By the time eight o’clock hit, I had a full folder filled with ideas to show him, as well as a couple for Cole. My next meeting with them wasn’t until Tuesday, so I had the whole weekend to work on it and get some colors for the walls to show them, as well as create mockups for them to see.
Just as I was getting up to stretch my back, my phone started ringing and I saw that it was my cousin Adam, who had been away on business. After hearing that Ren had shared women with my cousins, I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to them, but knew if I didn’t answer that they’d just turn up, so with a sigh I hit the answer icon on my screen.
“Hey, Adam. Sorry, but I’m just finishing up work and about to get in the bath for a long soak. Is it urgent?” I thought I’d sounded upbeat and ‘normal,’ but apparently not.
“What’s wrong?” he asked in his overbearing way. He must have been at the bar, because I heard music and voices in the background—probably picking up his latest slut to share with Ren. Jesus, that was messed up, and now I really didn’t want to talk to him.
“Nothing, I just have stuff to do. What’s up?” I replied in the most blasé voice I could.
“Tell me what’s wrong first,” he barked just as a girl squealed in the background, making me grind my teeth.
“Adam, seriously, I’m two seconds away from hanging up and putting the bolts across my doors so you can’t get in. I’ve said nothing’s wrong, and I mean nothing’s wrong, so what do you want?” I snapped. Oh well, at least I’d lasted that long without taking my resentment and hurt out on him.
“What the fuck?” I heard the background noise get quieter and figured he must have moved out of the main room of the bar and down a corridor so he could hear me better.
Unfortunately, after the day’s revelations, I so wasn’t in the mood for this.
“Listen, I dunno what the fuck is going on with you, but if you don’t get your ass to Jilly’s in the next half hour, me and the boys are coming round, and we’ll knock your door in if we have to.”
Adam wasn’t like my other cousins; he had a very serious and commanding personality that dared you to defy him. My youngest cousin, Mark, was at college. He was the quarterback of his football team and was a seriously fun-loving guy. My older cousin, Luke, worked at my uncle’s company, and he was a perfect fifty-fifty mix of Adam and Mark.
“Leave it, Adam. I’ve been working all day, and my head and neck hurt, and I just want to have a bath and sleep. I’ll call you tomorrow. Have a good night,” I said, and hung up.
Figuring he’d only call me back until I answered and gave in, I turned my phone off, locked my doors with the bolts, and headed upstairs to my sanctuary—my bathroom. It had an old-fashioned claw-footed tub that sat in the middle of it, and I’d ordered a selection of bubble baths and bath salts as soon as I’d seen the house. Settling on Frangipani for the night, I ran the bath, stripped, and then got in with my iPad to read my book. I was rereading a book and, although I’d read it a hundred times, I got totally lost in it until I realized that almost an hour and a half had passed and that the bathwater, which I’d been topping up with fresh hot water, wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I had a quick wash and got out, toweling off and crawling into bed and passing out.
When I woke up, the sun was shining brightly through the windows, and I realized I’d slept in later than I’d wanted to. Getting out of bed and stretching my neck and back, which were still stiff from being crouched over my laptop the night before, I got in the shower and then dressed in a pair of beige shorts and a white tank top and put my hair up in a messy knot. A quick swipe of mascara and lip gloss and I was ready to face the day.
As I got to the bottom of the stairs, there was a knock at the door, and upon opening it I saw Uncle George, who was taking me to collect my car from the garage. My dad had bought a new Escalade before he’d been posted, but had decided against shipping it to Australia, so I’d fallen heir to it. A couple of days ago, the door had refused to lock or open from the inside, and the window wouldn’t work. George had taken it to a mechanic he knew, so I’d been driving my aunt’s Lexus SUV while it was being repaired.
I’d named my Escalade ‘Hulk,’ and missed it something fierce. It had a step and handle to help you get into it, whereas my aunt’s SUV didn’t, so I tended to drop out of it instead of ‘gracefully’ stepping out. I could just imagine my mom’s face if she saw me doing this, as it was ‘unladylike.’ The Lexus didn’t have Bluetooth, either, so I kept having to pull over to the side of the road to take calls or put them on speakerphone, which wasn’t ideal when you were setting up a business.
