There she went again. Hinting at her own insecurities and making it impossible not to be one hundred percent honest. Wes stared hard at the reflective surface of the refrigerator. “Laura has been kind of down lately, saying she doesn’t have any friends. Which . . . I guess I brushed it off because of course she must have them. She’s cool and funny, right? But I think this is kind of important and I don’t know how to come through for her.” He turned and leaned back against the appliance. “We don’t have a lot of toys. I don’t even know if they’re still young enough to play with toys.”
“I played with my Barbies until I was nine.”
“Come over.” The request was out before he could lasso it, but he’d pictured Bethany throwing fancy dinner parties with dolls and he’d just . . . wanted to see her. Wanted her there. “I mean, come over?”
Silence. Then, “I mean . . . I guess two partially inept grown-ups equal one decent adult.”
Wes pushed off the fridge. “You’ll come?”
“It wouldn’t be a big deal,” Bethany said quickly.
“No, definitely not. Not a big deal.”
It was a huge deal. He’d asked for help and he was getting it.
Relying on someone else who seemed to have the power to make him happy, horny, frustrated, introspective, or pissed as hell. He’d kicked the rodeo gate open.
“I’d be doing it to help out Laura, of course. So she can make a good impression on her new friends.”
“Of course.”
“Do you have snacks?”
Wes turned on a dime and started to rummage through his cabinets. “Some stale pretzel goldfish . . .”
“Keep looking.”
His lips quirked up. “A bag of microwave popcorn.”
“Bingo. Fire that up and give them juice boxes.”
He listened to her footsteps on the other end of the phone and pictured her gorgeous ass twitching through the construction zone. Did he really ask her to wear those pink things again tomorrow? When the cameras would be back with all that lighting and zoom ability? “I changed my mind about the pants. Burn them.”
“I’m still expecting the flea collar.” He heard a door close. “I’ll just swing by my house to get out of these clothes—”
“By all means, get out of them here.”
“I’m not coming over if you’re going to act like a pervert.”
“It’s out of my system now. Promise.”
“Good. I’m hanging up now.”
“Bethany?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
A beat passed. “It’s for Laura.”
“Of course.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Chapter Twelve
Bethany kicked off her nasty work boots on the porch and stumbled into her house, already stripping off her smelly T-shirt and yoga pants. She started to leave them in a heap in the entryway, only making it two steps before going back, gathering them up, and putting them neatly in the laundry basket.
“What are you thinking?” she whispered to herself on the way up the stairs. By the time she finished scrubbing her grimy skin and rinsing off, a full five minutes had passed and she still hadn’t answered her own question. Already she was spending entirely too much time with Wes; now she was going over to help him babysit? Multiple kids? What she knew about children could fit inside of a shot glass. She knew even less about them than she knew about renovating a house. What had possessed her to take both of these new challenges on in the same week?
Careful not to slip on the tile floor, Bethany wrapped a towel around her body and stood in front of the bathroom mirror. No time to fix her hair and that was a shame. Clean, straightened hair always boosted her confidence. Her shot glass of children knowledge consisted of one fact—they preyed on the weak. She could remember her own glee as a third grader when a substitute teacher waltzed in, thinking they were going to follow the lesson plan. Sorry, sucker. Not today.
Now she was going to be the sucker.
She’d volunteered to be one.
“Okay, okay,” she breathed, moisturizing quickly and applying the barest layer of foundation, followed by a swipe of mascara. “You entertain dozens of women every week. You can handle some kindergartners.”
It was true, she did entertain the Just Us League members every Saturday night, but she only made it look easy when in truth she was overthinking every word out of her mouth, analyzing her friends’ comments to death, looking for some proof they were aware of her flaws. She loved the club. Loved the spirit and honesty and the women. But some part of her had always seen it as temporary. How long could she make them believe she was graceful and funny and dazzlingly carefree? What happened when they started to see through her?
Not wanting to examine those fears too deeply, Bethany hung up the towel, hunkering down to make sure the corners lined up, then marched through her bedroom to the closet. On the drive home, she’d mentally set aside an outfit and she reached for the ruffled denim romper now, putting it on and then sliding her feet into a pair of pointed white flats. She ran a brush through her hair and put it back in a high ponytail and, after stopping at the fridge to grab a slab of leftover wedding cake, then sailed out of the house with far more confidence than she felt.
In a matter of minutes, she was pulling into Wes’s driveway, parking behind his truck. “You can do this,” she said brightly to her reflection. “You can help babysit three little girls and leave them none the wiser that you’re a shocking mess.”
Cake in hand, she climbed the steps to Wes’s front door.
She’d barely raised her hand to knock when it flew open.
“What took you so long? They’re down to kernels, woman.”
She came very close to smashing the cake in his face. And seriously, why did her brain force her to register how sexy he looked even when his mouth was letting out rude shit? He hadn’t even bothered to change, still decked out in his worksite finest, hair mussed with dust, T-shirt wrinkled with dry sweat and plaster flakes. When he leaned a forearm on the doorjamb and made a sound of approval while looking her over, top to bottom, she refused to acknowledge the sliver of tight stomach revealed by his elevated T-shirt.
Or the fact that she’d gone home to change just so he’d look at her like this.
Dammit, though. She had, hadn’t she?
Someone really needed to overthrow her as leader of the Just Us League. She was a total fraud. It was just that no one had ever seen her in the states of dishevelment to which Wes had borne witness. He’d had the audacity to see her angry, crying, racked with stress, dirty. The utter nerve of him. Was it so much to ask that she be allowed to cast her usual spell for one afternoon?
“Step aside, cowboy. I brought cake.”
“And here I thought you were dessert.”
She held up a single finger. “You get one pass. That was it.”
His smile flashed white in his stubbled face and for a few, valuable seconds, she almost forgot he was twenty-damn-three. “I’ve been suitably warned.” He pushed the door open wider and eased out of her way. “Is that wedding cake?”
“Yes.” She stopped short in the entryway, her fingers dancing over the plastic wrap. “Did you . . . like the cake at the wedding?”