The Job (Auctioned) by Cara Dee (ebook reader for surface pro TXT) 📗

“Maybe if he got off his ass and found a job, he’d feel better.” I didn’t wait for a response. I wasn’t here to fucking chitchat with my idiot brother. Instead, I walked over to the pool and saw my eight-year-old doing laps like a little champion. “Ace!” I recognized her clothes and Barbie towel on one of the loungers, so I picked them up and aimed for the steps.

“Hi, Dad! Is it five already?” She swam closer to the edge.

“Yes, ma’am.” I enveloped her in the towel once she got out of the water, and I squeezed her to me until she giggled and wheezed. “Did you pack your things?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she mimicked. “Lemme go say bye to Daddy. He’s not feeling well. I think he might be pregnant.”

“Why? Is he feelin’ bloated? Are his tits sore? Is his period late?”

She guffawed and stepped into her dress. “No, silly! But yesterday, he got teary-eyed at a commercial and excused himself. It happened on Tuesday too. Something about pet insurance…”

I frowned to myself as she darted over to Ma’s patio, and Ace jumped right up on Boone’s lap.

He grunted and winced and nearly flew up from his reclined position, and then he hugged her tightly and peppered her face with kisses.

“I’m gonna miss you,” I heard him say once I got closer. “Text me before bed every night, okay?”

She nodded and smooched him back. “Will you come to my game?”

“Have I ever missed one?” he retorted with a wink. “Of course I’ll be there.”

“Come give Gramma a kiss too, honey,” Ma said. “Don’t forget your homework on the kitchen counter.”

We went through the regular drawn-out Friday goodbye, with Ma fussing, Ace running around to make sure she had everything, and me promising to go through her schoolwork before something was handed in. The kid was brilliant, rarely needed help, but she had an attitude problem with outsiders. If she felt a teacher’s question was dumb or too simple, she let them know.

She’d been fluent in Sarcasm before she’d started kindergarten.

Soon enough, we left Mom’s house. I had Ace’s backpack and duffel in my grasp, and she was the little terror who still found it funny to crawl over the door into my car instead of opening it. The only curse of driving a convertible.

My sweet baby. The car, not my daughter. Back in the good ol’ days when Boone and I were best friends, he’d restored my ride for me. A dark-green ’94 Ford Mustang convertible, the pride of the ’90s, despite what everyone else might say. Everyone was chasing classic cars from the ’60s, but not me. My life was a shrine to the ’90s, give or take a few years.

I threw Ace’s bags in the trunk, then got behind the wheel and pulled out from the curb. Shades on, music on, my girl in a good mood. It was Friday, and everything was right in the world when it was my week with her.

“Hey.” I reached into the back seat and grabbed her booster seat. It was the rule. If she wanted to sit in the front with me, she had to grow half a foot and act like a preteen.

She grunted and pushed the booster under herself, then adjusted her belt. Around the same time, I drove out of the gates of Ma’s community.

Ace located her neon-yellow Ray-Ban knock-offs in my glove box.

Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” blaring out of the speakers made me forget why I wanted to know if something had happened to Boone. He wasn’t part of my life anymore.

“Do the moves with me!” Ace grinned at me.

Well, I couldn’t not. If one listened to MJ, one moved to the fucking beat.

We bobbed our heads and lip-synched like pros, complete with turntable gestures, “ow!”s, “ooh!”s, “ahh!”s, and crotch grabs.

Five minutes later, I pulled into the Walmart parking lot, and we’d moved on to “Beat It.”

“Beat eeeeet!” Ace sang—or yelled—and nodded rapidly. Her fingers hit the imaginary keyboard too, ’cause she fucking rocked like that. “Beat it, beat it!”

I grinned and killed the engine, but the fun didn’t stop there. We moonwalked into the store, shared a chill when we got blasted with the icy AC, and I grabbed one of those baskets on wheels while Ace got a kiddie cart.

“What’s on your list?” I had mine somewhere… There. Tucked into the back pocket of my jeans.

“Freeze pops!” she declared.

I nodded. “Definitely getting freeze pops.”

She tapped her chin as we started our weekly grocery run. “Pizza?”

“Obviously.”

We started in the frozen food section and filled up the basket pretty quickly. Pizza, breakfast burritos, burger patties, sausage patties, taquitos… We said hello to our dear friends Pillsbury, DiGiorno, and Jimmy Dean. Then we continued to bacon and shredded cheese, eggs and milk, and last but not least, waffles, four boxes of Pop-Tarts, bread, and some cookies.

“We forgot salad!” she exclaimed.

I squinted at her and scratched my neck. I needed to trim my beard soon. “Uh…”

She sighed and gave me a look. “I’ll go get it.”

Yeah, she could do that, if she insisted. We had vegetables at home. I wasn’t an animal. We had pickles, ketchup, a bag of frozen peas, and sweet corn.

While I waited for her to return, I scanned my list to make sure we had everything. We were good on condiments, soda, snacks, and coffee. I needed to replace my water filter, but that could wait another couple weeks.

“Daddy, I’m cold.”

I turned around to see she’d come back. At the top of her cart was a collection of small ready-made salads and fruit cups.

“Because you’re still wearing your bathin’ suit underneath the dress.” I pushed down the sleeves of my denim shirt and unbuttoned it. “Don’t drag it along the ground.” It’d taken me hundreds of washes to get it perfect. Soft, faded black, well-worn. I draped it around her shoulders and tied the sleeves around her neck, and she giggled and called it her new cape.

“I can be your super-strong sidekick,” I