“Wow, you’re prompt this morning, Uncle George! Coffee?” I was desperately in need of the bean nectar before we went out.
“Sure,” my uncle said, wearing the smile he reserved purely for his family. “Adam tells me you had a problem last night and that you bit his head off and hung up on him. Everything okay?” he asked, watching me.
Oh my God, I couldn’t believe he was tattling on me to my uncle! We were a close family, and George had brought his family out to wherever we were posted or we would come to Piersville to visit them at least once a year for as far back as I could remember. My cousins were more like brothers, and that meant I could get him back for pulling this monkey shit move.
“No, not at all, Uncle George.” I poured us out two travel cups of coffee as I thought about how to land Adam in shit for telling tales. “I was tired, and I heard a female moaning his name, so I figured it would be best to let him give her his full attention—” I paused for effect. “—since it sounded like they were still in the bar.” I turned around and saw George’s mouth go into a tight, firm line. Bingo!
“I’ll speak to him.”
Now, some people might say that what I had said was an overreaction or cruel, but the truth was that since before I’d moved here, my cousins had been breathing down my neck with rules for my move. What I would be doing and what I wouldn’t be doing—and there was a lot of that. If a male approached me when they were around, they formed a barrier in front of me and told the guy not so nicely to get lost. Adam telling George that I had a problem when I just didn’t want to talk to him was below the belt, though.
I screwed the lids on, passed one over to my uncle, and picked up my handbag and headed towards the door.
“Luke will stop by and collect Christy’s car later. He’ll call you before it, though. So how did yesterday go?” George asked as we got into his car.
“Really good. The houses were beautiful, and I already have a lot of ideas for the first two. I’m going back on Tuesday with it all to get Ren’s approval.” I tried to sound focused on the work itself and not Ren.
“What did you make of them?”
“Yeah, they’re nice. Colette is fantastic, and Cole was a riot,” I said as I looked out the window and took in the town.
I loved Piersville. It had old shop fronts mixed in with a modern style, and on the opposite side of it all was a gorgeous park with trees, benches, and a large pond in the center. Having lived in big cities all of my life, I had never experienced a quaint town like this as my home. To be honest, after a couple of weeks living here, I was pretty certain that I never wanted to leave.
“Well, that’s good news. Always helps to get along with who you’re working with,” George muttered, pulling up in front of the garage. Eager to get to Hulk, I almost jumped out before George had put the handbrake on. “In fact, Ren’s the one who has been working on your car. Let’s go in and see what the news is on it.”
I’d twisted to look at him when he’d mentioned Ren, and the strap of my handbag had, of course, gotten caught on the door, tipping the contents all over the place.
“Shit,” I groaned, and got down on my knees to pick my crap up and shove it in my bag. As I reached for a lip gloss, I saw black boots and then denim-covered knees in front of me. Working my way up, there was Cole squatting and holding not one, but four tampons. They were those compact ones ,and Cole w
as looking at them, tilting his head from side to side as he tried to figure out what it was that he was holding.
“What the hell are these? Are they some sort of thingy that designers need to sort out interiors? Whatever they are, they smell so nice,” he said as he sniffed them. Why was he sniffing tampons?
I burst out laughing so hard that I lost my balance and landed flat on my ass in the parking lot. “No, they’re tampons, Cole. But yeah, I guess they sort out interiors,” I got out, laughing to the point of tears. Thankfully I’d ducked my head just as he flung them, as if I’d said they contained the Ebola virus, and he started making hissing sounds, using his index fingers to make the sign of the cross in my direction.
“What the fuck?” he yelled, rubbing his hands and face on his shirt like he’d touched something filthy. “That’s nasty! I had them in my hand and near my face…Oh my God, why would you carry those around with you?” He immediately went back to making the sign of the cross in my direction. By this point, I was lying on my side crying and holding my stomach. It was too much!
