“Fuckin’ Torri,” I muttered as I tossed the phone on the bed beside him. “I fuckin’ hate her guts.”
Jimmy sighed. “She really shouldn’t have to do it at all.”
“She really shouldn’t have said she would, which was part of the reason Dad married his third wife, if she didn’t want to.” I said. “She knew what she was signing up for when she walked into his life.”
Jimmy didn’t say anything, ever the peace maker.
I chose to help him get out of bed.
“Do you want to shower today or tomorrow?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I didn’t get very dirty yesterday.”
I nodded once and walked to the drawer where he kept his clothes.
After selecting a new pair of underwear and some jeans for him, I walked over to the edge of the bed.
From there we managed to maneuver him into his underwear and jeans, it taking a bit longer than it took other people because he was just fuckin’ massive, and I was an ‘itty bitty thing’ according to him.
After having him clothed from the waist down, I found a t-shirt, snickering when I dressed him in one that I’d bought him last year that said ‘Talk to me Goose’ and pair of socks.
“Mom doesn’t dress me in weird shirts,” Jimmy muttered.
I snorted. “Your mother doesn’t want you to be embarrassed. I don’t care.”
He tugged my hair, then gestured to his chair beside the bed.
“Let’s move.”
I got him to the chair just as Martha came barreling into the room.
She went straight to Jimmy and didn’t say anything to me but a distracted ‘hi.’
I stared at Martha fawning over Jimmy and wished things were different.
Another vehicle had crashed into Martha’s small car when she’d pulled out. Jimmy and I had been in the back seat, Martha in the front.
She hadn’t seen the car she’d pulled out in front of, and for her troubles she’d lost Jimmy because my dad had been pissed that he now had to deal with a child that was paralyzed from the waist down.
Sensing that they’d like some alone time, I chose to give it to them instead of being ignored.
I knew they didn’t do it on purpose, but they were mother and son. I was just the half-sister.
I knew Martha loved me. Hell, she’d helped raise me since I was a toddler. But her love for me and her love for her own son couldn’t compare.
“Anything else I can do to help you get ready for work, Jimmy?” I called out, knowing I’d given Martha and Jimmy enough time.
Jimmy looked up and held out his hand.
I went to him and smiled, bringing that hand back up to my cheek.
“No,” he said. “I’ll get Mom to give me a ride. Thank you for coming over.”
I rolled my eyes and playfully punched Jimmy in the thigh.
Jimmy gave a fake ‘ow.’
I rolled my eyes.
What I would give for him to feel that pain.
“Love you guys. I’ll see y’all on Tuesday, hopefully,” I said as I gathered my purse and belongings up.
Martha gave me a quick hug. “Love you, too. Be careful at work tomorrow.”
I rolled my eyes. “Aren’t I always?”
Martha gave me a pointed look. “No.”
That was true.
I wasn’t always careful.
“I’ll be as careful as I can be,” I admitted. “Y’all have a good one.”
With that I left before I could be mothered anymore.
I knew that Martha meant well, and I loved her like I once did my own mother, but I didn’t have any choice where I worked. I couldn’t be picky seeing as every single job I was ever hired onto fired me within a week.
See, Royal St. James was a royal fuck-up. A royal pain in the ass. A royal nothing.
I had a special set of skills. A special set of skills that nearly always got me fired—at least before I’d started working my current job—in trouble, or both.
Then again, I didn’t really try to keep my jobs when I was younger.
I knew it pissed my father off to know that I job-hopped as much as I did, but when I felt the urge to wander, I had.
Speaking of my father, I wasn’t out of the house for a whole minute before he was calling me.
I answered with a long-suffering sigh.
“Hello, Dad. How are you today?” I called out jovially.
“Get that woman out of my house,” were my father’s first words to me that morning.
I looked at my phone and considered hanging up, but he’d just call back.
And I didn’t want to deal with the asshole’s constant pestering.
He would bother the shit out of me until he got to say what he wanted to say, and then I’d agree just because that’s the only way he would stop, and do what I wanted the next day regardless of the previous day’s lecture.
“I can’t,” I said. “I’m already gone.”
“You just left the house. I can see you in the driveway still,” he said, not sounding amused.
