Single (Single Dads Book 1) Read online

  Heading back next door, I let myself back in. The guy hadn’t moved.

  “I don’t know if you remember, but my name is Sean?” He watched me blankly. “I’m an emergency room doctor at Soledad Memorial, and I just moved in next door.” Still nothing. If I hadn’t seen this before, I’d wonder if he was catatonic, but the red eyes, the stubble, the hair sticking up on end, and the baby spit-up smell on his pajama bottoms, led me to an educated guess that this was classic new-baby syndrome. “What is your name?”

  “What?”

  “Can you tell me your name?” I used my firmest doctor tone.

  “Asher Haynes, Ash.”

  “Okay, Ash, first I need to check the wound for debris.” I talked to him the whole time I worked on the injury as I closed the wider part of the wound with tiny butterfly bandage and wrapped the hand in a light bandage. I did consider explaining how he should see his family doctor for follow-up, but thought I’d leave that for later; maybe write it down somewhere for him or his partner or whoever.

  “What the hell was your friend Derek thinking, getting drunk and making all that noise?” Ash blurted.

  “You mean Eric.”

  “Whatever.”

  “This morning I’m sure he has the hangover from hell, but he’ll be okay.”

  Ash frowned. “No, I mean, you’re a doctor. Shouldn’t you explain to your friend about the excesses of alcohol and what it can do to him.”

  He was so damn serious, but I balked at explaining why Eric had gotten so blind drunk. It wasn’t my story to tell.

  “He had his reasons.” At least Ash took the hint and didn’t ask any more questions. “Is your wife or partner here?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe you should call them?” I prompted.

  “It’s just me, on my own. I’m a daddy on my own.” His tone grew belligerent, as if he was daring me to say something about it all.

  “Okay,” I said. I’d seen all kinds of families in the ER from moms and babies with a crowd around them to a single mom entirely on her own with her baby. Sometimes, if the mom couldn’t be saved, it was a baby on their own.

  Maybe this is what had happened to Ash? Had he lost his partner?

  The sound of wailing filled the house, a baby waking and needing attention. The instant the noise reached the kitchen, Ash was up and off his chair, stumbling, righting himself, taking a baby bottle, and grabbing a carton of ready prepared formula from a huge pile of similar cartons, before taking the stairs as if the hounds of Hell were on his heels. How he managed to move that fast I don’t know, but I watched him leave, safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t in immediate danger from bleeding out.

  I was about to go, but I couldn’t in all conscience do that with deadly shards all over the floor. So I swept up the pottery, considered leaving the bits in case he wanted the bright yellow parts to be put back together, then decided that whatever it had been was never going to be fixed. However, I didn’t want to dump it all into the garbage, so I tipped it all into an empty ice-cream container from the recycling bin. With that done, I had no reason to stay, but something made me go back into the kitchen. People didn’t leave their neighbors in a mess like this if they could help. Humming along with Pink playing softly on my phone, I rinsed plates, loaded the dishwasher and set it going, then washed and sterilized all the bottles that had been piled on one side.

  The sterilizer was exactly the same as the one that my oldest sister Rosie had, and with the bottles in a neat row on the side, I made fresh coffee for when Ash came down. He had one hell of a lot of those instant baby-milk cartons, the kind people used in emergencies, but there were also tubs of formula, and at first count, twenty-four brand new, still in their wrappers, pacifiers.

  After five minutes, the crying had stopped, but since then, everything had been super quiet. I guessed the baby was being fed. I let myself out, the scent of coffee filling the hallway, and debated leaving the house at all because I couldn’t lock the front door. Finally, I came up with a solution: I would keep an eye on it from our house. Then I jogged home and sought out Leo, who was up and doing yoga in the fourth bedroom that we’d dedicated to fitness. At the moment it held a yoga mat and some weights, but one day there might even be a treadmill in there. Who knew?

