Charlie Foxtrot (Book 2 of Love is War Series)

Chapter 5

“Aga Jibby booba!”

Or that least that’s what it sounded like.

Little Bridgette Wetzel blew a raspberry against her uncle’s cheek and jumped down from his arms. Jim wiped his face free of saliva and then stood up. He sighed and looked back at his sister, who was smiling brightly as she watched her daughters retreating back. She was on her way to play with some of her friends from daycare.

“I suppose I deserved that gross amount of slobber.” He shook his head at his sister. “You convince her to do that or was it sheer coincidence on her part?”

“You niece is brilliant. She’s like a cat. If she was a cat and you were allergic to her, she’d be sitting on your nap right now licking herself clean and rubbing up all over you.” She seemed proud of her young daughter, and laughed when the small child almost tripped and then righted herself on her way to the inflatable bounce house in the shape of a castle they had rented for the party.

For a two-year-old, even Jim thought she was smart, but that wasn’t surprising since his sister and her husband were both intelligent and hardworking people. His sister, Kate, was a CPA with a large firm who took on many large accounts and did the taxes for a large number of professional athletes living in southern Florida, and his brother-in-law, Bill, was a pediatrician with his own booming practice. He’d worked a few years at another clinic, but then one of his mentors had decided to retire, and he’d bought the business from him with a loan from the credit union they’d had since getting married.

And, yes, Kate did the books—for free—for her husband’s business.

Sitting down in a chair, he tipped his bottle of beer up and took a sip. “I’m never having kids. Slobbery and inexplicable language when they’re this young. It’s like trying to decipher hieroglyphs that flash across your eyeballs too quick to take in.”

Kate sat down too, her eyes glued to her husband as he played referee in the bounce house. “You say that now, but when you find the right woman, you’ll sing a different tune. No guy I know ever wants to have kids before he suddenly falls in love. Then it’s, oh baby I can’t wait to get you pregnant, etc., etc. Once they suddenly find what they didn’t know they were looking for, they’re all for all s*x all the time to get their wife pregnant. For some reason, it’s like the ultimate possession of their woman. What says that someone belongs to you more than seeing their belly filled with your child?” She fanned herself with a hand-held, battery-powered fan. Even if it was not even mid-January, they were having a heat wave, and it was 92 degrees and as humid as if it was the middle of the rainy season. It wasn’t unheard of for this to happen on occasion, but they had been hoping for a milder day for the birthday party.

“Okay, I suppose that’s fair. Who are all these rug rats here anyway? You rent out the residents at the local orphanage?”

“Daycare.” Kate closed her eyes and waved her hand in the air listlessly. “I invited the whole daycare Bridgette goes to. The lady says all the kids get along pretty well, though I didn’t think the babies would be too interested in coming, so I’ll wait until they are at least able to walk a bit. It’s no fun watching a bounce house when you can’t even stand inside one without falling flat on your face.”

Pointing over to the bounce house, her brother observed the cache of squealing toddlers. “I don’t think they’re doing so much bouncing as falling. Kate, these kids can barely walk on a flat surface. They look like the tiniest little drunks on the planet. I predict small concussed children making a trip to the hospital sometime later today.”

“They’re fine. Besides, anything goes wrong and Bill’s there to help with any ouchies. He’s a doctor, or did you forget that too?”

The whole week he’d been visiting, she’d sent little jabs at him about forgetting Bridgette’s birthday, but the sting had long-since worn away. He still needled her about it, hoping she would quit hassling him already. “How many times do I have to apologize? 100? 5,000? Should I take out a formal apology ad in the paper as well? Weeping Uncle Pleads Forgiveness for Shortcomings. It’ll be of real interest to the old folks of Miami. We can place it next to the obits so that all the octogenarians can drink their Metamucil or eat their oatmeal and gossip. I’ll be the talk of the bingo parlors on Sunday afternoons. I’ll never be able to show my face near the shuffleboard tourneys ever again. I’ll be a disgrace and have to be dumped into the Gulf when I finally go toes-up.”

He was kidding, and Kate rolled her eyes at him before spritzing herself with a small bottle of water and turned her fan on again to cool her sweaty skin. She sighed and slouched further in her wing-back chair. “I’ll try to talk you up at the nursing home. Maybe they’ll have cute nurses and you can walk around awkwardly with a sad little boner tenting your pants.”

“It’s not sad! It’s—”

“Oh, quiet! If we’re going to talk naughty, at least keep it low so none of the kids go home with new and interesting words to repeat to their parents. I don’t want to field questions about how their little darlings learned the word ‘c**k’ or asking what an erection is. p***y at least isn’t so bad. I can just lie and tell them we got a cat or brought in a petting zoo.”

Jim snorted and drained half his bottle of beer in his irritation. He was okay with censoring himself when littles were around, but he didn’t need his sister’s sass to cause him to forget his manners around the little tykes. If he didn’t shut himself up now, he was going to go and tear into her.

The two of them quieted and watched as the sun beat down in the hot afternoon and the screaming of sugar-fueled children filled the air. After a while, it wasn’t too bad, because Jim was usually pretty distractable and often got lost inside his own head. It was pretty scrambled in there because the whole time he’d been in Miami, he hadn’t been his usual self, and he wasn’t quite sure why.

