Chapter 3

"No, five weeks is not acceptable," I said into the phone as I stood on my porch holding a six-pack of my favorite light beer. The contractor working on my house in Phoenix rambled on as my eyes narrowed to the small child coming up the path that led down to the Hendersons' place.

"Does your mom know you're here?" I called out as Kai approached.

"I don't even know where my mom is."

What? Did Ivy go out and leave all the kids by themselves? I guess the oldest one was old enough to babysit. But that wasn't my point.

"Does Shane know where you are?"

"Probably not." He shrugged again and turned to chase Diesel around the grass.

I huffed and turned my attention back to the phone call. "Just get it done quickly, Tom. Five weeks isn't fast enough." Especially with the circus that had moved in next door. For the love of God, these people were going to make me nuts. "I gotta go."

Dropping the phone into the pocket of my jeans, I turned to the kid. "Come on, let's go back to the chaos." I waved down the hill toward Ivy's.

Kai tilted his head. "I call our house the cowboy boot."

"What?"

"You know, because it's tall and that one point sticks out."

His description to someone not looking at the place sounded ridiculous. But it was tall, three stories on one side and then only one story on the other. So maybe if I squinted really hard…not even then did it look like a freaking shoe. Although the nutty situation did fit that damn nursery rhyme about the woman with too many kids.

"You can see it too." Kai nodded confidently.

This kid's imagination was insane. "Let's go," I huffed.

Diesel came running like I was talking to him and took off down the hill with Kai. The darn dog seemed to have found a new best friend.

"Did you know we have bats?" Kai said as I caught up with them at the bottom of the hill.

"You have bats?

"Yeah, in the attic." He pointed to the tall point of the house.

Now that I was looking at it… I hated having to admit I could see the cowboy boot. I shook that idea off.

"You're telling me there are bats in your house?"

He shrugged. "That's what Ivy says."

Why was I going over there to have a drink with the ringmaster of a circus? Who apparently didn't care that there were bats living in the attic. No one better be drinking off the floor or jumping off car roofs. I was normally pretty chill about shit, but this group made my skin crawl.

Yet here I was for some reason, following Kai and Diesel to the house. Probably because someone needed to make sure no one died.

I stomped down the driveway toward the cowboy boot. My jaw locked now Kai had me calling it that. I shook my head as I slammed through the front door of Rose Garden. "You need to call an exterminator." I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes at Ivy, who stood in the kitchen.

"Well welcome back. Why is it you think I need an exterminator?" She blinked her big brown eyes before her gaze fell to Kai standing in front of me. "What did you do? I swear if you brought in another rat?—"

"Rat?" First bats, and now rats.

"Yeah, he likes animals." She sighed and shrugged a thin shoulder. "It's a thing, don't worry."

Worry usually wasn't my thing. My brother worried enough for both of us. But somehow, in just a day, this family had me stressing about a laundry list of things.

She crossed her arms, and her full breasts lifted into the scoop of her blue shirt. Damn she had nice tits.

I shook my head. Don't think about her breasts. Worry about the damn rats. Or bats. Or whatever the fuck else.

"Did you bring in a rodent?" she asked Kai.

"No, I didn't." He shook his head.

Shane descended the stairs. "Okay, this isn't funny. Where are my shoes?" he huffed. "I've been looking for three hours, and I just bought them last week."

"Well, I told you not to waste two hundred dollars on shoes."

One problem at a time. "Can we focus on the bats?"

"You brought in a bat?" Her eyes widened as she swung her gaze back to Kai.

I sighed. "No, he said there are bats in the attic."

"Oh." Her whole body relaxed, and she waved a hand at me. "I just told him that so he doesn't go up there." She chuckled. "For the love of God, there's no bats in the house. Do you think we could rent it if there were rabies-infested creatures in the attic?"

"We have a ghost, though," Kai interrupted.

"There's no ghost." Ivy rolled her eyes.

"Well, how come our shoes keep moving? They keep disappearing. It's the ghost. I know a ghost would love to live in our cowboy boot. And I saw a white thing in the hallway."

"You did not see a white thing in the hallway." She opened a cabinet and pulled out a bowl.

"I did too."

Jesus, this kid. He thought he lived in a haunted boot with bats. Quite an imagination.

"Stop making up stories, Kai." Shane narrowed his eyes at the small child. "Did you take my shoes?"

"No, it was the ghost. I saw it."

"Yeah, okay, fine. Show me where you saw the ghost."

Ivy chuckled as she poured something into the bowl.

I raised an eyebrow at her. "What's so funny?"

"Shane's about to figure out where our ghost is hiding all the shoes."

"Wait, it's the little one?" I nodded toward Kai, who was heading up the stairs behind Shane.

