On the Fly by Catherine Gayle Page A

people with my kids as much as he’d stolen
Maddie’s childhood. I couldn’t stop myself from panicking at the
thought that some man I didn’t know was going to pick Maddie up.
That his hands would be on her. That she didn’t know him at all,
and he was going to touch her, even if he only meant to help
her.
    I was still shaking, just thinking
about it.
    “ I’ll worry about my feet
when I’m done taking care of my daughter,” I said. I wiped the
cloth over the stream of blood down Maddie’s leg, but there weren’t
any cuts other than that one at the top. I held the washrag in
place, putting pressure on the wound. “Can you get my first aid
kit? It’s in the front bathroom.”
    “ I’m worried about your
feet now , because
it looks like a crime scene in here,” he grumbled. Then he picked
me up by the waist and spun me around. He put me down in one of my
dining room chairs, ignoring my huff of indignation.
    I finally let myself look at the
floor. He was right. There was blood everywhere—bloody footprints
traveling the path I’d taken carrying Maddie to the table and a big
pool of it below me. I must have stepped in a lot of the glass to
make that sort of mess, but I hadn’t felt a thing. Not really.
Maybe a pinch or two, but my mind had only been on getting to my
little girl and making sure she was all right.
    He took the washcloth from me and
handed it to Maddie. “Can you hold that tight against your leg
while I take care of your mom?”
    She nodded with big eyes.
    “ Put a lot of pressure on
it, okay?”
    “ Mmmhmm,” Maddie
whimpered.
    His attention had already left her,
though. He wasn’t looking to be sure she did it right, because he’d
raised my feet and was holding them in front of his
face.
    I tried to twist myself around so I
could check on her, but Brenden had a firm grip on my ankles—both
of them in one of his hands—and he didn’t let me move a
muscle.
    “ Keep it tight over the
cut,” I said to her, scowling at him.
    Brenden scowled right back at me. “I
already told her to do that.” He had another wet cloth in his free
hand, and he dabbed it against the soles of my feet.
    I sucked in a breath at the stinging
pain and tried to jerk back from him, but he kept a firm grip on me
so he could keep tending my wounds. No wonder it looked like a
crime scene in my dining room. I must have done a real number on my
feet without knowing it.
    He grimaced, but I was pretty sure it
had more to do with my struggling against him than what he saw on
my feet. At least he didn’t seem squeamish. “You’ve got glass in
here still. Quite a bit of it. I need tweezers to get it
out.”
    I heard Tuck’s giggles coming from
down the hall, along with Pumpkin’s growls. Pumpkin was good about
putting up a vocal argument when he wasn’t happy, but it was all
talk. He’d never bitten anyone, and he only ever used his claws
accidentally. He definitely wouldn’t hurt Tuck, and I was pretty
sure Jamie should be fine, too. I wasn’t worried. They disappeared
into the apartment across the hall—most likely to get shoes for
Jamie. Probably a good plan. I tried not to worry about Tuck being
alone with him, but my worry-o-meter had been going haywire for
about six months now.
    Brenden’s focus remained on my feet.
“Tweezers?” he urged me again.
    “ In the front bathroom.
Right next to the first aid kit.”
    Jamie poked his head through the open
doorway, holding Tuck in one arm and a very flat-eared,
perturbed-looking Pumpkin in the other as he skirted around the
mess on the floor. I released a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been
holding once they came into view.
    “ I’ll get them,” Jamie
said. “I’ll just put these two in Tuck’s room for now so they can
play.”
    “ I wanna help!” Tuck
squealed, but it was a happy squeal. At least he was okay.
    Jamie was already carting my son and
my cat down the hall. “You can help by keeping Pumpkin safe. Okay?
Make sure your ninja moves are better