Babies in the Bargain

Kira nodded. “I’ll try.” But the truth was, she’d been taught that there was always a right way and that was how she had to do everything. She wasn’t too sure she could ignore that now.

Cutty took his foot off the pillow and stood then. “Come on. Let me give you a key to the back door so you can get in whenever you want, and then you can go have that long soak in the tub. Tomorrow will be a better day.”

Kira thought he was probably figuring it couldn’t be a worse one.

But still, the idea of sinking into a bath full of bubbles was too tempting to pass up and she stood, too, following Cutty to the kitchen and feeling guilty for the sight of him limping even more than he had been the night before.

“I really am sorry,” she told him yet again as they reached the kitchen.

“I’ll let it go this time but another day like today and I’ll have to dock your pay,” he joked.

He took a key from the hook beside the door and turned around, giving her a full view of a mischievous smile that put those creases on either side of his mouth and made an unexpected warmth wash through her.

“Before this is over I might end up having to pay you,” Kira said, making a joke of her own. “In fact you can probably start a tab with those two dishes and the coffee mug I broke.”

Cutty just laughed and again she liked the sound of it. “You are kind of a bull in a china shop,” he said as if it were a compliment.

“Not usually,” she assured. “Honestly, no one who knows me would have believed this today.”

He didn’t say anything to that. He merely gave her the key.

But as she accepted it their hands brushed. Only briefly. And Kira found herself oddly aware of it. Of the heat of his skin. Of the little shards of electricity that seemed to shoot up her arm from the point of contact.

It was just silly, she told herself.

Although, she also thought when Cutty spoke again that his voice might have dropped an octave, and she had to wonder if he’d felt it, too.

But if he did, he didn’t indicate it in what he was saying.

“And don’t even think about coming over here at four tomorrow morning. Seven is plenty early enough. You’ll probably have to wait half an hour or so for the girls to wake up even at that. But maybe if you’re the first person they see instead of Betty, it’ll start things off more in your favor.”

“Like ducks bonding to the first thing they see when they hatch?”

He grinned. “Something like that, yeah.”

“I’ll hope for the best.”

There was a moment then when their eyes met and held. Kira didn’t understand why or what was in the air between them when it happened. But there was definitely something in the air between them. Something that seemed more than just the camaraderie of being in the trenches together.

But then it passed and Cutty opened the screen for her, holding it while she went out.

“See you in the morning,” he said then.

“Good night,” she responded.

But even as Kira walked across the yard to the garage apartment she could still feel the remnants of that change that had hung in the air for that single moment.

What had that been about? she wondered.

She honestly didn’t know.

But she did know that even after the fact, it left her feeling all tingly inside.

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