“You’re really going to help me clean this dump up?” he asked, suddenly looking earnest.
I studied him for a second, my heart squeezing. “Yes. I already was, but this is just a little more large scale, but still no big deal. We’ll have this place looking amazing and they’ll give you custody of Easton. I promise.” Of course, I couldn’t promise any such thing, but I didn’t want to see him like that.
He smiled. “Thank you. You’re a good person, you know that?”
I shook my head. “I’m not, not really. I’m not awful, but I’m not so nice, truthfully.”
“You are, too. You’re helping me, aren’t you?”
“That’s what friends do.” I put my arms on his shoulders because I was losing my balance. “And we’re friends, right?”
“Yeah.” His hand was warm on my back. “We’re definitely friends, Jess. Though I just realized I don’t know your last name.”
“It’s Sweet.” I fingered his necklace, enjoying being this close to him. It might never happen again, so I was going to take advantage of the opportunity. Heat radiated off him, and I could smell the whiskey on his breath. “Ironic, huh?”
“Seriously, that’s your last name?”
I nodded, cheeks burning for some reason. I didn’t blush any more than I cried. So annoying.
“I think it’s appropriate. You are, actually, very sweet.” Riley’s hand shifted underneath my hoodie onto my bare skin, and I shivered. “That’s what I think.”
“I think you’re drunk.” Why did he have to touch me like that? His hand was just resting on the small of my back, his thumb brushing back and forth lazily.
We were in a dangerous position, and he didn’t seem to have a clue. For a long minute, he studied me, his eyes dark in the harsh light of the kitchen, and I held my breath, wondering what he was thinking, wanting him to say something . . . important.
“Maybe.” His gaze dropped. “I never realized how big your tits are. Damn, all this yellow is really distracting.”
Yeah. That wasn’t it.
Disgusted, I jumped up off his lap. “On that note, I’m going to bed. And you should too. Nine a.m., buddy, you need to be in the living room ready to work.”
He saluted me and reached for his cigarettes.
“And no smoking in here!” I zipped up my hoodie all the way. “We just painted this kitchen!” With a sound of exasperation, I threw up my hands and left the room.
Then I had a thought. Rounding on him, I added, “Don’t try to clean up that glass tonight. You’re too drunk and you’ll cut yourself. We can get it tomorrow.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “And you don’t think you’re good mom material. I think it’s there, you just hide it under all that blond.”
As if that didn’t have me speechless, he chose that moment to stand up. Riley sitting in underwear was bad enough. But when he rose in an unfurling of naked hotness, standing in front of me like every girl’s fantasy, my mouth went dry. I half expected water to suddenly drop from the ceiling and land on him for a perfect package of gorgeous wet skin and finish me off completely.
The Wicked Witch had nothing on me when it came to melting.
“Put some pants on,” I told him.
He pointed an unlit cigarette at me and grinned. “See? Right there. Mom. That was perfect.”
First he said I was like his little sister.
Now like a mother?
It was going from bad to worse.
Chapter Seven
I didn’t expect Riley to get out of bed before noon, but there he was, in the kitchen at nine on the nose, brewing coffee and looking sexy in all his hungover scruff. He had a beard growing and dark circles under his eyes, his hair spiked out in all directions, as he shuffled barefoot in a pair of ratty jeans. No shirt of course. I was starting to think I was going to have to buy him a pack of T-shirts for my own sanity.
“What’s up?” he said, his voice sounding like he’d spent the night swallowing rocks. He gave a wet cough that made my stomach turn.
I wasn’t feeling all that fabulous, and the phlegmy sounds he was making weren’t helping. “Hey.” Flopping in a chair, I debated what to eat.
“Want some coffee?”
“No, it’s too hot for coffee.”
“It’s good for a hangover though, of which I have one.” He leaned with his elbows on the counter and rubbed his forehead aggressively. “Did I really kill a fifth of Jack?”
“Except for what you threw against the door, which wasn’t that much. So yeah, basically.” I stood back up, deciding I needed to eat something sooner rather than later. Fishing a yogurt out of the fridge, I asked, “So you don’t remember anything?” I was disappointed by that. It felt like we’d shared some kind of moment of bonding, and as stupid and lame as it sounded, I didn’t want that to be gone.
“I remember everything. I was just trying to convince myself that I really wasn’t stupid enough to drink that much.”
“Oh. Hey, it happens.”
Riley poured himself a cup of coffee and basically drank it all in one gulp. “Shit, that’s good.” He shoved himself up off the counter. “So what are we doing today? You’re the brains behind this, I’m the brawn. Just tell me what to do.”
I wished.
But practically speaking, in terms of the house, I did have a plan. “I’m going to finish cleaning up the kitchen. I bought new knobs for the cabinets, and I have some things to hang. You’re going to hang them, because I have no clue how to do that. Then we’ll tear up the carpet in the living room.”
“Alright.” He closed his eyes for a second, like he was calling up fortification. Then he snapped them back open and stood up, slapping his hand on the counter. “Let’s do this. You get what you need, I’ll get my drill and a knife to cut the carpet.”
Apparently he kept his drill and a knife in his bedroom. That struck me as more than a little weird, but maybe it was a safety issue with Easton and Jayden around. “Why don’t you keep that in the garage?” I asked as I came out of my room with the bags from the store.
“Are you kidding me? It would be stolen in ten minutes. Have you been in the garage? The only thing in there is a lawn mower that doesn’t run because someone stole the starter off it, and those old busted plastic sleds.”
“There’s a broom in there, too.” I started opening the individual plastic bags with the new brushed-nickel knobs. The eighties colonial pulls were gross and needed to go. “I found it the other day.”
“I’m sure it was happy to see the light of day since no one has used that in about a decade.” Riley was cleaning up the glass from the broken bottle with his bare hands, squatting down in a way that made his jeans drag down.
I balled up the receipt from buying the knobs and threw it at him. My aim was surprisingly good, and it landed in his butt crack before bouncing back off. “Score,” I told him, amused. No matter how sexy the guy, plumber’s crack has a way of killing the heat level.
“Hey, are you objectifying my body?” he asked, not bothering to pull up his pants.
“Yes.” I started untwisting the existing knobs, surprised at how firmly they were on there. It took me five solid minutes to get one off.
“Try this,” Riley said, opening a cabinet and showing me the back of the screw. He held the drill up and pushed something and bam, like that, the screw retreated and the knob fall off the front of the cabinet.
“Tricky,” I told him. But when he handed me the drill I could barely hold it up, let alone line the tip up to the screw. When I finally got it, I pushed the button and the kickback startled me so that I jerked back, and nothing happened. “Hm.”