try and get you out, okay?”

“Yup.” He popped the “p” and stood casually like he had all the time in the world.

“What are you planning on doing? Greasing him up like a pig?”

I shot a scowl at Jeremy. “What are you even doing here? I don’t remember calling you for help.”

“You didn’t,” he grinned. “You called Trevor. Trevor called Luke. Luke called me. No way in hell I was missing this shit.”

“Dats a bad word,” Cameron scolded.

“Yeah, Jeremy. That’s a bad word. Watch your damn mouth.”

“GOT IT!” Callie screeched about a million decibels higher than necessary as she shot into the bathroom with a tub of Parkay in her hands.

“Thank you, ladybug. Why don’t you take Jeremy here and go show him your tea party set? He was just telling me how much he wanted to have a princess tea party.”

“Yay! Come on, come on, Jewmy!” He scowled at me over his shoulder as Callie pulled him out the door, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to shoot him the finger as I watched him go.

“All right, bud,” I said, turning back to Cameron, still hanging out, one foot stuck in the toilet like it was just any other day. “This is what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna reach in and try to get your foot unstuck while Trevor here gently pulls on your leg.” I turned back to Trevor and narrowed my eyes. “You hear that, Trevor?
Gently
.”

“Yeah, I think I got it. Remind me real quick, who was it that got a kid’s foot stuck in the toilet while babysitting? Ah! That’s right, that’d be you, d-i-c-k-w-a-d.”

The bastard actually had the nerve to spell it out.

“Yeah, well, I’m still gonna kick your a-s-s when this is over, l-i-m-p-d-i-c-k. Can we just do this, please?”

Popping the top off the margarine, I shoved my hand in and got a huge glob before reaching into the toilet bowl and trying as best I could to coat his ankle so we could finagle him out.

“Okay, Trevor, you pull his leg. Luke, see if you can lift him up. On the count of three. One, two—”

“What’s going on?”

Son of a bitch!

Walking into my apartment after a long day of uncontrollably worrying about both my kids’
and
Brett’s welfare, the last thing I expected to see was Jeremy sitting in one of the tiny plastic chairs of Callie’s tea party table, wearing a princess crown on his head as he sipped pretend tea out of a cup with his pinky poking straight up in the air.

“Uh, hi?”

“Mommy!” Callie shrieked. “Brett and Jewmy played princess tea party with me today!”

“Good deal, honey pot. Where’s your brother?”

“Bathroom,” Jeremy answered as he dabbed the corners of his mouth with a napkin like he was some member of high society. I guessed the man really liked his tea parties.

I heard commotion coming from the bathroom as I walked down the hall, and what I saw froze me on site. Brett was crouched down with both hands in the toilet bowl while Trevor had a hold of one of my son’s legs and Luke was pulling him from under his arms. And was that…? Why was my butter in the bathroom?

“On the count of three. One, two—”

“What’s going on?” At the sound of my voice, three pairs of grownup eyes swung to me, all with different levels of
oh, shit, so busted
reflected back at me.

“Mommy!” Cameron let out a delighted shout. “I twied to flush myself again!”

I couldn’t hold back my laugh at Brett’s exclamation of, “
Again
!”

Oh, this was just too damn funny. “Brett, did you try to butter up my son?”

“Technically,” Trevor answered, “it’s margarine, so there’s that…”

“Beauty, this isn’t what it looks like,” Brett flustered.

“Really? Because it looks like you got my kid stuck in the toilet, then tried to baste him,” I managed to get out between hysterical giggles.

“So it’s exactly what it looks like,” Luke laughed.

Finally taking pity on the poor guy, I walked over to Cameron. “All right, bub. Turn your foot so your toes are at the front.” He did as told and his little foot popped right out. When I turned back to the hulking men crowding in my cramped bathroom, Trevor and Luke looked like they were trying their damnedest to keep from laughing while Brett looked like he was about to have an aneurysm.

“Not our first rodeo,” I told him with a laugh. “Or our third.”

“Mommy, guess what!” Cameron asked excitedly as he hopped up and down on the bathroom floor, flushing incident long forgotten.

“What, pumpkin?”

“Brett’s da best babysitter ever! He gave us pizza and watched movies with us and we haves a buddy code dats like a secret where we don’t tell you when he says bad words by accident! But I can’t tell you cuz its buddy code! OH! And I frowed up…like a
whoooooole
bunches.”

I heard Brett grumble, “Kinda defeating the purpose of buddy code there, little man,” before Cameron took off into the living room to go play with his sister.

Luke slapped Brett on the shoulder, telling him, “We’re out, man. Don’t need to be witness to whatever she’s about to do to you.” Then he was gone.

Trevor did the sign of the cross on Brett before bailing out and seconds later, I heard the front door open and close.

“Kenz, I’m so damn sorry…” Brett started, but I held my hand up to stop him.

“I’m gonna go in order here, so try and keep up. First, no more buddy code, okay? I didn’t expect your first foray into babysitting to be a perfect ten, especially with those two, but you can’t teach them to keep secrets from me. Not even if it’s obvious they can’t keep their mouths shut to save their lives.” He gave me an ashamed nod. “Second, if something happens like, oh say, my son trying to flush himself down the toilet and getting stuck, all you have to do is call me. Odds are I’ll know how to get him out of whatever he got himself into, so there won’t be a need to butter him up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Also, I get you were trying to win cool points, but heads up, any dairy after a stomach virus is a definite no no. But I’m pretty certain you learned that lesson the hard way.”

“That’s the friggin’ understatement of the century. You must hate me right now,” he mumbled with his head hung, but I pushed forward, ignoring his statement.

“And you have to watch your language. I know it’s hard, trust me, but they’re like little sponges. Those damn kids soak up
everything.
”

“Ain’t that the damn truth.”

“And last…thank you.”

His head shot up as he stared back at me with his wide brown eyes. “Thank you? For what? I’m the worst babysitter in the history of babysitting.”

I couldn’t help myself; he was just so damn cute standing there all down on himself. I stepped up to him and cupped his cheek. “Thank you for liking my kids so much that you wanted to spoil them with pizza, even though it wasn’t the best idea since they’ve been sick to their stomachs. Thank you for playing princess tea party with my little girl. I promise you, that made her entire week. Thank you for sitting through God knows how many kids movies just because it’s what they wanted.”

“I think I might just puncture my own ear drums if I have to listen to that fu-friggin’
awesome
song again.”

I was definitely of the same opinion on that.

“But mostly, thank you for giving my kids such a good day that, even though his foot was lodged in a toilet, my son couldn’t stop going on about how much he liked you. There were a few bumps in the road, but you are far from the worst babysitter in history. They’ve been lacking when it comes to having a man who cares in their lives, so I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

Brett reached up, placed his palm against my hand on his cheek and leaned further into my touch. “So you’ll let me babysit for you again?”