On the Fly by Catherine Gayle Read Free Book Online Page B

after I got into the building that
I realized I should have let Babs know I was heading home so early.
They had had a game last night, too, one on the road, so it would
have been a really late night. More than likely he would be
sleeping in this morning, considering today was a scheduled day
off.
    I doubted he had a girl over or
anything like that, but how was I supposed to know without having
talked to him? We didn’t have any rules in place about overnight
guests. I made a mental note to talk to him about that sometime.
Soon. Just in case. Better to have it all out in the open than to
run into an awkward situation. He’d probably never stop blushing if
I interrupted a private moment with Katie Weber or some other
girl.
    I got off the elevator at the twelfth
floor and made my way down the hall. I was almost to my door when
Rachel’s opened and her little boy came out carrying a plate piled
high with pancakes and sausage links. He had a huge missing-toothed
grin that made him look like a hockey player.
    Out of habit, I let my tongue slide
over the flipper tooth on the bottom row of my own teeth. I’d been
wearing it for over a decade. Someday, after I retired, I’d get
something more permanent put in place. There wasn’t much point in
doing anything permanent now, though, when I could lose more teeth
at any moment.
    The boy’s sister followed right behind
him with a bowl of fruit salad. She wasn’t smiling, and when she
saw me she looked flat-out alarmed. “Mommy?” she said warily,
looking back into the open doorway.
    Shit . I didn’t want to scare the kid.
    “ I’m on my way. Y’all go
on,” Rachel called from inside somewhere. “Let’s surprise Mr.
Jamie.”
    Hearing her voice again, that sexy
accent, shouldn’t have affected me like it did. Despite that,
hearing Babs called “Mr. Jamie” had me laughing out loud. The fact
that she was going to feed him again made me want to kiss her. Damn
it, I had to stop thinking about kissing her. At least while her
kids were around. Still, I guess Rachel had taken to heart what I’d
said about him potentially burning the building down.
    The little boy didn’t seem fazed by my
presence in the least. He waltzed right over to stand in front of
my door, but he didn’t have a hand free to knock. “Hey, Mister,” he
said, cocking his head way back. “Can you knock for me?
Please?”
    “ Don’t talk to strangers,
Tuck,” the little girl said, retreating toward her own door. I’d
known both kids had Rachel’s hair, but this was the first time I’d
really gotten a good look at their faces. They both had those same
fairy-dust freckles across their cheeks and noses, and the girl had
the same green eyes.
    “ He’s not a stranger. Mommy
talked to him the day we getted ice cream.” He craned his neck back
so far I thought his head might fall off and roll across the
hallway like a bowling ball. “So will you knock?”
    “ I’ll do even better than
that,” I said. I pulled out my key and stuck it in the lock. “I’ll
just open it and let you in.”
    Before I could turn the key, all hell
broke loose.
    “ Maddie! The cat!” Rachel
shrieked from inside her apartment, just as an orange ball of fluff
streaked out into the hall.
    The girl dropped her bowl at the sound
of her mother’s voice. It shattered, sending bits of fruit and
shards of glass flying.
    She started to take a step backward,
but she was wearing socks without shoes.
    “ Don’t move!” I shouted at
her. I probably shouted too loud. I wasn’t really used to being
around kids—not since I was a kid myself, and I was thirty
now.
    Tuck started crying and pulled his
plate in toward his chest. “Pumpkin,” he sobbed, but I had no idea
what he was talking about. The plate tipped up, and pancakes and
sausage links all mashed against him before they, too, fell to the
floor.
    At least he held onto the plate. He
was barefoot, too. I really didn’t need both of them surrounded by
broken glass.
    The door