by Pippa Grant
He grips me lightly by the elbow and tugs me away from the light-rail station I was passing as a trolley pulls up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m—I’m overwhelmed.” I say it out loud and realize it’s actually true. “Things don’t usually go this well for this long, and right now I have more satisfied clients than I’ve ever had, I hadn’t seen my mother in a week until tonight and I’m trying very hard to not let her get back in my head with her comments about my birthing hips, which I think is supposed to be complimentary, and I had a fantastic time hanging out with your family today even if I’m really pissed that you got a black eye in the game and I want to hit that asshole back for you. Nothing has ever gone this right for this long in my entire life.”
He studies me for a moment, then nods and pulls me into a hug. “That doesn’t mean anything’s about to go wrong.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
“She sounds like a very good therapist.”
I hug him back tight. It feels so damn good right here in his arms.
If I could stay here, in the drizzly night after a super disappointing game, but with him holding me, forever, I would die a very happy woman. He’s not a superficial jerk who only cares about a woman’s size.
He’s everything, and I think he was everything before I let myself see it.
I can’t deny it anymore. I don’t even want to.
I am head over heels in love with Tyler Jaeger. Completely. Without question.
Not because he’s handsome.
Not because he’s successful.
Not because he gives me the most incredible orgasms of my life.
But because he cares.
He doesn’t have to. If anything, he has all the reasons in the world to not care.
Who am I to him, really?
Considering he’s still here, and all the other places he could be, I must be someone pretty special to him, and there’s nothing in the world to make a woman want to love a man more than feeling complete, total, unquestionable acceptance of even her worst moments.
He’s choosing me.
I need to choose him right back.
“Tyler?” There are so many emotions swirling in my chest, I can barely get his name out.
“Hmm?”
“Will you please—” I don’t finish the sentence before someone jostles into us.
I lift my head. Tyler drops his arms and shoves me behind him. “Cranford,” he growls.
A thick-necked dude with an ugly-ass scowl flexes his shoulders back. “Taking advantage of another one?”
“We’re leaving.” Tyler nudges me.
I grip his back belt loop and inch back toward the covered stop, where people are spilling off the trolley.
“Not gonna introduce me?” Cranford asks.
Tyler doesn’t answer. He turns his back on the other hockey player, tucks his arm around me, and nudges me again, more firmly, toward the trolley. “Fuck off,” he mutters over his shoulder.
I glance back too.
Cranford smiles. It’s an ugly smile, one that he tops with a wiggle of the brows and then a tongue movement that makes my ovaries shrivel and hide, because eew.
And that’s exactly what I’m thinking when I turn to look ahead again, zig when Tyler zags to get around the people departing the light-rail station, and I trip and fall into a massive concrete flower box.
42
Tyler
Only Muffy.
Seriously, only Muffy.
The good news? Cranford disappeared into the night as soon as Muffy went down in the flower box. Not that I expected him to cause actual trouble off the ice, but I’m still happier when he’s not around. Dude likes to be intimidating.
The bad news?
She’ll probably have a bruise the size of Alaska on her hip from hitting the concrete wrong, someone at the trolley stop told the tabloids that I stole Cranford’s girlfriend, and all of my sisters have invaded my condo after hearing about the little accident.
Could be worse.
Muffy could be seriously hurt.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Allie’s asking. “I can make soup.”
“How handy is it sometimes that you went to medical school?” Brit adds. “I’d be freaking out and rushing my kids to the emergency room.”
“Lots of padding and I can still walk,” Muffy replies, but she winces the teeniest amount, and I want to put my fist through a wall that I didn’t steer her better down the street. “You guys are so sweet to worry.”
Staci smiles at her. “Worrying is basically our entire job. We’re related to Tyler and West.”
“On behalf of West, Ty’s the bigger worry and always has been,” Keely calls from the kitchen, where she’s doing I don’t want to know what.
Probably brewing a potion to make me more romantic for Muffy.
It’s exactly the sort of thing my sisters would do.
“Out,” I order.
Forty-eight women turn and glare at me.
Okay, like five of them.
Also, Muffy’s not glaring. She’s blushing and avoiding my eye, just like she’s done since Allie banged on my door while I was trying to inspect Muffy’s hip, demanding to know why people at Chester Green’s were talking about me having another dust-up with Gator Cranford over a girl.
“He’s such a youngest child,” Brit mutters. She hugs Muffy. “We’re doing brunch at a wine bar at ten, and I really hope you make it, but we get it if we’re overwhelming and you send Tyler by himself.”
“Does your cat always stare at the fish tank like that?” Keely asks from the kitchen doorway. Rufus is doing his thing, sitting in a dining room chair that we’ve placed in the middle of the living room, his back to the aquarium, peeking over his shoulder like he’s afraid the fish will look back.
Didn’t take long for me to realize Rufus is more of a danger to himself than he is to the fish. I like it that way.
“Yes,” I answer for Muffy. “Go away.”
She gives me the don’t be rude huff. “He means thank you for being the kind of awesome sisters who care and try to help.”
“Even if we’re doing it in the name of not letting each other get more gossip than any of the rest of us?” Staci asks with a sly grin.
