Mr. Savior: A Roommate Hero Romance

by Sullivan, Piper

  I groaned. My mother Sabrina only had two children with James Worthington, my dad: Grant who was dating one of the governor’s daughters, and me. Painfully, permanently single me. “That makes sense. Grant was waiting for me when I got off work, issuing an invite on Mom’s behalf. I wondered why.”

  “Well, now we know. Preston will soon be off the market.” Ry’s voice boomed loudly, a sure sign that he was either alone or in the presence of one of his three sisters, who loved to pretend they had crushes on me.

  “Seeing as she hasn’t apologized to me, I won’t be there on Sunday.” And, now that I knew what her motives were, I’d make sure to be busy. “Work.”

  “I feel your pain, man, I really do. Even if you would be doing me a solid by going to this party and getting some numbers for me. These chicks are rich, right?”

  I laughed. Ry talked a big game, but he was the proverbial nice guy. “You can go in my place, since Mom will definitely have a place setting for me.” So few people went against her wishes, she’d grown to expect that the whole world would bow down at her bidding.

  “I’d rather have you do the heavy lifting.”

  I wouldn’t be doing any lifting. I’d be at work on Sunday until late in the afternoon, and then I would sleep at least ten hours. And there would be no husband-hunters to be seen. “If you don’t show up in my place, you’ll have to make it happen with Lefty and Righty.”

  Ry barked out a laugh that was way too loud and way too amused for my liking. “I always find a way. So, am I gonna see you at the Black Thumb tonight?”

  I glanced down at the beer in my hand and at the other dripping condensation on the wooden slats next to me before I turned my gaze back to the lake, smiling. “Nah. I’m fine right where I am.”

  Nina

  Early mornings were the worst, even in a beautiful place like Tulip. But I had already agreed to this damn camping trip, which, for some reason, had to take place at the absolute ass crack of dawn. Why did I do this to myself? I knew the answer — Buddy had said it a few days ago. I was a softy. Despite my best efforts, with my badass ‘don’t fuck with me’ persona, the ink and the piercings, I was a big ol’ softy.

  That, and the fact that these people were genuinely nice. Annoyingly nice, even, which made it hard to be a bitch to anyone and even harder to say no. Which is exactly how I found myself walking up First Street, Tulip’s answer to Main Street, before the sun even rose.

  But I wasn’t prepared for a weekend filled with seven- to nine-year-old girls. Or a weekend spent in the woods. Serial killers and other crazies didn’t avoid places because they were part of the National Parks System.

  Walking along First Street, right down the middle of the road, I took in the quiet beauty of the town. Brick sidewalks gave Tulip’s downtown a welcoming, cozy feel, which was enhanced by colorful awnings announcing the quirky names of locally-owned businesses. There was the diner, Big Mama’s Place, where you could get the best scrambled eggs on the planet. Next door was the Bloomin’ Tulip Bookstore, which had been around since well before e-books were a thing, and its bright rainbow awning often gave people the wrong impression. Tulip boasted two small women’s boutiques, side by side, just before you got to Bo’s General Store, where you could find everything from farming equipment to blue jeans, gas grills to Brie.

  It was truly a picture-perfect small town, with trimmed trees along the streets adorned with twinkle lights that flickered on as the sun’s light grew dim and oversized flowerpots beside the entrances to each business. And, of course, the statue of Tulip Worthington, though it hadn’t fared well during the tornado that blew through town at the start of spring.

  Tulip had been a pioneer in her own right, running away from home at the age of sixteen to avoid marrying a man twice her age she didn’t love. She’d thought of heading west, as many people had done at the time, but had stopped to regroup in this part of Texas and never left, after falling in love with a local farmer and helping him turn a little flower operation into what was now a multi-million dollar corporation. At least, that was the story I’d been told.

  Over and over again.

  Ad nauseum.

  But Tulip was looking a little worse for wear — the statue, as well as the fountain and garden surrounding it, was in desperate need of a makeover. Soon, ol’ girl. Soon.