“Jesus, Cole, I know you went to school—did you pay attention to anything?” barked Ren, who’d apparently seen and heard Cole’s overreaction to sanitary products, although I doubted anyone could have missed it. This killed my laughter immediately, and I felt my face go bright red. I mean, come on, it is not a good thing to be caught by a guy—especially who looks like he should be immortalized in marble and put on display for the world to appreciate forever more—laughing on the floor with your tampons lying around you. Then to just hammer my embarrassment home, he crouched down and picked them up and put them in my purse, thus completing my mortification.
“Hey, baby, your uncle’s inside waiting for you. Here, lemme help you up,” he said, taking hold of my hand and pulling me up off the floor.
“Uh, thanks, and sorry about…” I trailed off and just gestured in the general area of where I’d been, and saw that Cole was now rocking back and forth. “What the hell?”
“Ah, Cole gets traumatized by all things, um, period,” Ren explained, looking like he was torn between laughing and wanting to wash his mouth out just for uttering the word ‘period.’
“It’s not natural,” Cole hissed, leaning forward, still curled in a ball. “You bleed for days. Days! If I bled for days,” he said, dragging out the word dramatically, “you’d make me go to the hospital for stitches. But no, not women.” He shuddered.
Watching this tall, built guy rocking back and forth looking around like the FBI was about to jump out, and then dramatically talking about periods, was just too much.
“You realize that all women have them, right?” I got out through my laughter.
“No, they don’t,” he said, adamantly shaking his head. “Playboy bunnies don’t.”
Tears were falling down my face, and I was holding on to Ren and gasping. “Yeah, they do.”
Cole jumped up to his feet, leaned into me, and hissed, “You take it back. They do not! God made them perfect, so they don’t have—” He stopped mid-sentence and looked around him before leaning in and hissing, “—periods. And they don’t shit or fart, either. They just exist in Playboy perfection.” He ended his tirade by leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest, looking at me smugly.
Ren was roaring beside me, which set me off again.
“Know what, screw you guys,” Cole huffed, and stormed off, muttering to himself, then slamming the door.
Looking at Ren and pushing through the embarrassment and urge to run and drown myself in the pond, I started walking toward the garage. “How’s Hulk?”
“Who the fuck is Hulk?” Cole boomed from somewhere inside.
I turned and looked at Ren, who had stopped walking and was standing glaring at me, and said slowly, “My car…” I mean, really, who else would Hulk be?
“Wait, you called your car Hulk?” Cole walked up to me with a huge grin on his face. Guess he’d gotten over periods.
“Well, yeah, it’s big!”
Immediately, I knew that I’d just given Cole fodder for his dirty innuendo addiction. “Big is such a dirty word,” he chuckled. “You like them big, Maya, then you’ll love my—” But he didn’t get to finish, as Ren smacked him hard on the back of the head, making him take a few steps forward with the force.
“I swear, Cole, one more, just one more!” Ren seethed, looking like he was about to Hulk up himself with the vein in his neck standing out, his hands clenching.
“Ow, man, I was just about to say she’d like the Big Easy at Jeff’s! Dude, that fucking hurt.” Cole pouted and rubbed his head. This guy was such a big kid. A pervy big kid, but still.
“Right, go and make yourself useful far away from Maya while I get her car sorted out,” Ren gritted out, still looking like he was ready to do some damage.
Cole turned me with a wicked grin. “Seriously, though, I know something big that will make your mouth—” Smack! “I’m telling Mom,” he whined as he walked away, rubbing his head again, while Ren stood there glaring at his back with his jaw ticking.
“Um, so, about Hulk?”
“Yeah, this way.” He gestured towards the other side of the garage, and I saw Hulk in the corner with the hood up and my uncle having a look under it. “I’m sorry about Cole. I swear we shoulda had him tested as a kid,” he muttered.
I burst out laughing. “It’s never too late, you know.”
“I heard that,” Cole’s voice boomed from somewhere in the depths of the garage. How the hell he’d heard us, I’d never know. They definitely should have him tested.