I shrugged, knowing he could see me on the security system camera. “I can’t. I have an appointment with my gynecologist. I may have a sexually transmitted disease and can’t miss it,” I lied. “And since Torri isn’t here to help him, I had no choice but to call Martha.”
My dad was silent on the other end of the line for a few seconds, then he cleared his throat. “I hope that’s a joke.”
It was, but I wasn’t going to tell him it was.
The more annoyed I made my dad, the more he focused on me and the less he focused on the woman in his house that loved her son.
“Anyway,” I said. “If you’d just allow Martha to come over every day to help like she wants to, Torri wouldn’t have to be the one to half-ass him getting ready.”
And Jimmy wouldn’t have to come over to my job or Martha’s bakery and have one of us help him change his underwear because Torri didn’t feel like doing it that day.
“That woman is not allowed in my house anymore,” he said, angry and pissed, I was sure more at my words about having an STD rather than at Martha now.
“That woman loves her son and wants to help,” I said. “And I’ll keep inviting her over to help because I want to.”
My father didn’t say anything. “I’ll change the codes to the house and you won’t be able to come over anymore.”
I laughed at that. “Your precious Jimmy would hate that. And he’d eventually wear you down.”
Just like he always did.
My dad threatened and implemented the ‘keep Royal out’ plan at least once every couple of months. It’d last for about two or three days before Jimmy was able to convince my father to let me back into the door.
Then Jimmy would call me and tell me to come over the next morning, and I would.
It pissed my dad off to no end, but he loved Jimmy, and inevitably would give him whatever he wanted.
“I do hope if you end up having an STD that you find whomever you gave it to and inform him.” My father hung up.
I opened the door to my SUV—the one that Jimmy had helped convince my father that I needed to haul him around—and got in.
I tossed my phone onto the center console and backed out of the driveway before heading in the direction of home.
I was tired as hell.
I’d been up since the night before, unable to sleep, and I could use some shut eye.
But first, I stopped by Martha’s bakery and got a pastry.
It was while I was leaving, stuffing my face full of a massive blueberry muffin, that I nearly ran straight into a wall of muscle.
I inhaled deeply and sucked bits of muffins into the wrong pipe. My eyes watered, and I began coughing, bits of muffin spraying out onto a massively beautiful, defined chest.
Once I realized what I was doing, I turned and coughed sideways. All the while, the wall of muscle didn�
�t move.
Through bleary, tear-filled eyes I cleared my throat and looked at the man that had nearly been the cause of my demise.
And froze.
That was because the wall of muscle was…beautiful.
He was tall—way taller than me—with dirty blond, messy hair. He had the most beautiful crystal-clear blue eyes that I’d ever seen, set in a tanned face. A tanned face that had the same color beard with just a hint of red in it. That beard circled a perfect set of plump red lips.
Red lips that were turned down in a frown.
I followed the muscled column of his throat to a black t-shirt. The collar of his black t-shirt had a pair of Ray-Ban Aviator glasses hooked to it.
And the man’s tattooed, muscular arms were now crossed intimidatingly over his chest.
A chest that had food on it—from me.
That was when I reached forward and started cleaning off my coughed-up blueberry muffin pieces off of his chest.
And oh, God. That chest felt like ecstasy underneath my hands.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I brushed the crumbs away.
The man’s hands caught mine, and he slowly set me away.
“I got it,” he said. “You’re good.”
I wasn’t good. I was dying.
“Uhh,” I hesitated. “Okay.”
The man’s eyes met mine.
That was when I felt myself freeze.
His eyes were…scary.
Scary was the only word that could describe them.
I felt like he could see straight into my soul with those eerie, witch eyes.
“Have a good one,” I said, scrambling my way around him.
But with the way he was standing in the doorway, I had to brush my entire body against his to get away.
And God, his body.
If his arms and chest had been defined, that was nothing compared to the abs that I could see through his t-shirt.
There was no way in hell the man belonged here then. Who in their right mind, with a body like his, would be caught dead in a bakery? There was no way he maintained a body like he did while also eating sweets.
Trying to ignore the way my breasts felt while grazing his arm, I hurried outside and told my nipples to get themselves under control.
I didn’t look back until I was in my car.
And when I did, I was shocked stupid to see him staring at me.
Starting my car, I backed out of the parking spot and jetted in the direction of home, all the while confused on why my heart felt like it was beating straight out of my chest.
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