“Um—”
At a loss, Connor got no further. He had followed the woman into a bathroom. The “it” she was obviously referring to was a toilet. The water was rising precariously high within the bowl. It looked as if any second, the water was going to overflow and go all over the floor.
The sprightly redhead was standing in front of the toilet, her hands on her hips. “Kids,” she said to him by way of an explanation.
“Kids?” Connor echoed, unable to understand what she was telling him.
“Every time I turn around, one of them has decided that one of their stuffed animals or trucks or figurines is dirty and needs to be washed. I guess the toilet’s like a bathtub to them.” She sighed and looked at him plaintively. “So, can you fix it?” she asked, a hopeful look on her face.
It was a face, Connor realized, that he couldn’t bring himself to say no to.
Connor forced himself to focus on something other than Brianna Childress’s very expressive eyes. He knew that he couldn’t very well lie to the woman, not if he needed her help and wanted her to be truthful with him. If he lied, or omitted telling her the truth, that wouldn’t exactly be starting off their relationship, however short it might turn out to be, on the right foot. Lies just begat lies.
“I’m afraid that you’ve made a mistake,” Connor began.
Dismay washed over Brianna’s face as she took in what he had just said. “You can’t fix it like the commercial said?” she asked.
“It’s not that, it’s—”
Connor got no further in his explanation than those first four words because right at that moment there was a bloodcurdling scream followed by a wail and then the sound of things either falling or being thrown.
The jarring noise went clear down to the bone.
“Oh dear lord, now what?” Brianna cried in exasperation.
Before Connor could venture a guess, she made an abrupt about-face and dashed out of the room, heading toward the scream. That left Connor standing alone in the bathroom with a toilet that looked as if it was about to blow at any moment.
“There’s obviously never a dull moment around here,” he commented under his breath.
Left to his own devices, Connor looked around the small, blue-and-white-tiled bathroom. From what he had gathered, this wasn’t the first time the toilet presented a problem. Judging from the tools that were scattered on the floor, Brianna had the right things to deal with the situation.
The fact that she hadn’t dealt with it told him that she’d never learned how to put any of these tools to use. She’d probably just seen the plumber using them and had thought ahead—or wanted to be prepared for the next time. Next time had obviously arrived.
He gave the woman an A for observation. Too bad her execution was sorely lacking.
Connor had no desire to follow the woman into the other room, given the high-pitched screaming that was coming from another part of the house, but on the other hand, he was never much for standing around gathering dust, either.
Looking around again, he took inventory of the tools in the room. There was a long, thin metallic tool expressly made for breaking through the debris that gathered in clogged pipes. Whimsically dubbed a “snake,” it was lying beside a standard plunger. There were a couple of other tools, as well, but in his opinion, they were just overkill.
Connor prided himself on being rather handy. He decided that he might as well do something while he waited for the woman to come back.
Assessing the problem one last time, he rolled up his sleeves and got to work.
* * *
The job turned out to be easier than he had expected. The reason for the clog was a miniature toy train that had been wedged in the bottom of the toilet’s evacuation pipe. The train had been covered in what appeared to be a massive wad of sopping wet toilet paper that had wound itself around the toy. It had been a little tricky getting the train free, but in the end, he managed to get it loose—all without breaking the toy.
He looked down at the item that was now safely nestled in his hand. Such a little thing, so much trouble, he thought.
It was only when he finally rose back to his feet again that he realized the knees of his pants had gotten quite wet. He looked around for a mop to at least dry the floor, but it appeared to be the one thing that the woman hadn’t brought out with the other equipment.
Shaking his head, Connor muttered under his breath. “It figures.”
“What figures?”
The voice startled him. Swinging around to face the doorway, he saw that Brianna had finally reappeared.
She was not alone. She was carrying a squirming, very vocal preschooler on her hip. A boy.
The slightly surprised look on her face gave way to a wide, relieved smile when she saw the toy train in Connor’s hand.
“You fixed it,” she cried, delighted.
The little boy on her hip saw the toy at the same time that his mother did.
“Mine!” he cried, eagerly putting his hands out as if that would somehow cause the toy to levitate out of the stranger’s hand and into his own.
“Then what’s it doing in the toilet?” Connor asked, pretending to be serious as he presented the train to the little boy after rinsing it off in the sink.
The kid had the same wide, sunny smile that his mother had. He flashed that smile now at Connor as he grabbed the toy train and pressed it to his chest.
“Mine,” he repeated.
“We’ve established that,” Connor replied as if he was talking to someone his own age. “But why did you—?”
Brianna anticipated his question. “You’re not going to get an answer,” she told him. “He knows he’s not supposed to throw anything down there but for some reason, the toilet just seems to really fascinate him.” She looked at her son with an indulgent smile. “Axel used to have a pet hamster until one day he decided that Howard was dirty and needed a bath.”
“Let me guess,” Connor said to her, “Howard drowned.”
She surprised him by saying, “No, actually, he didn’t. I managed to fish him out of the toilet bowl just in time.”
“So you saved Howard,” Connor concluded.
“No,” she said with a heartfelt sigh. “I didn’t.” When he raised a quizzical brow, she told him the rest of the story. “As near as I can figure it, Howard died of a heart attack. After I rescued him and dried him off, I put Howard in his cage. I found him the next morning, lying on the floor of the cage, as stiff as one of the kids’ figurines.”
The boy had stopped making noise and now sniffled a couple of times.
“We had a funeral,” Axel said solemnly.
“So he can talk in sentences,” Connor marveled, looking at the boy. The boy seemed pretty young to him and he had no idea just what kids were able to do at any given age.
“Only when he wants to,” Brianna answered. Shifting her son to her other hip, she looked contritely at the man whose pant legs she had just noticed were wet. “I’m sorry I’m going on and on here. I don’t get much of a chance to talk to adults,” she admitted. Setting Axel down, she looked around for her purse. “How much do I owe you?”
Smiling