  As I approached the meet-up spot just beyond Tulip’s statue, I ducked into Bo’s for a very large cup of coffee.

  “Mornin’ Nina!” Bo waved, her thick brown hair falling silkily around her shoulders. Her blue eyes were sparkling too brightly for this time of the morning.

  “Hey Bo, how’s it going?”

  “Not too bad. Not yet, anyway. Coffee? I just got in this new hazelnut stuff that people seem to love.” She chuckled to herself as she reached for a cup and the pot of coffee behind her. “Cass refuses to get the flavored stuff, so I figured this wasn’t cutting in on her business.”

  “Any business that can’t handle a little competition is a business that will soon fail.” I’d heard that enough from different employers over the years to know it was true. “And make that coffee as big as you’ve got. Please.”

  With a soft, feminine laugh, Bo set out a large disposable cup and began to pour. “Ready for your weekend in the woods?”

  “You heard about that too, huh? Well, I’m not ready, not even a little bit. What if I lose a kid or something?”

  “There will be other mothers with you, plus the Tulip Troop Leader. You’ll be fine.”

  I had my doubts, but I kept them to myself and busied myself grabbing a few snack items that would make the perfect bribes for good behavior this weekend. “I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  After I paid for my loot, I hurried back outside before someone thought the new chick had flaked on her responsibilities. I wasn’t the first person to arrive, but thankfully, I also wasn’t the last.

  A few moms huddled together over coffee while their girls chatted excitedly near the bright blue school bus rented to take us to our camping spot, or close to it. I didn’t know any of the women well enough to offer anything more than a wave and a nod in greeting, so I started loading my gear.

  “Hey Nina, glad you could make it.”

  I smiled as I backed out of the seat I’d chosen all the way in the back of the bus, turning in the direction of my friend Max’s voice. “I’m here,” I confirmed, “and I’m prepared for just about anything.”

  Maxine Nash had been the first person to befriend me on my second day in Tulip. With curly red hair, big green eyes, and enough curves to make Sofia Vergara jealous, Max was a vibrant single mother who cooked the best food I’d ever had the fortune of tasting. “You’ll be fine. The girls love you and they listen to you, which puts my mind at ease.”

  As the official leader of the Tulip Buds, the name assigned to the youngest group of Tulip’s Troops, the safety of everyone involved in this trip fell on Max’s shoulders — which is how I got roped into this in the first place.

  While I had my doubts about the girls, with plenty of other moms around I figured I was the designated fun grownup. By the time the bus was loaded with gear and the girls, though, tension started to creep in.

  As we left the town of Tulip behind and the girls were on their thirtieth bottle of perfume on the wall, I was dancing on the edges of a full-blown panic attack. It was a special kind of torture, one that ended only when the bus came to a stop in one of the parking lots outside the seemingly endless national park.

  “Thank god,” I whispered to Max, who shook her head with a soft chuckle.

  “That wasn’t too painful, right?”

  Easy for her to say, since she was used to the chaos of having kids around. Between her adorable daughter and her friends, the stress of being a caterer and business owner, Max thrived on challenge. I, on the other hand, had been alone for most of my life — this kind of activity was new to me.

  After my father died, my mom spent less and less time at home, until f
inally, she just stopped coming home altogether. My Uncle Rudy stepped in and raised me from the time I was seven until he died after I turned twelve.

  I spent the next three years bouncing from foster home to foster home, dealing with money grubbers, perverts, abusers, and the occasional genuine people before I called it quits. Unwilling to continue being tangled up in the system, I stayed under the radar for a few years, got my GED, and left St. Louis behind for good. So yeah, my life was mostly quiet, and this was… not.

  “Not if you gave birth to one of the little tone-deaf divas, I suppose.”

  “What about me, Nina?” Max’s seven-year-old daughter looked up at me with big brown eyes, her lopsided red ponytail swinging behind her. “Am I tone deaf, too?”