The first night, he’d gone out to a bar, thinking he might hook up with someone and bring her back to a hotel of his choosing. Everywhere, he saw pretty women with slim builds or curves he could get lost in, all dolled up for an evening out. He even spied a couple of ladies in pairs who eyed him interestedly. He hadn’t engaged in a ménage à trois in a couple of years, but he was always up for it, so long as it was him and two women. He was typically male that way, though he did know a few bisexual men who seemed to enjoy having another man there. He just knew that he would not.

With the first night a bust—or, well, not—he tried to hit up a club the next night, one that he was well-acquainted with. No go. The third night, another bar, this one far enough away from the two other places that he didn’t know anyone there. No dice. He didn’t know what was wrong with him and why he couldn’t find someone that sparked his interest.

That was until his fourth attempt and he saw a woman who looked familiar.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Jim drawled, strolling up to a female with long, dark hair and light eyes. She looked up at him, nibbling on her cocktail straw seductively before her eyes rose slowly at him. She had long lashes and plump lips. When Jim looked closer, he was fairly certain that her eyes were a dark green, which caused a flash of unnerving déjà vu to crawl up his spine. It made him shiver, this strange recognition of something he was certain he’d never had occur before. Firstly, he’d never been to this club, and it was a younger crowd than he was used to. He was 3o, almost 31, and he’d have to guess that the median age of the people at this club was probably around 22 or 23. Maybe a younger woman…

He'd admonished his brain for the doubts it was having and forced himself to order an Uber to the club. He thought maybe a change of scenery over his old haunts would help, and it seemed to be working.

So far.

“Hey there, daddy.” He may have looked nonplussed, but Jim was honestly surprised at her odd greeting. He forced a smile onto his lips, but he was already feeling like what at first seemed like a good thing was about to go nowhere. He didn’t need some young little thing with daddy issues. He’d noticed enough of that type of thing at a few other clubs he’d gone to and immediately crossed off his list of places to frequent.

“How old are you, honey?” Trying to get back onto familiar ground, he leaned against the bar.

“My name is Chelsea, and I’m 22.” She c****d her head, and if it wasn’t so childlike, it would have been cute. “But you can call be babygirl, if you want.”

Abort. Abort, Jim. You don’t need some clingy little—

“Daddy?”

Fuck, he needed to get he hell out of here, and he made a quick excuse. “Sorry, sweetheart. I’m, uhm, new with the club and just checking IDs of the patrons inside. Sometimes things slips through the cracks, so I’m on duty inside here. May I see yours? I thought you looked a little young to be here and I’m just making sure my guys at the entrance didn’t f**k up and let in someone underage.”

Her lips pursed in a pout he would have found cute if he hadn’t thought it so fabricated. She pulled out her clutch purse and showed him her driver’s license, which proved she was indeed 22 years old, almost 23. He gave it back to her after studying it for about ten seconds, blinking a couple times.

“You’re good to go. Enjoy your night.”

It was only a couple of hours later when he was drinking bourbon he’d purchased at the liquor store in his hotel room when he realized his problem. He usually stayed at his sister’s house when he visited Miami, but he’d been so certain tonight was the night he grew out of his funk that he’d decided to reserve a nice room at The Westin ahead of time. Since the charge on his plastic was nonrefundable, he'd grabbed a bottle from the store and used the plastic cups provided by the hotel and the bucket of ice he’d grabbed and filled from down the hall.

With the TV on and watching an old rerun of Penny Dreadful, he almost choked on a chip of ice when he came to an epiphany. Chelsea, the girl from the club earlier, looked very similar to Auden with the exception of the body type. Since the girl had been sitting and not walking or standing, he couldn’t honestly tell what her body type was, but he was certain she was more slender than Auden. It didn’t bother him, because it was all how you held yourself, in his eyes. A little hip bone sticking out or a generous fupa, he didn’t care. s*x was s*x, and until now, he would have sworn he didn’t have a type. He’d f****d curvy women and ones with twig-thin arms. He wasn’t discerning, thought he preferred for his dates not to call him daddy. It wasn’t his thing.

“f**k me,” he muttered, and added more bourbon to his drink where it slopped over the rim in his haste. He didn’t care, but later on at his sister’s house and celebrating his niece’s birthday, he began to think more as he watched the kids play and eat cake.

While Bridgette dug into the chocolate icing that smeared all over his mouth, he murmured something under his breath. Kate leaned in and poked him hard on the shoulder.

“What was that, old man? Speak up, brother.” She smacked him on the back and was surprised that he almost sounded dazed when he asked his next question. In fact, she didn’t know how to even react or respond.

“How did you know you wanted to marry Bill? Did you just one day wake up and know, or did it come over you slowly?”

Shocked, she thought about it for a moment before answering under her breath. “I knew I loved him not long after starting to date, I guess. But I didn’t know I never wanted to be apart until I just…I just knew in my heart. One day I was sitting around talking to him and planning our next date, the next…the next I was certain that no one else would ever make me as happy as him. It just felt right.”

Jim nodded, smiling over at his niece as she turned to him with a chocolatey smile and giggling.