"He has a name," she said before squatting to put the bowl on the floor.

"I'm sure they all have names," I shrugged. "But there's a million of them running around, hard to keep track."

She glanced up at me, rolling her eyes. "Well, since Diesel seems happy, are you staying for dinner, too?"

My eyes shot to my dog, devouring the contents of the bowl on the floor. The kid had said earlier he didn't have a dog. "Why do you have dog food?"

"We went to the store and Kai wanted to get some for the dog he saw running around." She shrugged and pushed up to her feet.

"You bought a random dog food?"

She chuckled as she tucked her long auburn hair over her shoulder, exposing the column of her neck. Smooth, pale skin flowed down into the deep v of her shirt. My eyes locked onto the swell of her tits, again. I forced myself to look away with a reminder not to check out the woman who was bringing utter chaos into my life. And probably causing a price reduction on my cabin rental.

"At the time," her voice jarred me back to the conversation, "I thought it was an imaginary dog, so I assumed I'd have to find an animal shelter to donate it to. This seems easier."

I blinked, unsure how the hell to respond to that. She needed to rein in this kid's imagination. First bats, then ghosts. Who knew what he'd say next?

"Don't feed my dog."

She cocked her head to the side and once again, my eyes were drawn down to the exposed skin of her chest. "So are you not staying for dinner?"

I blinked and cleared my throat. What the hell were we talking about? "Can we have a single conversation instead of six random thoughts that don't go together?"

"I'm trying to." She laughed. "I've asked you a question two times and you still haven't answered." She crossed her arms, once again pushing her breasts higher into the v of her shirt. They were full and round and…

The fact that I was staring showed I needed to go out and get laid. Breasts didn't normally make me incapable of conversation. At least not since I was fourteen.

"What do you mean?" I ran a hand through my hair, shaking off my brain haze.

"Are. You. Staying. For. Dinner?" She held up a plate and pointed at the table that was set with what looked like too many place settings. But who knew, maybe I hadn't met all her little ones yet.

"Oh." If I was stuck with these people as neighbors, it was probably best I at least see what I was in for. "I guess. Plus, I brought beer." I held up the six-pack.

"Ew." Her nose scrunched.

"How is that how you respond to someone bringing you a gift?" I narrowed my eyes at her.

"Because it's light beer. I'm not sure that's a gift. It might be a punishment." Her voice made it sound like sewage or a dead animal. "If I knew that's what you were going to bring, I would have picked up something good. All Out isn't bad. I love their Pumpkined Out." She smiled. "It's how you know it's October."

I glanced around, seeing the pumpkins already peppering the room. "Let me guess, you're all into pumpkin spice everything."

She seemed like a chick who had an In My Pumpkin Spice Era sweater. I wished she'd put that on instead of the damn T-shirt.

"It's pumpkin spice season until at least Thanksgiving, and then you definitely need to switch to peppermint because who doesn't want peppermint at Christmas?"

Great, my new neighbor was the queen of Starbucks. Boy would she struggle out in the woods.

"Tell me you don't use pumpkin spice perfume?" I sniffed. Was I going crazy, or did I smell pumpkin now?

She pointed toward the middle of the coffee table in the living room that sat open to the kitchen. "As much as I would wear pumpkin spice perfume, this time it's a candle."

My eyes widened, forest fires flashing through my mind. "You have candles with all these kids running around?"

She waved me off. "Don't be such a worrywart. They're used to it."

Worrywart? My jaw locked. Jesus.

"I've been doing this kid thing for a while." She gave me a sympathetic smile and reached toward me. The second her soft skin touched mine, tingles shot up my arm. I stared down at her hand.

"Sorry." She yanked her hand away, leaving my skin cool.

What the hell was wrong with me?

"No worries." I shook my head. "How did you end up with all of them? The kids, I mean." I tripped through my question like a moron.

"I'm a foster parent."

I blinked, the pieces that didn't make sense all clicking together. This wasn't your typical single mom with a bunch of her kids. "To all of them?" It was a dumb question. I'd already noticed not one of them called her mom.

She nodded. "I found out young I couldn't have kids. My dad's family has a genetic issue."

My brain scanned possibilities of what could be wrong.

"It's probably nothing you've heard of, but I'm not shy about it." She handed me one of the beers I bought and then turned to the fridge, talking over her shoulder. "It's a zona pellucida defect. I'm perfectly healthy apart from that small thing."

She pulled a pumpkin beer from the fridge as she shrugged off a diagnosis that would crush some people. I couldn't tell if she was brushing it off for my benefit, or if she really had accepted it so well, she believed it was a ‘small thing.'

