Chapter 9

“That was so embarrassing,” Colten grumbled as we drove away from the crosswalk and the scene it had turned into. “Now I definitely don’t want to go tonight.”

“We’re going.” I inhaled deeply in an attempt to keep my temper under control. “No more negotiations. We’re going to be in this town for almost two full months. We might as well put ourselves out there and get to know people. They can’t all be as bad as the bimbo.”

Fuck. I shouldn’t have said that.

Colt frowned. “What’s a bimbo?”

I winced. I really have to start remembering to be more careful about what I say.

“I’m sorry, Colt. My mouth ran away with me there. It’s not a very nice word and I didn’t mean it. That woman just gets under my skin. She’s always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and she’s… willful.”

Stubborn, more like, but I didn’t say that. I’d already called her a bimbo in front of him. The least I could do now was to rein in my frustration and not say any other words with less than pleasant connotations.

“I think she’s cool,” he said, and I nearly rolled the goddamn truck as shock ricocheted through me.

“What? Why?” I didn’t look at him, intent on keeping my full attention on the road now that I’d learned the people around here just stormed into it whenever they saw fit.

Spotting a grocery store next to the road, I pulled into the parking lot. Breakfast hadn’t been the only thing we needed to get while we were in town. Colt shrugged when I finally looked at him after I’d parked.

“She stood up for herself,” he muttered. “She was right and you were wrong, and she made you apologize for it even if you didn’t want to. That’s cool. Not a lot of people have the guts to do that. Especially when there are so many others watching.”

What the hell? I shook my head, but I didn’t respond immediately. I knew how to bite my tongue when I needed to—and how to consider whether there was something I might learn from the person I was speaking to.

It was a skill I’d acquired over the years in my job, not running my mouth while people often left all sorts of clues if you let them run theirs instead. I had already let it get away from me just a few minutes ago. I wasn’t about to let it happen again.

As I considered what he’d said, I realized that he had a point. So had I, but I might’ve overreacted back there. That woman—the Bimbo Siren—had been standing up for herself, which she’d had every right to do.

She hadn’t had to make such a scene about it, but in retrospect, I could see why Colten might think she was cool. He was right about something else too. There weren’t a lot of people who had the guts to do what she had.

Sighing, I climbed out of the car and waited for Colten. We headed toward the grocery store together. A bulletin board was up on the wall outside it, full of community events, jobs, items for sale, and that kind of thing.

All sorts of advertisements stared back at me, both seekers and providers taking the opportunity to get their needs out there. It was cute. Wholesome.

We’d had these in LA too when I’d been growing up, but I hadn’t been to a grocery store in so long that I had no idea if it was still a thing. Either way, as I paused in front of the board, I wondered if I could take advantage of this.

Colten and I needed someone to cook at least dinners for us. Between cereal, eggs, and toast, we had breakfast covered, and making sandwiches for lunch was easy enough, but dinners were going to get the better of me.

A brilliant idea popped into my head and I grinned. Colten frowned up at me. “Why did we stop? If you’re looking for a bicycle, I told you, I?—”

“It’s not that,” I assured him. “I still think it’d be nice for you to have one here, but I can wait until you realize it too.”

Scanning the board, I found what I was looking for posted right at the bottom. A flyer so old that the paper was yellow and wavy. Everyone who lived in town had probably seen it a million times, but I was still careful when I tore some paper off the bottom of it.

The information on the flyer remained undamaged, and I was satisfied that I hadn’t been a pompous ass by destroying someone else’s ad. Turning the scrap over in my hand, I slid my pen out of the pocket of my shirt and scrawled my number on it, adding that I was at the Manor at the end of the lake and looking for a chef for the summer.

With that done, I borrowed a pin from another ad and stuck it to the board, proud of my handiwork and my own initiative. Colt shook his head at me, a pained expression on his face as his gaze met mine.

“Is that really necessary?” he asked. “You can grill, right? We’ll just have hamburgers every night.”

“I can grill more than just a hamburger,” I said, feigning insult. “I’d just rather not have to do it every night while I’m on vacation. Besides, this helps the local economy.”

Just as I was about to turn away from the board, a flyer for a residential cleaning service caught my eye. Acting on impulse, I tore off one of the phone numbers at the bottom and tucked it into my pocket.

The Manor could’ve come with house staff, but I hadn’t been interested in having a bunch of people around us at all times. I was having second thoughts about that now though, since I also didn’t want to spend our entire vacation cleaning up.

