F-Bomb - Lani Lynn Vale Page 0,14

vaguely, I’d heard screech to a stop the moment that Astrid had darted out into the road.

It was her.

I gave her a chin lift and turned back to Astrid who was busy animatedly telling me about her day.

“Wait, wait,” I said as I walked back to the front driveway. “Start over and tell me what you just said again.”

“I have a boyfriend!” she repeated enthusiastically.

I looked over at Izzy who only rolled her eyes.

“A new boy showed up at the daycare today,” she explained.

Well, actually what it sounded like was ‘a new boy something something something something day,’ but Izzy helpfully translated for her daughter.

I grinned and winked at Izzy, who was rolling her eyes at her daughter’s excited babbling.

I only caught every other third word, but eventually I got the gist of her new friend being a boy. And him being ‘cute.’

Well, as long as ‘coot’ meant cute, that was.

“You got the other one?” I asked, gesturing to where Izzy was trailing behind.

In answer, Izzy handed me the car seat, a look of relief crossing over her face as she did.

“Thanks,” she murmured. “I strained my shoulder at work yesterday, and now I can barely hold anything heavy. I’ve been trying to use the other arm, but now that arm is getting sore from all the heavy lifting.”

I was about to open my mouth to scold her for not telling me at first, but Astrid wriggled in my arms.

I set her down and she ran toward the hammock, throwing herself at it.

I watched in horror as the hammock spun.

Astrid, holding on to it for dear life, went ass over tea kettle and ended up on the other side, on her back, staring up at the sky.

It’d all happened so fast that I hadn’t even had the chance to tell her no.

Then the crying started, and I felt like my heart broke a thousand times.

Before I could get to her, though, that woman who I’d been studiously avoiding made it to her, picked her up, and looked at her.

Astrid stopped crying, then threw her hand around the random stranger’s—to her anyway—neck.

Izzy sighed and started toward them.

“I swear, she gets her gracefulness from me,” Izzy exclaimed as she made it to Harleigh.

“This was totally a power move,” Harleigh teased. “She tackled that hammock so hard that it never stood a chance. She’s fierce.”

Izzy chuckled.

Astrid lifted her head up to get a look at the woman holding her.

“Hello,” Harleigh said to Astrid.

Astrid blinked back large tears. “Hi.”

“You okay?” Harleigh asked.

Astrid nodded, then wiped the tears, and her snot, with the back of her hand.

I grimaced when she put her hand back down on Harleigh’s shoulder.

Harleigh took it like a champ, though. She didn’t flinch once.

“Well, that’s wonderful,” she said softly. “That was a pretty big tumble you took. Do you want to get in the hammock?”

Astrid immediately shook her head.

“It’s my favorite place to take a nap,” she whispered. “You just got to go slow when you get in it. Otherwise you’ll land on your back like you just did. Want to know why I know that?”

Astrid blinked owlishly.

“Because I’ve done it. Plenty of times.” She snickered. “Sometimes things startle me, too, when I’m taking a nap. I’ve fallen in front of the UPS man, the exterminator, and the water meter reader.”

“What’s a terminantator?” Astrid asked.

“An exterminator is a man that comes by your house and kills all the bugs in it,” she explained. “Because I don’t like roaches or spiders. They scare me to death.”

“Is that why you sleep out here?” Izzy asked teasingly as she walked up to the two.

A look passed in between the two women as Harleigh handed off Astrid to her mother.

“Yes and no,” she said, surprising me. “But the reason I sleep outside doesn’t really have to do with an actual bug. More like one of the human variety.”

With that cryptic comment, she walked inside and didn’t look back.

Izzy caught up to where I’d somehow frozen in the middle of the lawn and gestured to my house.

“I brought her lunch, it’s sitting in my front seat,” she said.

I nodded my head and turned back around, but not before taking one final look over my shoulder at where the woman had disappeared.

“Good,” I said. “Because all I have is chicken, brown rice, and veggies. I need to go to the store.”

Izzy made a gagging sound. “I need to start doing that again myself. I’m having trouble getting this baby weight off.”

“What baby weight?” I paused. “Your ass