"Most people wouldn't even know a condition like that affected them until they tried to have kids. When my aunt was crushed to find out about it after years of trying to get pregnant, my parents tested my sisters and me. That way, we would know and not be set up for disappointment. But I always wanted kids, so I started fostering when I turned twenty-five."

"Will you adopt them?" Shane seemed like he was close to aging out of the foster system, but not the others.

"Probably not." She shrugged. "I tried with Shane. Apparently, as a single woman, it's easier to get approved to foster than adopt. But it doesn't matter. Regardless of their status, these are my kids. And I'd move heaven and earth for them."

There was a fierceness in her eyes when those words left her mouth, and I had to respect her for that. I didn't know much about the foster system, but it seemed like if there were more Ivy's in it, those kids would be better off.

The preteen—I couldn't remember her name, but I recognized the attitude and chip on her shoulder—stomped down the stairs. "Grandad needs the Wi-Fi password?"

Ivy ignored the attitude and just smiled as she gave it to her.

"Your father is here?" I asked Ivy as her daughter stomped back up the stairs.

"They came to help." Ivy shrugged. "Or butt in," she muttered. That seemed ominous. "But Maia loves my dad, so I'm not going to complain. She only joined our family two months ago, so she's still finding her feet in the group."

I raised an eyebrow.

"With Kai and Maia getting placed with me in the last six months, the two-bedroom apartment in the city was getting way too cramped. And since I work from home, I can really live anywhere. Well, in New York anyway, so I decided this place would be perfect for us. But my parents see it as me being…" She rubbed her lips together and narrowed her eyes before she chuckled. "Impulsive. I guess is the best way to say it."

It didn't seem impulsive to me. It made sense. More kids, more space.

"Even the social workers were iffy about the whole move and being way out here by myself. But I convinced them this would be better for everyone in the long run. They're supposed to be sending someone out in the next couple of days to check in."

The boy who'd made an impression on me earlier by scaling the porch post called from the top of the stairs. "Where did we pack the Legos?"

"Look in the big blue bin labeled toys," she called back up before directing her attention back to me. "Do you live here year-round? I didn't think you were local."

"No, my main home is in Phoenix. I'm just staying here until my house is done being renovated."

She cringed. "I could never live in Phoenix. Too hot. I'm excited for the winter up here."

Kai came back down the steps. "Come on, Diesel, let's go find the ghost. Maybe it's outside."

Ivy sighed. "Where's Shane?"

"He's looking for the ghost in the attic."

Ivy rolled her eyes as Kai and Diesel disappeared out the front door.

"My brother is the complete opposite." I chuckled thinking of how he complained about winter here. "Hates the cold and the snow."

"I love the snow. It's so pretty. Do you get a lot?"

I took the bowl of salad from her hands and placed it on the table as she set out the rest of the silverware. We chatted for a bit longer about the winters, and how harsh they can be, until Shane came down the stairs.

"Did you find where Kai has been hiding the shoes?" Ivy asked, nodding to the Nikes he was now wearing.

"Yup, and you're not going to like it."

"Let me guess…the attic?"

Shane nodded. "Yup. Found mine and the one Blair had been looking for earlier."

"That kid and his imagination." She shook her head with a smile. "Can you call everyone down for dinner and go outside and get Kai?"

"Sure." He turned behind him, talking to someone just out of sight, when the front door swung open, and Kai came running in with a woman stepping in right behind him.

"There's my new dad right there." Kai pointed straight at me.

What? Me? I wasn't anyone's dad. And definitely not this kids. I had no plans for kids, even in the future. Little people were messy and loud.

"And this is my dog." Kai patted Diesel's head and looked up, smiling.

And there we went again with the his dog thing.

The woman raised a brow at Ivy. "I'm a little confused. I don't have a record of you requesting to get married."

Who was this lady?

Before either of us could correct her, Maia jumped down the stairs in front of the Hendersons. I tipped my chin to give Earl a hello, but his jaw locked as he stared at Kai.

"There's no paperwork when you elope." Maia smiled at Ivy with a look that was completely not innocent. "Where'd you go again? Vegas?"

"You did not get married in Vegas." Earl's head snapped my way, and his glare ripped through me.

"No, hunny, they didn't go to Vegas." Daisy chuckled. Boy was I glad someone was clearing this up. "Ivy would never do that. Finn just asked for your blessing not even two days ago."

I what now?

Daisy elbowed her husband and he coughed. "Uh, I don't know."

"They're simply engaged. Right, Shane?" Daisy looked at the teenager a few steps up.

The poor guy looked like a deer in the headlights. But whatever Daisy said, or the look she gave him, must have given him confidence. He cleared his throat. "Right. They're getting married…soon?"

The end of that statement sounded like a question that had no business being asked because we had no plans to get married. Why was Daisy saying this?

I blinked. What the hell was going on?