Hustle Him (Bank Shot Romance #2)(23)
Author: Jennifer Foor

“I’m not good with kids.” It was a lie. Every kid reminded me of my daughter and it was brutally painful for me.

“It’s one hour. It ain’t like he is going to pry into your business. If he get’s curious, make something up. If you ask me, it would do you both a load of good.”

“I have to work.”

“I already called the station. I know you’re off today. Look, you take the kid fishing and I will send you home with a chicken potpie. Don’t tell me that you don’t love it. I’ve seen you tear through my potpies before.”

She had a point. The woman knew how to feed me. She also knew how to push my buttons. One thing that I was sure of was that she wasn’t going to back down. “One hour, Sue.”

“There’s old rods in the shed and the pond should be crazy full of fish, since my Ray stocked it before he died. If you catch it, you can keep it. I will fry it up some way or another.” She opened the cookbook and started looking at what she was looking at before I came into the room.

“You want me to go now?”

“Why not?”

I shook my head and walked out of the kitchen. The kid was sitting on the step where I’d left him. He had a baseball glove in his hand and was throwing the ball up and catching it. Half the time he would miss and have to get up to retrieve it.

I didn’t look at him when I spoke. “Follow me, kid.”

He caught up with me fast. “Where we going? You taking me on a ride along? I saw it on TV last night.”

It was going to be the longest hour of my life. “I’m taking you fishing, kid. You’re too young for a ride along.” He stopped following me, so I turned around to see what happened. He just stood there, looking down at the ground. “What’s wrong, kid?”

“My name is Logan, not kid and my dad was supposed to take me fishing.” He seemed pissed off.

I struggled with myself over what actions I should take. On one hand, I would have liked to get in my truck and head home without having to burden myself with the whole ordeal. On the other hand, I saw a kid that had his heart broke by someone he counted on. He needed to know that not everyone was going to disappoint him. I shook my head and cussed under my breath for what I was about to do.

Without arguing myself out of it, I knelt down in front of him. “Listen here, Logan. I’m going into the shed and grabbing two rods. Then I’m going to walk down to that pond and fish for a while. I don’t know what you had planned for the day, but the company would sure be nice. It’s up to you though.”

It didn’t take but a second for him to catch up to me walking away. I didn’t say anything else, even when we got to the shed and grabbed the rods and tackle.

Logan had never been fishing, so I had to teach him how to bait his hook and cast his line. I have to give him credit for trying. He listened to my every word. After attempting to cast four times on his own, I took the line and cast it out for him. He smiled as we sat next to each other on the little man made pier. His little feet were swinging around, while he tightly held the rod, waiting for his bobber to disappear out of the water.

“You having fun, kid, err, Logan.”

“How long does it take to catch one?” He didn’t answer my question. I figured he would get bored fast. I remember how it was to fish with my father when I was a kid.

“I’ve fished a whole week without a bite.”

“Maybe you aren’t good at it. I bet my dad could catch a big fish real fast.”

I bit my tongue, but I gotta admit, it was real hard to do. After hearing just a few things that the guy had done, I was sure that his ass had no balls, or compassion for his wife or kids. Unfortunately, this kid was too young to understand all of that, and as I learned more about his mother, I learned that her compassion for her children had caused her to keep negative things about their father from them. The more I wanted to avoid the woman, the more I respected the kind of person she was.

Thankfully, my bobber went down into the water. I knew what I had to do, when I turned to see the look on Logan’s face. I handed the kid my rod. “Pull it in, Logan. This fish is going to be your catch.”

He reeled his little heart out, trying to pull in that fish. Now, when Sue told me that her deceased husband had stocked the pond, I hadn’t considered how large those fish would have gotten. After fighting for five minutes, I stood behind Logan to help him pull the fish in. I think we both were in shock, when we pulled up a bass that was nearly two feet in length. With giant eyes, the kid watched me use the net and get the fish out of the water. Once it was in the bucket, we smack hands at our catch. “It’s giant!”

I was proud of him. Sadly, it reminded me of another moment that I would never get to share with Katie. As depressing as it was for me, I patted the kid on the shoulder. “Let’s try to catch some more. I’m thinking our bait is too small for what’s swimming around in this pond. We should try something else on our lines.”

“Can we catch a shark?”

“If there’s a shark in this pond, we’re both going to have to change our pants.” I knew there wasn’t, but the kid seemed like it was the coolest thing ever.

He watched me bait his line. “Why would we change our pants? Are we going to fall in? I don’t want to fall in with the sharks.”

I started laughing; not even considering what I’d told him could scare him. “I meant that if there was a shark in this little pond, I was going to crap my pants.”

He giggled. “You poop yourself? Only babies poop themselves.”

Clearly, sarcasm wasn’t in his vocabulary. “Never mind. How about we talk about something else.” That’s when it happened. I’d opened myself up to the boy, while sitting on that pier. After nearly a year of solitude, I’d opened myself up to a curious kid.

“My dad said that after we caught fish, we could go out for ice cream.” I clenched my jaw, knowing the kid was trying to get something extra out of me. The thing was, I kind of liked being around him. He was too young to judge me, or understand why I was the way I was around other adults.

“Let’s see how many we could catch first.” That’s what we did too. For the next couple hours, we sat around talking about baseball, bugs and fighting crime. He never asked me anything that made me feel uncomfortable.

When we got finished, we’d brought in seven large fish. Sue was outside hanging laundry when we came across the field with what we’d caught. She put down a shirt and walked toward us. “How’d you do?”