Chapter Five
Ren
A fter taking Maya and George through the repairs that had been done on her car, I watched Maya getting into the SUV. Desperate not to be away from her yet, I blurted, “Hey, can I take you to lunch?”
“Sure.” The girls here were always in your face and throwing themselves at the guys, so knowing that she wasn’t like that, which meant she most likely hadn’t had a lot of boyfriends and wouldn’t flirt with other guys, calmed me.
“Just leave the car here, baby. We’ll walk across, and you can come and get it after.” I caught her hand and gave her a gentle tug, but her eyes were on my mouth, and she didn’t look like she was listening. “Maya, you with me?” I laughed. She seemed to come back into herself, and the most adorable blush heated up her face, making me laugh harder. “Come on, gorgeous, let’s go!” I tugged her out the door.
I was pretty impressed with how she’d dealt with Cole and the whole period debate. Ever since he was a kid, anything menstrual had been met with dramatics. I’d heard his sex ed class had been entertaining when he was 12, too, because he’d spent most of it rocking in the corner with his hands over his ears. I decided to share this story and a couple of other similar ones with Maya to break the tension.
“He took your sister to the hospital and told the ER doctor to sew her up?” she repeated, laughing her ass off as we walked into the diner. I could see a couple of guys I knew from high school watching her and looking at her tits and ass. Rather than ruin the easy flow we had going, I stood between them so they couldn’t see her, and guided her to a corner booth so she had her back to them.
“Yup, she told him she needed to go to the store to get some Tampax, and when he took her, they were out of the biggest size.” I had no idea how you measured Tampax, but she was back to holding her side as she laughed. “So Cole decided it was an emergency and she was about to bleed to death, and so he took her to the ER and told the doctor to sew her up or give her a transfusion. He’d called all of us on the way to tell us she needed immediate medical attention, so we all walked in to hear him saying this. Poor Layla was standing in the corner with her back to the room and her hands covering her face, embarrassed as hell. The whole time, Cole was saying that she was only seventeen and she couldn’t be that big down below, so they needed to do something ‘stat.’” I was laughing my ass off too at the memory, and we were drawing a lot of attention to o
ur table.
I looked around the place, still laughing, until I saw the one female I would have begged God happily never to see again in my life—Francheska Benner—and her group of bitches. We’d hooked up a couple of times in high school, but then she’d hooked up with pretty much every male in the county, and since then she’d been trying to get back on my dick. I wasn’t up for touching her with someone else’s, let alone my own. Did you ever see the movie Fatal Attraction? Let’s just say thank fuck I didn’t have rabbits, because I was sure she had some mighty big pots, and right now she was staring at me with what she must have thought was a flirtatious smile, but it just looked ugly and scary to me.
“Who’s that?”
“That, baby, is the thing that horror movies are made of.” I reached over to hold her hand that was resting on the table. “Don’t make eye contact, okay? She’s a bunny-boiling nightmare that won’t take the hint.” I looked up and saw Maya watching me; her eyes were scanning my face, but I had no clue what she was looking for. She must have found it, though, because her head did an almost imperceptible nod, and she smiled and relaxed.
“Lucky you,” Maya said, winking. I laughed because when she winked it just looked like a blink, but with one eye, and shit did it look cute on her. I looked over at Francheska one more time to see her giving us a sneer and a look I didn’t like one bit before she turned back to her friends, who were huddled over the table, and the whispering started. Shit. I needed to keep an eye on that.
Louise, the co-owner of the Diner, came up to us and asked us for our order in her normal loud voice. She was a great woman, and had gone to school with my mom, but she had left to tour the States a couple of years after graduating. She’d come back one Thanksgiving and had met Jeff. They’d fallen in love, and the rest was history, but man did she have some wicked stories.
“Hey, Lou, this is Maya Price, George Montgomery’s niece.”
“Hey, sweetie, nice to meetcha. I’ve heard a lot about ya,” Louise said. Really it was more of a shout, because she was incapable of using a normal volume when she was talking, and I laughed at Maya’s look of surprise.
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