  Callie was quite possibly the cutest little girl in town, with that generous sprinkling of freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks. “I heard one voice that sounded pretty damn good.” She gasped at my language, and I shrugged as I crouched down to bring my face level with hers. “I thought it was me, at first, but then I remembered I can’t sing, so it must’ve been you.”

  “Really?” The awe in her voice gripped my heart and I smiled.

  “Yep. I’m sorry to have to tell you that you have terrible taste in music though, squirt.”

  She laughed. “Hey, I’m a kid. You can’t say that!”

  “I just did. Now, grab your gear so we can get this show on the road.”

  Not that Callie or any of the other buds offered much help when it came to putting up tents or setting up camp, but they were the troops and we had to let them earn their badges.

  Or try, anyway.

  I’d only been at this camping thing for about six hours, but other than a headache, things were going well. Two girls were on time-out in their tents for mocking Bailey, a quiet seven-year-old with white-blond hair who had just moved to town.

  Was it wrong to call nine-year-old girls, bitches? Probably, so I kept the thought to myself.

  The kids sat around the fire in groups of two or three, chatting with more animation than any human needed. Max and Callie were huddled together, watching another girl working on getting a smaller fire going. Bailey sat on the other side of the big fire, all alone, so I figured I’d better set a good example by trying to include her. “Hey kid, what are you doing here all by yourself?”

  She shrugged, barely looking up as I took a seat on the log beside her. “Just watchin’.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You do?” She looked over at me cautiously.

  I nodded. “Of course, I do. I moved here recently too, and it’s hard to find out where you belong in a place where the people have known each other since the day they were born.”

  “I’m not good at making friends,” Bailey confessed.

  “Me, either. Max was the first person to befriend me.” She’d accosted me in the grocery store, looking for someone to act as a guinea pig for her new recipes. From then on, she hadn’t let me get away with not being part of the community.

  “Callie, too,” Bailey said sadly. She was a shy girl who probably relied on having friendly, outgoing friends more than she should. “I like your tattoos.”

  “Thanks, you’re one of the few people around here who does.” Everyone stared. Half of them probably thought I was some disgraced biker chick, but they were far too polite to say it out loud. “What badges do you plan to earn this weekend, Bailey?”

  She shrugged. “I already know how to start a fire, so I guess first aid, environmental stewardship, and nature identification?”

  “You guess?”

  “Yeah. I’m good at following directions, but some of them need you to have a buddy and I don’t have one. Callie and Toni are already buddies.”

  Well, shit. How did parents walk around all the time with their hearts bleeding and breaking for their kids? “Then I guess we’ll be buddies, and that’s good news for you — I don’t need any badges. You can teach me all this stuff and probably get yourself some kind of teacher badge.”

  Bailey giggled, but her face still looked serious. “Thank you.”

  “Anytime, kid. Now, let’s get over there before all the marshmallows are gone.” I stood and held out my hand, waiting patiently because I knew exactly what it meant to be a stubborn little kid. Plus, I was pretty confident I could out stubborn her any day of the week. “Well?”

  “Fine.” Sighing, she took my hand and let me tug her to the other side of the campfire where she grabbed two sticks, marshmallows, and s’mores ingredients.

  Then, she retired back to the other side of the fire. I grinned. Bailey was my kind of kid.

  Preston

  Days off were precious to me, because of how the NPS configured schedules. Working three days on with two days off meant I had to get everything — including cleaning, shopping, running errands, and even doctor’s appointments — done in those two days. There was no relaxing on my days off until all the busy work was out of the way.

  Today was a rare full day of no work — I’d gotten everything done yesterday, which meant the entire day was mine. I didn’t plan to do a damn thing, other than watch TV and maybe finish building the bookshelf I’d started months ago.

  Even that was a big fat maybe.

  But the sound of the doorbell over the hard rock music blaring from my stereo put a major kink in my plans. Resisting the temptation to pretend I didn’t hear it, I pulled the door open to see Ry standing on the front porch. “What are you doing here?”