They finally leave, and by the time I shut the door behind them, Muffy’s disappeared.
I find her leaning on her not-bruised hip in the middle of my bed. “I think I embarrassed myself this time,” she whispers. “Who walks into a giant flower pot?”
I crawl onto the bed with her. “You’re hot when you’re clumsy.”
She rolls her eyes and ends the massive gesture by staring at the wall over my shoulder.
“Hey. Look at me.” I grip her chin lightly, stroking her jaw with my thumb until her gaze shifts to me, her pupils dilating. “You’re not really embarrassed, are you?”
“No, I’m—okay, yes. No. Yes. I—maybe? Your sisters are all so put together, and they’re so nice, and I’m basically a walking disaster. Every time I feel like I’m making progress toward being a functioning human, I go and fall in a pile of dirt. And it’s not just falling in a pile of dirt. It’s falling in a pile of dirt and then it being this big thing that meant your entire family came running to make sure I was okay, and what happens when it’s something bigger than me tripping in public? Because it’s usually something bigger than me tripping in public.”
“I faceplanted in my Thanksgiving mashed potatoes one year because I put my chair on wheels so it would be less effort to get up when I was stuffed. And Keely got inducted into the National Honor Society in high school with her dress tucked into her underwear because none of her classmates told her she’d done it when she made a last-minute run to the bathroom before the ceremony. She gets nervous in front of crowds.”
“Been there,” she mutters. “But it was an amusement park and my back pocket ripped off my shorts and I didn’t have another pair.” Her fingers drift to my face, lingering on my cheek unde
r my blackening eye. “And here I am being a total prima donna over tripping when you took a fist to the face.”
I shuck my shirt, because this is dumb.
I know how to show her I like her exactly the way she is. “Part of the job. Show me again where it hurts so I can kiss your booboo.”
She doesn’t move though, and she’s still carrying her wariness like it’s a shield. “I’m like this all the time, Tyler.”
This is a trap. I don’t know what kind of trap, but I know it’s a trap.
And her heavy sigh doesn’t help. Nor does the way she leans back out of my grasp. “I just—I don’t know when you’ll get tired of it.”
Oh. “Muffy.”
Her nose wrinkles. “Never mind. Let’s go to bed.”
Like hell. I hook my hand behind her neck. “No never mind. Muffy. You—do you know why I’ve never dated?”
“Because you got burned before?” she whispers.
“Because I was waiting for you.” Fuck, words are hard. How do normal people confess things like this? “I didn’t know it, but I was waiting for you.”
Her eyes go shiny, which makes my throat go thick.
Part of me wants to run. To hide from the truth I just dropped in the middle of my bedroom.
What if she gets bored of me?
She sucks in a deep breath and blinks rapidly. “Tyler?”
“Yes?”
“Will you please kiss me now?”
That I can do.
It’s so much better than talking.
And so I lean in and capture her lips as I slip my hands under her shirt.
No worrying about tomorrow.
Not when I have tonight.
And if I do my job right tonight, I won’t have to worry about tomorrow anyway.
43
Muffy
Tyler and I are quite the pair at brunch. I’m moving stiffly because my hip is sore, and his eye looks like he walked into a very offended, ugly boulder that’s probably telling stories about what the other guy looks like right now, and we are definitely the two most casually dressed people in this wine bar for brunch.
Also?
Showers with him keep getting better. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is.
So it’s entirely likely we’re also the two most relaxed, satisfied people in this wine bar too.
“This is the place where I accidentally set Kami up with Felicity’s ex-boyfriend last year,” I whisper to Tyler as our hostess guides us to the back room of Noble V. “It’s the one place in the entire city that Kami’s banned and I’m not. Isn’t that weird?”
He grins. “Yet. You’re not banned yet.”
“Goals, right?”
It’s wrong that he’s even more handsome with a black eye.
Or possibly I’m a little bloodthirsty and knowing that my boyfriend can physically protect me if necessary is a turn-on.
My boyfriend.
He didn’t flinch when I said it last night.
I’ve been waiting for you.
The man knows how to make a woman feel special. I squeeze his hand simply because I can.
We’re not the last to arrive to brunch with his family. Staci and her family and West and Daisy aren’t here yet either, and Mrs. Jaeger—May Ella—is frowning while she keeps checking her phone.
Allie and Keely have a coffee carafe between them that they’re possibly taking turns drinking straight out of, with their families fanned out on either side. Britney’s handing two of her kids coloring books while her husband hands the other two his phone.
It’s like a zombie breakfast.
Without the dead bodies. Naturally.
“See the sports page this morning?” Allie’s husband asks Tyler while Ty pauses to rub his nephew’s head and kiss his niece’s hair.
We both shake our heads.
The whole family shares looks.
Apprehension slithers up my spine, and I reach for my phone, which isn’t in my pocket.
Nor is it in my bag.
At least, I don’t think. It’s hard to subtly reach in and dig through everything in there.
“What?” Tyler asks them as he pulls a handful of small gummy bear packets from his pockets and tosses them to the under-ten crowd, who all shriek and lunge.
