Read Online On the Fly by Catherine Gayle - Free Book Online Page A

them
there. That wasn’t good for her or for them. Watching her bleed all
over her dining room while she tried to clean up her daughter’s
almost nonexistent cut had made it abundantly clear to me, even if
it wasn’t clear to her.
    I didn’t particularly want to be her
keeper, even though she definitely needed one. The way she’d
completely overreacted to her daughter’s cut, to the point that she
seriously hurt herself, proved that to me. I was way more attracted
to her than I could understand. Whether I wanted to be that for her
or not, she didn’t want it. At least not from me. That would mean
struggling with her every step of the way, and all because she was
too scared or proud or whatever to accept help when it was offered.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I probably should be her
keeper. That thought opened up a whole new bucket of trouble, one
that I wasn’t ready to look inside.
    By the time I’d put my suitcase away
and changed clothes—I’d gotten some blood on the knees of my jeans
while I was cleaning Rachel up—Babs was dressed and ready. We went
across the hall and knocked.
    Tuck opened the door with a huge grin.
“I’m ready, Mr. Jamie!” he shouted. He had put on pants and a
T-shirt. He hadn’t even attempted to zip his pants, showing off his
Spiderman Underoos. At least he had underwear on. His sneakers
weren’t tied, either, and the tongues were hanging out. Amid all
that, he’d already pulled on his coat.
    Babs picked him up, tossed him over
his shoulder, and carried him back inside. “Not quite,” he said,
laughing. He tossed Tuck down on the sofa and set to work
straightening out the mess of his clothes.
    I followed them in and closed the door
behind me so the cat wouldn’t escape again.
    The set-up of their place was exactly
like ours, with the master bedroom on one end and the other
bedrooms on the opposite end. The open living and dining area was
in the middle of it all.
    Maddie stood off by the hallway to
what I assumed to be the kids’ rooms, fully dressed but with that
wary look in her eyes. I still hadn’t gotten over her calling me
Mr. Soupy. I wasn’t sure what to do with that, let alone with her
shyness. When we were kids, Zee and Dana and I, we’d all been
boisterous and energetic and all up in everybody’s business. Maddie
Shaw was nothing like we had been.
    I smiled, thinking maybe that would
help. “Is your mom ready?” I asked her.
    She shrugged her shoulders in lieu of
answering me, then hurried past me into the master. A minute later,
she came back holding her mother’s hand…but it was Rachel I was
more focused on. Every step she took had her wincing and grimacing,
and she kept sucking in quick breaths of air.
    I should have taken her to the
emergency room like I’d initially thought to do. I probably should
do that now.
    Instead, I crossed over to her and
picked her up. She was tiny—couldn’t weigh more than a hundred
pounds or so—and she felt way too good being right up next to me
like that.
    This could be dangerous, letting
myself think about how nice it felt to hold her. She was a single
mom. I had to remember that.
    “ What are you doing?” she
asked, sounding all sorts of breathless and sexy, even though I was
positive the breathlessness was because of pain.
    Her question was a good one because I
was having a really hard time looking away from her cute button
nose and the smattering of freckles that fell across it. Until I
looked at her lips. Then I couldn’t look anywhere else.
    Tuck’s giggles finally caught my
attention and reminded me that we weren’t alone—far from it. I
looked over. Babs had finished straightening his
clothes.
    I cleared my throat and returned my
gaze to Rachel. “I’m carrying you because your feet are too torn
up. You need to stay off them.”
    “ I can’t stay off them,”
she said. “I’m a mom. I have to take care of my kids. I have to
start a new job tomorrow.”
    Why did she always feel the need