  “Good to see you too, butthead.” He punched my shoulder and walked right inside, like it was his house instead of mine — something we’d been doing since we were boys. “I figured you were over here wallowing, and I thought you might want some company.”

  “Not really.” I grinned at Ry as he surveyed the room. “But, since you brought beer, you can stay.”

  “Gee, thanks.” His sardonic tone pulled a smile from me and he glanced around the living room at the empty pizza box and beer bottles that littered the coffee table. “Look at this dump. Your anal retentiveness must be on the fritz,” he teased, pounding on my back like it was an old school TV.

  “Stop that.” I smacked his hand away and he laughed, following me to the kitchen. “I wasn’t in a cleaning mood this weekend, sue me.”

  “It’s not like you can’t afford a cleaning lady.”

  “You know why I don’t.” My trust fund had been released when I turned twenty-five and, since it had been put in place by my grandfather, mom couldn’t use it to punish me or manipulate me to get her way.

  “I know, but I still don’t understand.” Ry shook his head, but dropped the subject. “Maybe you could get me a cleaning lady, then? My birthday is coming up.”

  “In, like, six months,” I shot back and made my way to the kitchen.

  “Still coming up,” he explained with a shrug and shoved the six pack in the fridge, pulling out two already cold beers and handing one to me. “You really aren’t going to your mom’s dinner party this weekend?”

  Everyone in Tulip knew about Sabrina Worthington’s infamous dinner parties and thought it was a privilege to get an invite. Me excluded.

  “If Mom can so easily dismiss me from the family for my choices, she can be a damned adult and apologize if she wants our relationship to change. Until that happens, I’ll only show up to public events.”

  “You think the town doesn’t notice?”

  I was sure they did; the main currency in Tulip was gossip. “You think I care?” It had hurt at first, admittedly, that one little difference of opinion had pretty much cost me my family, but as time wore on, the pain had turned to anger and frustration to the point that it had stopped mattering to me. “Besides, I’m happy where I am.”

  “Are you?”

  “Hell, yes. All those charity functions where more money goes to putting on the event than to the actual charity, the gorgeous empty shells of women groomed to become trophy wives, the constant talk of business, vacations
, and material bullshit — no, thank you.”

  “Let’s go back to these gorgeous empty shells for a moment.”

  We both laughed at that, having experienced our fair share of girls “slumming it” with men they’d never consider husband material: an EMT and a search and rescue worker.

  “Did you finally strike out with little miss mysterious?” Ry’s mystery crush had him all tied up, but he still wouldn’t say anything about her. Trying to guess her identity had become my favorite pastime.

  “Nah, she’s going out of town this weekend. Soon though, I’ll ask her.”

  “You’ve been saying that for months.” Ry glared at me and I chuckled, nodding toward the back deck. “Come on, those steaks aren’t gonna cook themselves.”

  Ry pushed past me to the spice rack his baby sister had given me as a housewarming gift. “Thank goodness for Shelby or we’d be eating plain beef.” He pulled out a few small glass bottles and sprinkled various seasonings on both sides of the meat before pushing it aside. “I know you have fries in the freezer; pop’em into the oven.”

  I knew the drill. This was our routine whenever we hung out: steak and fries, with beer on my deck. “Happy, chef?”

  “Ecstatic. So, tell me how the Worthington clan is handling the fact that the whole town wants to help repair Tulip’s Tribute?”

  “No clue. Contrary to what my mother thinks, the entire world doesn’t revolve around what she wants. Besides, the town council took it out of her hands,” I told him with a smile. “Probably because she thinks throwing money at every problem puts her in charge of it all.”

  “Including your love life.”

  “Especially that,” I groaned. Just thinking about her interference pissed me off. “This dinner party will be the perfect time for her to learn another valuable lesson — if I do choose to settle down, it will be with a woman I choose for reasons I deem important.”

  Besides, how Mom thought she could get one of her society girls to marry a man who wore a uniform to work and climbed rough terrain for a living was beyond me.