  I didn’t sit down, because I could only see Ash’s front door if I stood. Cap was in his typical I’m-a-dog position as close to Leo as he could get, and I waited until Leo was aware I was there. That gave me time to think about Ash, with his dark soulful eyes. He was trying very hard to be the most awesome dad ever, and one day he’d get past the exhausted stage. He’d probably read all that he needed to, had all kinds of procedures in place, but hadn’t figured out the mess that was real life. It was kind of endearing in a sexy kind of way.

  Asking him out for a drink was a thought I had as I’d bandaged his hand. From a purely physical point of view, I was attracted to tall, dark, and moody guys, but I’d never dated a new dad before or anyone with children. He’d said he was alone, but that didn’t mean he played for my team or would even be interested. Still, I couldn’t stop the X-rated thoughts that popped into my head.

  Leo finished his breathing exercises and stretched his muscles before sitting on the mat cross-legged.

  “That was one hell of a long sorry to our neighbor.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your note on the chalkboard said you were apologizing, and that was two hours ago.”

  “Oh, yeah, well, Ash is all alone over there, and he’d hurt himself. I had to help him. Then I tidied his place up a bit.”

  “Ash hurt himself?” His tone was teasing, and then abruptly, he corrected himself. “Wait, hurt himself how?” This time his voice held a war of reactions that a cop like him would feel. The “hurt himself accidentally or deliberately,” question unspoken.

  “Cut his hand on pottery, so I patched him up.” No need to tell Leo that I’d then made coffee while I cleaned up the aforementioned pottery and put the kitchen back to rights. Not to mention how I’d handled sterilizing bottles. There was only so much a person shared with one of their best friends before they got the piss ripped out of them at every available moment.

  “Okay then, as long as it was just that.” He wiped his sweaty face with a towel and looked at me expectantly. “And?”

  “And what?”

  “You have never willingly set foot in this room, but now you won’t move? You clearly have things to say.”

  I huffed and then waited a little while. “You know I like running for real and yoga bores me.”

  “One day I’ll get you to sit still long enough to center yourself.”

  I ran a hand from my throat to my belly. “I’m perfectly centered, thank you very much.”

  “So you say.”

  “Whatever,” I began. “Leo, I need to ask you something?”

  I think maybe I sounded way too serious because Leo stood up, then leaned on the window sill next to me. “Is it Eric? Is he okay?”

  “I haven’t seen him yet.” He wasn’t on duty for another forty-eight hours, he was presumably hungover, and he was probably staying in his room debating whether to even get out of bed. “It’s not Eric, although I’m going to cook him some food before I go on shift. Can you make sure he eats something?”

  “Of course,” Leo said. “So, in all seriousness, if it isn’t Eric that’s worrying you, what’s so important that you’re messing with my Zen?”

  “The guy next door…” I pressed my fingers to my temples, not quite knowing what to say about Ash.

  “Number twenty-three, Asher Haynes, unmarried, no dependents that I could find, but maybe that has changed since the check if there’s a baby now. No criminal history, degree in game design from MIT, works from home, pays his taxes, owns a red Hyundai Tucson.”

  “Wait? You checked him out?”

  “I check everyone out,” Leo dismissed, then looked at me. “Is it just him you’re worrying about, or do you want to know about the spe
eding ticket that Jeremy Graves at number 15 received two years back or the fact that Gina Lazar at 10 was a stripper and got pulled on four separate occasions for solicitation?”

  “Gina? Isn’t that the woman who brought that tuna casserole on our first day and came on to Eric?”

  “One and the same.”

  Gina Lazar was a big-chested, loud, funny woman in her late fifties, who hadn’t seemed that worried when Eric explained he was gay. She’d just asked if he had any straight friends, and I’d never seen Eric go so scarlet.

  “I genuinely don’t want to know that about Gina.”

  “But you’re worried about the guy next door?”

  “He’s a new dad, looked like shit, but he’d cut himself, and there was blood and a smashed bowl, and he seemed kind of out of it.”

  “Maybe he needs you to go over again and kiss his boo-boos.” Leo was teasing me, I knew that, and I shoved his shoulder.

  “Whatever, freak.”

