I took the few steps I needed to get to Ransom and knelt beside him. “Are you okay?”
He rolled to his back, groaning with the movement. As he gazed up at me, I couldn’t help but let my eyes track over his body, looking for injuries. When I brought my eyes back to his face, he had a dopey grin stretching across it.
“I saw that going very differently.”
A soft laugh escaped me. This guy was really something else. And I was totally gone for him.
“I’d certainly hope so.”
He looked up at the doorway, examining the mess he’d made of the door. “Think Harry’s going to be mad?”
I also looked up to survey the damage. “Without question.”
“Damn.”
I laughed again. I grabbed on to his arm as I stood, trying to pull him with me. A wasted action since he outweighed me by probably almost a hundred pounds, but he did move to sit.
“Come on,” I said as I tugged on him again. “We can call Bill to come take a look at it.”
Bill was the head of the maintenance crew at the center. I was sure he’d be simply thrilled to deal with a destroyed door this late on a Friday.
“Oh God, do we have to?” Ransom asked. “Maybe I can fix it.”
Bill was gruff and grumpy on a good day. And this would certainly not be a good day in his book.
“I think you’ve done enough,” I said.
“Dude, that was epic,” Roddie enthused from behind us.
“Oh, it was epic all right,” I said, staring meaningfully at Ransom.
“Epically stupid?” he asked.
I tapped my nose twice to indicate he was right on the money.
“Come on, get up,” I told him. “The kids are gonna be here in”—I checked my watch—“ten minutes.”
He sighed heavily. “I’ll never find my pride by then.”
I barked out a laugh as I helped Ransom to his feet. Roddie moved the couch against a wall and set about cleaning the mess the couch had made as Ransom and I walked out to where Edith sat.
“Edith, love of my life,” Ransom said, laying it on a little thick, even for him.
“No,” she said without even looking up from the paperwork she had spread across her desk.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” he objected. “Maybe I just came to declare my undying devotion to you.”
She eyed him over her glasses without moving her head. “Did you?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then my answer is no.”
Ransom dropped to his knees beside her desk and put his elbows on top so he could clasp his hands in prayer. “Please, Edith. I’ll never ask for another favor as long as I live.”
She eyed him doubtfully until he added, “Or until I really need something else.”
The sigh that fell from her lips would’ve made my eternally agitated grandmother proud. “What is it this time?”
“I need you to call Bill, and—”
“No, absolutely not.”
“But…think of the children, Edith!” Ransom’s wail was plaintive and dramatic.
“I prefer to think of myself, thank you.”
Ransom stood then. “I don’t understand why they let such an evil creature work around children,” he groused at her.
“It brings balance to Harry’s eternal piety.”
“This selfish act will come back to haunt you one day, Edith. Karma is an unyielding force.”
Edith looked unmoved. “Bill should be in his office about now for his afternoon snack.”
Finally losing my battle with the laughter bubbling inside me, an amused snort escaped me.
Ransom glared at me. “Et tu, Brute?”
Unable to hold back anymore, I began laughing. It actually bordered on hysteria. All I could do was throw my hands up in an exaggerated shrug, causing him to storm off in the direction of Bill’s office. At which I only laughed harder.
God, I loved this job.
Chapter Twenty-Two
R A N S O M
Bill wasn’t thrilled to see me. Especially since, as Edith had predicted, he was eating his afternoon snack. To his credit, he kept his grumbling to a minimum as he followed me down to Safe Haven and set about sanding down the jagged pieces so we didn’t have to worry about the kids being impaled as they came in.
But I’d evidently done irreparable damage, because he had to board it closed after the last bus had arrived because a new door would need to be installed. Thankfully we had a door at the other end that opened to the courtyard out back as well as a doorway that led to the main center, so it was able to be boarded closed without being a fire code violation.
Of course, the order for a new door prompted a visit from Stacey, for whom we had to recount the whole tale. She looked at the couch dubiously, and I was filled with a growing sense of dread that she was going to force me and Roddie to take it back out. God only knew the damage we’d do if that happened.
Thankfully, Roddie jumped in and convinced her to give the couch a chance—his exact words. He promised to have it cleaned and presentable by early the following week, at which point she’d come back and determine whether it could stay or not.
With all the drama, Taylor and I hadn’t gotten to work out much about the weekend other than she’d be over the next morning. I only had to survive one night alone with Cindy. How bad could it be?
I’d worried that I’d have issues leaving Safe Haven with Cindy. I didn’t really want to put Harry and Taryn’s business out there, so I was thankful when Marty took me up on my offer to let him leave a half hour early. Parents usually came earlier on Fridays to pick up their kids, so when only two brothers and Cindy remained, Marty told me to have a good weekend and hightailed it out of here.
The brothers were picked up ten minutes later, and it was just Cindy and me.
“Ready to go?” I
