“What is it?” Joey bounced beside me.
“It’s from Billie for your room.” I pulled out the boxes. “This makes noises like raindrops or an ocean, and this can make your room all different colors or have stars on your ceiling.”
“Mallory has that!” Joey clapped. “I always wanted one of those, but Grammy said if I wanted to see the stars, I could look outside.”
Grammy wasn’t wrong, but I remembered all the noises Billie used to hear at her grandparents’ house. I couldn’t count the number of nights I’d be sound asleep and get a call on my walkie-talkie because she’d heard a noise or seen a scary shadow on her ceiling. She was making sure his girls didn’t experience the same thing.
She made it really fucking hard not to love her.
Another knock sounded on the door, this one less tentative and more businesslike.
Joey’s eyes went wide as if she’d just heard the jingle bells of Christmas morning. “Billie!” she whispered, the word a wish and a command, and before I could warn her about running on the hardwood in socks, she and Andi were tearing for the entryway.
I trailed after them, still towel-drying my hair with a dish rag, my steps increasingly hopeful with every footfall, until Joey wrenched the door open and the fantasy dissolved. It wasn’t Billie.
A good-looking guy stood there who looked like he’d just walked off a construction site, and the boys I’d seen in the backyard with superhero capes on.
“Hey, man,” the guy said, sticking his hand out to shake mine. “Sorry to bother you. I’m Cole, Bailey’s fiancé.”
“No bother. Hi.” I accepted the handshake as one boy jumped on top of the other. “Adam. Nice to meet you. These must be your?—”
“Nephews, Luke and Leo.” Cole gestured down, pointing to each one individually, as the boys collided in a heap.
“Hi!” Luke popped up from the dogpile. He was missing a front tooth and had the stance of a kid who’d just won a gold medal in mischief.
“Hey!” chirped Leo before executing a backward roll off the porch, landing with both feet on the grass and an unmistakable look of pride. His brother immediately followed, not to be outdone, with a cartwheel that took out three dandelions.
“They’re in ninja mode,” Cole deadpanned as we watched the duo descend in a flurry of limbs and laughter.
“I see that,” I said.
Joey and Andi, still hovering by the door, exchanged a look so loaded with yearning I could practically feel their need for a new neighborhood crew radiating in waves.
“Can we play in the front yard?” Joey pleaded, hands folded under her chin in the universal gesture of desperate child negotiation.
“Yes, but don’t go past the driveway,” I said.
“We know!” Joey delighted, as she grabbed Andi by the wrist and the two of them skipped past Cole and onto the lawn, where they were instantly absorbed into the boy tornado.
Cole turned back. “I know you’re probably busy and tired, but Bailey asked me to come over.”
Alarm bells started ringing in my primitive “protect Billie at all costs” cortex. “Is everything okay?”
Cole’s brows knitted slightly. “Yeah, everything’s fine,” he assured me as his lips twitched at the corners in amusement. “Bailey just had a favor to ask, and it’s kind of a big one.”
I relaxed. “Oh, okay, what’s up?”
“Birdie has a shoot today?—”
“ForThe Vow, right, Billie mentioned it.”
“Oh, did she?” He seemed more amused that Billie had shared the information. It seemed she hadn’t mentioned that she’d been over last night. “Yeah, that’s the one. The family who was supposed to model all came down with the flu. Bailey is scrambling because the family is what they built the whole concept around. Flower girls, mom, dad, the works.”
“Brutal,” I said, sympathy rising. “So, she needs?—?”
“Your girls,” Cole said, nodding toward the lawn. “They’d be flower girls. It’s just for pictures, no actual wedding, obviously.”
"Oh, um, I don’t know if they would. Andi is really shy and…” as I said that both girls were chasing Leo and Luke around the front yard, screaming at the top of their lungs. “She’s shy around adults.”