  I left the mobile security camera at a side window, videoing anyone who approached Ash’s house, and had the monitor propped up on the work surface. Then, with it in place, I stood in the kitchen, rinsing mugs and filling the dishwasher. There was something very therapeutic about tidying up and looking at a clean kitchen. I could see the backyard of the next house, but there was no sign of Asher Haynes or his baby. I shouldn’t worry. I mean, if our resident cop wasn’t concerned, then I had to think it was all okay. Only, Leo hadn’t seen Ash or watched him vanish to see to a crying baby, not caring about the fact that a total stranger was in his house as he stumbled up the stairs.

  “Maybe I should go over later,” I said to no one in particular.

  “What?” Eric asked from behind me.

  I turned as he opened the fridge and pulled out a carton of orange juice. I steeled myself to be the best friend, the one who understood him, but he appeared calm. During my psych rotation, I’d learned all about bottling things up, but how could I even ask Eric to confront what he’d seen and talk to me? I wouldn’t talk to him about the things I’d seen.

  He actually seemed okay, tired, a little red-eyed, and he had a wicked bruise on his temple, but his breathing sounded good, and from a medical point of view, he wasn’t in need of urgent help. That was all I could do for him right now, and I knew that.

  Eric shook the carton, then drank straight from it, finishing what was left and tossing the empty container into the recycling.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “No,” he said with absolute certainty and hip-checked me out of the way of the coffee pot. “But I will be.”

  Asher

  San Diego sunshine poured through the blinds, and a strip of light hit my face. For a moment I stretched like a cat, all my muscles deliciously loose. In that millisecond, I was just Asher Haynes, single dude with no responsibilities, and then in the next breath, awareness of who and what I was hit me hard. And it was beautiful.

  I rolled to my side and stared right at Mia.

  She’s not breathing. She’s still.

  Then I saw the rise and fall of her chest, and right there was the miracle that was my beautiful daughter, so close I could reach out and touch the wispy hair on her head.

  So close I could smell she needed her diaper changed.

  But she was still sleeping, and I was taking the chance to grab a pee, and even managed the quickest shower on record, which was more of a walk-in-the-water dash.

  I managed both of these things in the space of a couple of minutes, and by the time I walked naked into my bedroom, Mia had begun to stir, a soft murmuring as her instinct for food and a clean diaper hit her. There was the scent of coffee in my room.

  Why was there the scent of coffee in my room?

  “Hey, little brother!”

  I yelped, covered my groin, and tripped over a pair of discarded running shoes, all in the time it took my idiot sister to snort with laughter.

  “What the hell, Shiv?” I snapped and turned my back to my twin, grabbing the nearest clean underwear and covering my junk.

  “Nice ass,” she said and snorted again. “Your face when I said hello was comic gold. I wish I’d been filming it because, dude, you’re so funny.”

  “Siobhan, I’ve had two hours sleep, and I will kill you.”

  She smiled at me but then grew serious. “What the hell?” she asked and took my hand, peering down at the soaking wet bandage. I’d forgotten about that, and it had collected water and was dripping on my carpet. “You’ve only been home twenty-four hours.”

  “Shit,” I muttered and stared down at it, attempting to pull memories from my hazy mind. “I cut my hand, but it’s okay. A doctor…”

  She wasn’t listening. She dropped my hand and then scooped Mia out of her crib. She did the sniff test, the one I’d seen other new parents do to their baby’s diapers. It was the one I promised myself I would never do until I realized it was the only way to tell if something lurked inside. I knew her diaper needed changing, but if I admitted that I’d left her sleeping to grab a shower, would that make me a bad dad in my sister’s eyes?

  Even though she was cool with it now, Siobhan’s first reaction to my plans had been horror. Not that she thought it was wrong, but she’d immediately suggested that it made sense for her to be the one to carry her niece or nephew instead of a surrogate. Given she was the mom of two and had nearly died giving birth to my niece, there had been no way I was ever going to agree to her suggestion. That was when the shit hit the fan. She hadn’t spoken to me over that heated debate for two weeks and three days. I knew it was that long because she was my twin, and we talked or texted every day, and those seventeen days of being alone had been horrifying.