This summer was supposed to be about my son and me, but having someone pop in every now and then to clean and having a cook just for dinners sounded like the perfect balance to me. Otherwise, I might end up giving us both food poisoning and I doubted that was the kind of memory Walter had been encouraging me to make with my son.

Reaching out, I ruffled his hair and looked into those unhappy green eyes. So far, I wasn’t doing a very good job of making the right kind of memories. I smiled through my disappointment, my mind whirring for ways to make it up to him. “How about we do our shopping and then we head back to the Manor for a swim in the lake?”

“For real?”

I nodded. “For real. It’ll be fun.”

A wide grin split his face as he nodded enthusiastically. “That sounds good. Do you think they’ve got any inflatables at the house we can borrow?”

“Like what?” I asked. “I know you can swim.”

“Yeah, but like, maybe a boat we can float on or even just one of those fun, ride-on sharks or something. An inner tube at least.”

I chuckled. “I didn’t see it mentioned in the listing, but maybe we can get something while we’re here.”

Finally leaving the bulletin board behind, we grabbed a cart on our way into the store and Colt glanced at me. “Even if you don’t want to cook burgers every night, do you think we can maybe just do it once?”

“Of course,” I said immediately. “We can even do it a few times. It’s just that having a cook around will mean that I can focus on you without having to worry about what we’re eating as well.”

He rocked his head from side to side as he considered it, then nodded. “Yeah, I suppose that’s fine.”

Satisfied that I had explained my reasoning properly this time, we turned left as we entered the store and took the aisles one by one. The place wasn’t great or huge. We certainly wouldn’t find any upper-end, gourmet products here, but we managed to load up our cart with snacks and basic foodstuffs. I even got some pancake mix, intent on giving it a try at least once.

Colten and I could do it together, and barring any kitchen disasters, it would be worth the memory no matter how bad they turned out. Once we’d made our way through all the aisles containing food, we walked to the other end of the shop, finding them surprisingly well stocked with summery things.

There were camping chairs and swim towels, portable grills only meant to be used once, beach toys for children, and fortunately an entire wall dedicated to all sorts of inflatables to play around with in the water.

Colten bounced on the balls of his feet when he saw the selection, his eyes lighting up with glee. I stepped up beside him, checking them out myself. He reached for a box that supposedly contained a boat.

“I wonder if we need oars to go with this,” he said, then spotted a bucket with a few oars in it a couple yards away. “I think we do.”

Leaving him to do his thing, I went in search of a device to inflate these for us. I definitely wasn’t doing it all with breath out of my lungs. I’d never survive.

After finding an electric compressor that promised to do what I needed it to, I strode back to Colten and our cart, finding that he’d added a ride-on creature that might or might not have been a dragon. After grabbing a floating mat for myself as well as a miniature, inflatable volleyball net and a ball, I nodded at him.

“I think that’s enough, don’t you?”

He shrugged, eyeing our haul before he grabbed two pairs of goggles and dropped them in too. “Now it’s enough.”

I chuckled, but considered myself lucky that he was so excited about this. At least it meant that I wasn’t too late. He wasn’t a slave to a screen—or a chessboard—just yet.

As we made our way to the exit, I spotted a few cheap fishing rods and wondered if we should get some of those too, but I had a feeling I might be able to find some at the Manor. Deciding to check there first, we continued to check out and then loaded an impressive amount of shopping bags onto the back of the truck.

A fresh breeze had started up while we’d been inside, and I found myself smiling as I stood in the sunshine with the wind in my hair. Behind the grocery store was a line of towering green pines, the lake glinting in the distance.

Despite the encounter with the Siren this morning, I was taking more and more of a liking to this picturesque town. At first glance, it was a little simple and a lot small, but there was something enchanting about it that was definitely getting to me.

Colt and I had our windows down on the way back to the Manor, both lost in thought but smiling as I drove us home. It’d been a long time since I’d felt so at peace. So relaxed.

I could see Colt felt the same. This summer was going to be good for us. I could feel it in my bones. If I had known then how it was going to turn out, I probably would have tucked tail and run for the hills, but I had no clue what was coming for us.

So I drove back to the Manor, blissfully ignorant of the changes about to happen, and spent the afternoon in the water with my son. Sunscreen and sand be damned. We were here to have a good time, and from the look of his smile and the sound of his laughter, that was exactly what Colten had.