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It was awkward. I didn’t enjoy having help when I was working unless it was someone in the business or my dad, but it was even worse when the guy helping me was as hot as Brantley.
All the hot guys I knew, I’d known for years. We were friends, and aside from misplaced teenage crushes and a few—ahem—slightly inappropriate adult fantasies I’d since grown out of, I couldn’t see them that way anymore. Our relationship was mostly business now, and it was pretty obvious that my dating life was severely lacking in the hot guy department.
Well, the decent hot guy department.
Not to mention we had nothing to talk about. I didn’t know a damn thing about him, and after my foot-in-mouth moment yesterday, I was afraid to ask.
Honestly, I’d probably mean to say, “How are you?” and it would come out, “How big is your cock?”
That’s just the way it was for me.
And it wasn’t the least bit appropriate with the tiny people on the other side of the room. Who were making absolutely no progress with their paper scraping. But then they were using bright pink and blue plastic knives, so what did I expect?
“So,” Brantley said, breaking the agonizingly awkward silence that had lingered between us for almost an hour. “What made you go into building? Handywork? What do you call it?”
“Handywork, generally, because we do a bit of everything.” I peeled a long strip off paper off the wall.
God, it was so satisfying. Almost comparable to an orgasm.
Jesus. I needed to get laid. Or a life.
Preferably a life in which I got laid. Regularly.
“Interesting. Your dad is a carpenter?”
I nodded. “He loves it all, but that’s his true passion. He’s the reason I do this.”
“It’s different, don’t you think? I’ve never met any woman who wanted to go into this field.”
“Different is a word for it,” I said slowly. “I don’t think it’s the career I chose. More in that it chose me, and I fell in love with it as a young girl. Now, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I don’t think I could do anything else.”
“Really? You wouldn’t do anything else?”
“I’m gonna be a superhewo,” Eli said, knocking the knife against the wall.
Ellie blew a raspberry. “You can’t fwy,” she said in that way only four-year-olds can—sarcasm and sass wrapped up in innocence. “Superhewos have to fwy.”
“Not true,” Brantley replied. “Most of them can’t actually fly.”
Eli grinned. “I need a cape and then I can!”
“Capes don’t make you fwy!” Ellie shouted, pointing her plastic knife at him. “Magic makes you fwy!”
“Superhewos aren’t magic! They’re super!”
Well. That was a good argument.
“Superhewos are stupid,” Ellie carried on. “Who wants to be beaten up by bad guys? You should be a pwincess instead.”
Eli wrinkled his face up as if the idea was completely disgusting. “Only girls are pwincesses!”
“Then I’ll be a pwincess and you can’t come in my castle!”
“I’ll destroy your castle!”
“Okay!” Brantley put down his scraper and stepped between them, then crouched down. “Ellie, if you want to be a princess, be a princess. But it’s only nice to let your brother in your castle, okay? And Eli—if you destroy her castle, that makes you a super-villain, not a super-hero.”
Eli frowned.
“You’ll be Loki and not Thor.”
“I don’t wanna be Woki,” he said in a small voice. “Ewwie, if you wet me in your castle, I won’t break it.”
Ellie narrowed her eyes. “Will you save my castle from super-viw—super…bad people?”
Brantley fought a smile.
“Only if you have candy.”
“Okay. I have candy.”
“Shake hands,” Brantley ordered. “Then it’s the law.”
I raised my eyebrows. The law? Wasn’t that slightly extreme?
Their little hands met in the middle and they shook three times.
“Do they ever not fight?” I asked when he rejoined me.
He opened his mouth to answer, then paused, looking from the twins to me, clearly considering his answer. “I don’t know…It’s been a long time since we had a day without fighting. They’re so similar, I don’t think they know how not to disagree.”
That made sense. “Well, I have to admit that’s the strangest argument I’ve ever been privy to.”
He dipped his head as he picked up his scraper and laughed quietly. “Don’t put your expectations so low. There’s every chance you’ll hear something way weirder than that before you’re done here.”
“Really?”
He looked me dead in the eye and said, “Last night, after bathtime, we had an argument over who has the best genitals.”
I blinked at him. “The best…genitals,” I echoed.
What the hell?
“Eli insisted it was his because he can play with it. I told him we’d revisit this conversation in ten years.”
I snorted, quickly clapping my hand over my mouth to disguise the dreadful noise.
Brantley had caught it, though, and he flashed me a quick smirk, his turquoise eyes shining with mirth. Then, he turned away, back to the wall he’d been working on.
