Irresistible (Cloverleigh Farms #1)(2)

“No, it’s not! I was only at fifty cents.”

“The F word is a whole dollar, Daddy,” Felicity informed me.

“Oh, right.” I paused. “You know what? It’s worth it.”

“So what am I going to bring for the bake sale?” Millie pressed.

“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.” Somewhere between doing the laundry and getting your hair in a bun and feeding you all something that won’t rot your teeth or kill your brain cells and getting you to ballet on time and checking in at work and filling the swear jar and grocery shopping for the week and making sure each of you is getting enough time and attention to feel secure and loved and—I went over to the window and looked out—shoveling the snow that fell overnight.

Goddamn, it was only the beginning of February—Groundhog Day. And it was cloudy, which meant spring was supposed to come early (according to the lore), but right now it felt like spring was never going to get here. Winter in northern Michigan was always long and cold, with perpetually gray skies and knee-deep snow, but this one had felt particularly grueling. Was it because it was my first as a single parent?

The girls and I trooped from my first-floor bedroom to the kitchen, where I put on some coffee for myself, pulled frozen pancakes from the freezer for Felicity and Winifred, and scrambled an egg for Millie. They sat in a row at the breakfast counter that separated the kitchen from the dining room. There used to be a wall between the two rooms, but my friend Ryan Woods, who’d lived in this house before us, had remodeled the kitchen, making it more modern and open. In fact, we hardly ever ate at the dining room table. Mostly I used it to fold laundry.

“These taste like the freezer,” said Felicity, making a face at her pancake. “Don’t we have any muffins left over from Mrs. Gardner?”

“We ate them,” I told her, pouring orange juice into three glasses. Mrs. Gardner was the ninety-four-year-old lady who lived next door, a widow who’d become sort of a surrogate grandmother to all of us since we’d moved into this house last summer. She loved to bake and often brought over delicious homemade muffins or cookies, which never lasted long. In return, I made sure her yardwork was taken care of in good weather and her driveway and front walk shoveled in the winter. The girls weeded her garden, brought in her mail, and drew pictures for her, which she proudly displayed on her refrigerator door.

“Do you want a banana or apple?” I asked the girls. The fruit, at least, was fresh.

“Banana,” answered the younger two.

“Apple,” said Millie.

“Anybody want bacon?”

All three nodded enthusiastically. Bacon was one of those rare things we all agreed on.

I sipped my coffee and tossed some strips into a pan, then ran down to the basement to rewash the load of darks I’d forgotten about last night. While I was down there, I scooped a load of whites from the dryer into a basket and noticed there was a decidedly rosy hue to everything. That’s when I saw Winifred’s red sock in the basket along with everyone else’s white socks and underwear.

Great. Just what I needed—pink socks.

Cursing under my breath—at least no one heard me this time—I left the basket there and went back to the kitchen, where I flipped over the sizzling strips of bacon, gulped more coffee, and watched Winifred smear maple syrup all over her mouth. “It’s lipstick,” she said proudly.

“You’re getting it in your hair,” said Millie, moving her counter stool away from Winnie’s.

Someone dropped a fork, and it clattered noisily onto the floor. A couple minutes later, someone’s elbow knocked over a glass of juice and it spilled over the edge of the counter down the front of a cupboard. After cleaning that up (and adding fifty more cents to the swear jar total), I was supervising Felicity slicing up her banana at our tiny kitchen island when the kitchen began to fill with smoke. I turned off the gas under the bacon, pulled the pan from the burner, and opened the window.

“Ew, it’s burnt,” said Millie.

I closed my eyes and took a breath.

“That’s okay, Daddy,” said Felicity. “I like my bacon black.”

Winifred coughed, and I opened one eye and looked at her. “Are you choking?”

She shook her head and picked up her juice.

“Good. No choking allowed.” I put the overdone bacon strips on some paper towels. “Guess we’re eating it extra crispy this morning, girls. Sorry.”

“Oh Daddy, I forgot to tell you. Millie broke my glasses,” Felicity announced as she returned to her spot at the counter with her sliced banana.

“I did not!”

“You did too. You sat on them.”

Millie scowled at her. “Maybe you shouldn’t leave them on the couch.”

“Maybe you should look where you put your big butt.”

“I don’t have a big butt! Daddy, Felicity said I have a big butt!”

“No one in this house has a big butt,” I told them, setting the extra crispy bacon in front of them. “Now finish your breakfast. Felicity, I’ll look at your glasses in a minute.”

I managed to get everyone fed, repair Felicity’s glasses, clean up the kitchen, fold some laundry, get dressed, shovel my drive and Mrs. Gardner’s, and start my SUV in time to drive Millie to ballet—barely.