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Greenish-brown eyes.
“Fucking hell,” I bit out.
It didn’t matter what color her eyes were.
“Oooh, Uncle Burke said a really bad word.”
“Yeah, he did. Just add it to the list of why he’s never allowed to babysit,” my sister said. Behind her kids’ heads, Tansy shot me a dirty look.
My face felt hot. “What? I didn’t know I had an audience.”
My nephew, Ford, grinned, and his twin sister, Felicia, studied me with open curiosity.
“Sorry, guys,” I told them. “I didn’t know you were back.”
Felicia hopped over to my chair and perched on the footstool. Her eyes were big and blue, just like my sister’s. “When you move out and get your own house, can we have sleepovers?”
“I don’t think your mom will trust me with a sleepover just yet.”
“Not with that language, I won’t,” Tansy said. She took a seat next to me and sighed as she stretched her legs out. “This is nice. Kids, if you go now, you have enough time to swim before dinner.”
They ran off, hooting and hollering in excitement.
I eyed them as they disappeared into the house. “Don’t they swim every single day?”
“Yup.” She pointed to my phone. “What made you so mad?”
I sighed. “Nothing.”
“The Michigan house?”
“Don’t want to talk about it, Tans.”
She shook her head. “Poor Burke. Someone hands you a gorgeous old house and a professional to run the project for you. Let me scrounge up all my sympathy.” She patted the front pockets of her shorts, then opened her purse. “Nope. Fresh out. Sorry.”
“You didn’t see it. Trust me, no one would call it gorgeous.”
She snatched my phone and tapped in the security code.
“How do you know that?” I asked.
Tansy ignored me and scrolled through the exchange with Charlotte. “You’re not going for these interviews?” Her jaw fell open. “Gawd, you are being such an ass to her!”
My face felt warm, and I chalked it up to the sun. “I don’t need to babysit what she’s doing there. She wouldn’t want me to.”
“She’s asking you to be part of this.” Tansy stared me down, that horrible, weighted sisterly stare that she’d perfected in middle school. “You’re the investor, for all intents and purposes, right? You’re the money. The one who directs the big picture. And you’re bailing on her.”
“She is more than capable of handling it on her own.”
“Were Chris and Amie not part of the renovation?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to talk about whether they were or not.
“I know Chris was busy with football, but you can’t tell me his wife wouldn’t have been up to her armpits in this project, because she knew how important it was to him.”
When I closed my eyes, I got flashes of Amie playing pranks on Chris when he and I lived together. Jumping out and scaring him. Scaring me too, which made it a bit less funny.
The way she rubbed his shoulders after we’d had a hard practice.