  Thankfully, she’d finally accepted my decision, backed up by some interference run by her husband, Dan, who was on my side. Then, with Dan overseas, she’d suggested I stay with her after picking up Mia, just to learn and have someone close.

  I’d only done it because she promised our mom wouldn’t be involved.

  Mom-issues, I have them.

  Siobhan changed the diaper, using all the tricks she had taught me, wrapped the stinky one up and tied the scented sack. Then she lifted Mia and cradled her.

  “Hello, my sweet precious Mia,” she murmured, and in that moment, with the sun shining and casting a halo around the two most important women in my life, I forgave the fact that she’d let herself into the house and then scared the shit out of me.

  Talking of which, if Siobhan was there, I could go back in and get a real shower, maybe even shave? Maybe I telegraphed that to her because she patted my chest. “Shave, shower for longer than ten seconds. I’ll make us lunch and see you downstairs in thirty.”

  There were two people I trusted with Mia. Me being one of them, I had every faith in Siobhan. But as she walked away, I stood there with my arm outstretched in fear, like some guy in an old painting whose kid was being taken away forever. I was bereft, scared, tired, my hand hurt, and all I wanted was for Mia to come back.

  Siobhan turned as I knew she would—it was that freaky twin connection we had going on, and she could feel my fears. “I have her,” she murmured gently.

  “Be careful walking down the stairs,” I said because that was all I could think of saying.

  She could have done her normal twin thing, made some sarcastic comment about how she’d been using the stairs for all of her thirty-one years, but she didn’t. She smiled in reassurance.

  “It’s okay, little brother.”

  And just like that, it was.

  Sue me if I watched them go downstairs, and only moved when they were at the bottom. She knew I was watching, and gave me the finger. I couldn’t blame her for that.

  Back in the bathroom, I stripped off the outer bandage and then didn’t know what to do next as I examined the neat row of tiny butterfly bandages. Had the doctor-guy said I shouldn’t get it wet? Jeez, I didn’t actually remember much of what he’d said. I didn’t even recall his name. Hell, I had a hard
time recalling my own. In fact, my entire impression of him was that he was my neighbor and he lived with an alcoholic friend, or at least a friend who got so blind drunk he couldn’t even find his way home.

  Also, that he’d brought wine and flowers, and a comic or something like that.

  Oh, and he had blue eyes and soft blond hair. I wasn’t dead, and I certainly wasn’t blind.

  I shaved as best I could despite the fact that every movement made my hand hurt like a bastard. I had to wet shave because I’d gone past sexy stubble and driven right on through to ragged, homeless-guy semi-beard.

  I spied a plastic grocery bag stuffed with baby wipes of which I had a year’s worth. They had been a last-minute desperate purchase only a day before Mia was born, the kind of thing I felt I had to have in the house to become the perfect dad. It turned out all I needed to do was be there when she needed me, and that it wasn’t about the wipes, pacifiers, or the heap of cute shape toys I’d bought and stored in her colorful nursery. With some fumbling and a small helping of ingenuity, I tipped out the contents and tied the bag around my hand and then turned on the water. It was hot, the shampoo frothed up, the water felt different on my smoothly shaven face, and I spent a good deal of time soaping everything. Normally, this alone time was the perfect time to pull out my favorite fantasy and enjoy the solitude.

  Only I didn’t like that I was up here and Mia was downstairs, even if she was with my sister.

  Part of me hoped that one day I wouldn’t suffer separation anxiety, even when I went to use the bathroom. The remainder of me, the part that was besotted with Mia, was telling my sensible side that Mia was my life now. The life I wanted and that I loved.

  I dressed in clean jeans and the softest T-shirt I could find—Mia adored snuggling into soft material—and headed downstairs. I heard Siobhan murmuring to Mia and followed that and the scent of more coffee to the kitchen.

  The immaculately tidy kitchen.