His sisters get matching eye twitches, but he ignores them.
We both do, because his dad has a weird look in his eyes, which he refuses to aim at either of us as he speaks. “Big write-up on you and Cranford and his sister.”
“And?” Tyler says.
“And Amelia Cranford is still in love with you,” Keely says. “According to the gossip pages, she hasn’t talked to her brother since he forbade her to date you and beat you up back… How many years ago was that? Six? Seven?”
Tyler grunts and pulls my chair out.
I peer at him.
Nothing.
Totally stone-cold poker face.
And that’s when the butterflies hit.
He told me he fell head over heels in love with her.
But that was years ago. Surely, he doesn’t feel the same now.
That’s what I’d tell my clients.
So why is it not working when I tell it to myself?
Because you know when you’re the consolation prize, Muffy. You’ve always been the consolation prize.
“She was supposed to be on that reality TV show,” Britney says to her kids’ coloring books. “Which one is it? The one about competing for a husband?”
“Oh my god, I can’t even keep track of them anymore,” Keely says.
It doesn’t matter which show. What matters is that if she’s competing on reality TV for a husband, she’s hot. And has a personality.
It’s a rule. You can’t be on TV if you’re not hot and don’t have a personality.
And if she wants Tyler—would she go to reality TV lengths in real life to get him?
My heart is fluttering into a panic. Stay calm, Muffy. Stay. Calm. Tyler knows who you are. He likes you for who you are. He’s not going to dump you just because someone he had a thing for way back when is suddenly into him and available and hot.
“Mimosa?” I croak to the server as she pops in and smiles at me. “Maybe skip the orange juice part and substitute vodka for the champagne?”
“She’ll have a salted caramel hot chocolate, extra whipped cream, with a shot of Baileys,” Tyler corrects.
Swoon, my vagina sighs.
I’m not mad at him for changing my order. I do like his idea better. And not just because he had it.
He drops into the seat next to me and drapes his arm over the back of my chair. “Ignore them,” he mutters.
Which isn’t I don’t love her anymore and I’m not interested.
I force a smile and reach for my water with clumsy hands.
But he knows me, and he’s steadying the glass almost before the ice clinks against the side.
Be cool, Muffy. Be. Cool.
“How’d everyone sheep last night?” I blurt.
Sheep.
Oh my god.
I asked them how they sheeped.
“Like the dead,” Allie answers.
Tyler grabs a straw and throws it at her. “Shove it.”
“What? That wasn’t a zombie Grandpa joke.”
“Definitely not,” Keely agrees.
One of the kids—I swear I knew all their names yesterday—spills a lidded cup of what I sincerely hope is apple juice, and another sticks a crayon up his nose. “Look, Mama, I gots a booger!”
I love these people. I truly do.
I steal a glance at Tyler.
He turns a soft smile my way, and that’s all it takes. One slight hitch of his lips, and my pulse pulls back on the throttle and my panic chills.
He likes me.
He really, really likes me.
“Oooh, brunch time!” Daisy and West stroll into the room, West holding Remy, who pumps his feet when he sees everyone. He sets the little boy down, and he todd
les straight to Britney.
“Favorite aunt!” she crows.
Daisy slips an arm around May Ella and kisses her cheek, and I swear she whispers something that makes May Ella’s nose twitch.
They both look at me, and there it goes again.
The doubt.
Things have been too good for too long. Tyler’s sexy, attractive, talented ex-girlfriend still pines for him. His family is giving me weird looks.
“What the fu—udge is going on?” Tyler asks.
“Nothing,” his mom says.
“It’s never nothing.”
“Tyler, are you related to the most amazing woman on the planet or not?” Daisy asks with a grin. “If it’s nothing, it’s nothing.”
“It’s possibly not nothing nothing,” West says.
“Optimism, Westley.” She pats him on the ass. “We’re having optimism.”
“About what?” Tyler asks.
And now the family’s sharing more looks again, and I’m trying to pretend I’m not on the verge of hyperventilating.
Be confident, Muffy. This is okay. Tyler’s not the same guy who fell in love with a woman who’s not a klutzy professional disaster. He’s into you despite all that. He won’t leave, even if he stays out of guilt for telling you he liked you better before he knew all his options.
Apparently Allie loses their silent, mental rock-paper-scissors game, because she’s the one who speaks up. “Ty, you remember this summer when we had our family reunion at the lake, and those gossip reporters showed up and thought that kid who kept collecting rocks in his pockets was with us, and then there was that massive local story about how we were hanging out with a woman who was once investigated for tax fraud at a local nursing home since it turns out she was the kid’s mom, which wasn’t funny but we all thought it was weirdly funny since it was the first time we really saw the full Daisy effect in our lives and we joked about how we all might as well admit now to all the weird things we’ve ever done that might be interesting because we’re in the Daisy Halo now?”
While my stomach suddenly cramps, making my hot chocolate feel like it’s an angry hurricane in there, even though it hasn’t arrived at the table and I haven’t actually drunk it yet, Tyler gives his sister the same flat glare he uses on the ice. “No.”