face. “First, good news about Gunner, and then, I find Queenie with her hand in the cookie jar.”
“What?” Queenie squawked. “My hand is nowhere near the cookie jar.”
“No,” Kimber laughed. “But your head is a lot closer than it normally is.”
Queenie turned toward me and she was eye level with my crotch. “He’s got pants on for Pete’s sake!”
Kimber shrugged. “Just a button and zipper away from having a little snack.”
“Something is really wrong with you, you know that?” Queenie laughed. She stood and brushed her hands on her pants. “He doesn’t have any clean clothes. So I decided to take a look because he’s a man and we all know they can’t see something right in front of their noses.”
“We all know what was in front of your nose just now.” Kimber pushed off the jamb. “I’m gonna go find Fancy and Petra.” She disappeared while humming under her breath.
I blinked twice. “I don’t even know what just happened.”
“What happened is you and I are going to be the talk of the clubhouse in about two minutes.” Queenie shook her head and laughed.
I watched her smile actually reach her eyes. I hadn’t seen that since before all the bullshit. “Haven’t seen you do that too often.”
“Do what?” she asked.
“Smile like you mean it.”
She shrugged and jerked open the top drawer. “I guess I didn’t have much to smile about lately.” She pulled out a balled up piece of cloth and shook it out. “If it’s got tits or tires, it’s gonna give ya problems,” she read.
Jesus. I forgot I even had that shirt.
She tossed it at my face and laughed. “Found you a shirt.” She grabbed my dirty shirt off the floor and dropped it in the overflowing laundry basket. “Guess you better get a load of laundry going, that is, unless you have more shirts with words of wisdom like that.”
I pulled the shirt over my head.
‘Wait.” She stood over the basket. “You do know how to do laundry, right?”
“Uh, well. You see.”
Queenie pressed her hand to forehead. “Oh, my Lord. You don’t, do you?”
“I tend to, maybe, you know, sneak my clothes into Dyno and Fancy’s.” I did know how to do laundry, I just fucking hated it.
“You’re ridiculous, Sledge.” Queenie reached to pick up the full basket but I jumped to grab it from the floor before she could.
“What the heck do you think you are doing, sugar? I’ll carry this.” She was healing but that didn’t mean she was healed enough to get back to lifting heavy shit.
She waved her hand in front of her. “Then lead the way to the washing machine. We can’t have you walking around shirtless. I’ll never get anything done then,” she smirked.
“Are you serious?” She didn’t need to do my laundry. I hated it, but I still did it. Some of the time. Fancy hadn’t quite caught on to what I was doing, so she had been doing a lot of it.
“You’re making me sit here with nothing to do while we wait to hear something from Kaye, so we might as well do some laundry, right?”
“Is this your motherly instincts coming out?”
She flipped me off and then pointed to the door. “Lead the way before I dump that basket over your head.”
I paused a second and knew I just saw a glimpse of the Queenie who wasn’t bogged down with worry and fear. It was pretty fucking amazing. “Whatever you want, sugar.”
*
Chapter Thirteen
This is the laundry room!
Queenie
“You have two loads of laundry every two weeks and you can’t seem to do them?” I was perched on top of the folding table waiting for the final load of clothes to dry.
I made Sledge fold all of his clothes while I nursed my second wine cooler and just enjoyed the view of him doing a little housework. The laundry area was in a room tucked off from the living room. Kimber and Fancy had obviously set everything up because it was a dream. The washer and dryer were each large capacity. There was a ridiculous amount of soap, bleach, and pretreat, and along the wall opposite the washer and dryer was a long table that was perfect for sorting and folding.
“There are so many other things I could be doing right now,” Sledge grumbled. He folded the last piece of laundry from the first load and dropped it back into the basket.
“Things you would be doing in dirty clothes or shirtless,” I pointed out. “Wait,” I drawled, “don’t you have