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It was only a matter of time before the thing rolled down, crushing her.
Bryce scrolled through her contacts. Imani was out of town with Zander. Patty was on a clandestine date—one she was keeping from her sons—and Bryce didn’t have Kate Sweet-Matthews’s number. Willow, Patty’s amazing front end manager, was in Buffalo for a rock concert. There was nobody left to ask, except…
Her gaze landed on Ryker’s name and their multiple texts with terrible mechanic jokes—a daily thing they’d been doing since that night at his garage. Her stomach fluttered at the thought of seeing him—the good anticipatory feeling she hadn’t had in forever. When she’d kissed his cheek, his expression had hinted that he’d felt the same sparks. But asking him to babysit? The bubbly feeling soured at asking a favor from a guy she was crushing on.
Then her eyes spotted her checkbook. Although it was closed, she knew the figures inside, and it wasn’t good.
Shame was a more expensive emotion than she could afford at the moment.
She hit the icon for Ryker, and when he picked up, she asked her favor in a rush of words.
“I already owe you for buying out the downtown pharmacy of period products and for fixing my rattling car, but I need help. Can you watch my nieces for about an hour in my upstairs apartment while I meet with my clients at PattyCakes?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Yes. When do you need me?”
Bryce winced, her voice strangled as she admitted, “My clients are due in a little over twenty minutes.”
“I’ll be there in five.”
***
A half hour later, Bryce was seated with the future Mr. and Mrs. Strickland with taster plates and linen napkins in front of them, explaining each nibble, writing down their preferences and reassuring them it would really be this good when there were two hundred, versus two, of them.
But in her head she wished she was upstairs.
Ryker had shown up, as promised, in five minutes. He was in a pair of garage coveralls so clean they looked like they were for show versus work. He wore black Chuck Taylors, and smelled a little of cars and the spicy scent of whatever cologne or body spray he bought—the one Bryce was convinced must be manufactured in some illegal pheromone laboratory whose goal was to cause clitoral explosions everywhere.
The smell of him made her want to cancel her catering clients to breathe him in. All. Night. Long.
Instead, she smiled politely at the young couple sitting at the fifties-style red-and-chrome table. The two were tall, blond, and had teeth so blindingly white they might’ve been models for wedding cake toppers. The guy was a tanned Ken doll who might easily double as a Hollister mannequin, and Bryce found herself mesmerized by the future Mrs. Strickland’s symmetrical perfection. You could draw a line down the woman, fold her in half, and she’d match right down to the same cup size. Bryce guessed the bride-to-be was a card-carrying member of the Itty-Bitty-Titty-Committee but was wearing a cheater water bra that gave her a generous B cup. She fantasized how awesome it must be to wear a lacy bra with wispy-thin straps, never worrying if you had on the right bra for your DDs to handle any high-impact activity. Like jogging to catch the UPS guy to mail a package.
Bryce shook herself out of the IBTC fantasy, recovering her sales groove.
“This is the latest trend in wedding dining—the mini-bites. Everyone will have a salad to start, then hit the buffet, which will be filled with these choices. Stuffed portabella mushrooms for your vegetarian guests, teriyaki chicken drumettes, mini stuffed shells, shrimp, and of course they’ll have me—a chef to sauce it all up for them.” Bryce smiled, indicating the variety of homemade sauces she’d prepared for each of the menu options.
The groom-to-be began stuffing everything into his mouth at once, sans sauce. But the bride had a chef’s palate. She carved a perfect triangle out of the portabella, dipped it into Bryce’s fresh green goddess sauce, then bit into it.
She closed her eyes, then moaned. “This is incredible.”
Bryce suppressed a smile. The IBTC bride-to-be was hers.
The rest of the appointment flew by as the picture-perfect couple tried various bites: yes to the mushrooms and mini-quiches; no to the shrimp-deviled eggs. Yes to the field green salad drizzled with a lemon-poppyseed dressing; no to the mini Caesar salads with the homemade croutons. Although, Bryce noticed, they both ate every bite of the “no” items, clearly impressed.
Almost two hours later, she had the deposit check in her hand and the Strickland wedding date inked in her calendar. Bryce was elated, but as she took the stairs two at a time—holding her hands over her boobs because she’d worn the T-shirt bra for its nipple-hiding and smoothing effect, which had absolutely no support for the girls at all—she worried. She’d thought she’d heard someone on the stairs earlier and was stressed that something had happened, but nobody came into PattyCakes. While she hadn’t heard any shouting or overly loud wrestling-match-type shenanigans in the time she’d been serving the future Mr. and Mrs. Strickland, she had spent the whole meeting anxious.
Had the girls survived Ryker as a babysitter? Had Ryker survived them?
Throwing open the door, she moved to go into the living room but heard the girls’ voices in one of the bedrooms.
“Hello?” she called, and suddenly they all came tumbling out of Addison and Cecily’s shared room. First June, with a bemused grin replacing the sarcasm typically etched on her face, then Cecily, who was so excited she almost fell as she skittered out in her dirty sock feet. Trailing them was Addison, who exited the room fairy wings first as she tugged a reluctant Ryker into the hallway.
As soon as they came into the light of the kitchen, Bryce figured out why.
Ryker looked like he’d been given a makeover by a drunken, blindfolded Kardashian.
The guy, still dressed in his mechanic’s overalls, was completely transformed from the neck up. He was all glittery blue eyeshadow and glopped-on mascara. He held his baseball cap in his hand, because twenty different-colored barrettes were clipped to his short dirty-blond hair. His perpetual five-o’clock shadow was gummed up with peach blush, which clashed with his punk-rock-purple-painted lips.
“Hey.” That was all he said. And really, what else was there to say?
