The doorbell rang again right as I reached for the knob. Perfect. An impatient ne’er-do-well. Poor little Jeremy was just going to have to find another way to pay for his tattoo machine.
I wrenched open the door, prepared to be polite but firm. There was no way I was inviting this guy in for even so much as a cup of coffee. I would just have to explain to him that Luke should have checked with me first, and—
My mouth fell open. Standing in front of me was six foot two, two hundred pounds of lean, muscled...man. Dark hair peeked out from beneath the brim of a navy blue Remington Woodworking ball cap. Deep green eyes, long eyelashes, firmly molded lips, and the broadest, squarest shoulders I’d seen outside of the pages of a magazine.
Holy Mary, Mother of God.
A helpless, mildly hysterical giggle escaped my traitorous lips. This was poor little Jeremy?
Chapter 5
“Meg?” His voice was deep and a little rough and slightly hypnotic and—
“Uh, yes?” I’d never been more aware of my rumpled bed head, and my big fat unattractive puffy bathrobe, which did nothing to hide my pot belly. If anything, it accentuated it.
“It’s me, Jeremy Remington. I hope I didn’t wake you.” He smiled then, revealing perfect white teeth and tiny dimple near the side of his mouth. Swoon.
“No. No. I was just...drinking coffee.” I lifted my “I’d rather be at Pemberley” mug in the air. Stupid, Meg. Of course you were drinking coffee.
He stood there for a minute, a slight frown replacing his smile. “Can I come in?” he finally asked.
“Of...of course.” Oh, crap. I’d been staring at him when I should have been inviting him in. Every single thought I’d had before I opened the door fled as I moved back and opened it wider to allow Jeremy to enter. “Come in.”
I turned to lead him into the living room, super glad I’d cleaned so thoroughly the night before. I glanced back to notice that he was still standing on my blue flowered welcome mat.
“Should I take off my boots?” he asked.
One glance at his boots and I immediately wanted him to remove them. They looked dusty and speckled with what appeared to be wood chips. But years of being an overly controlling neat freak had taught me that other people tended to think you were a big weirdo when you did things like ask them to take off their shoes when they entered your house. “Oh, I don’t mind—”
“Yes! Take them off,” came Luke’s voice from the kitchen. “She’ll freak if you don’t.”
My free hand went to my hip. “I will not!” I called back before realizing that listening to a fight between siblings rivaled big fat puffy bathrobes for non-sexy things. I turned back to Jeremy to see him already dutifully removing his boots. Now that was sexy, and the fact that he had asked? Double swoon. I shut my mouth and gave him a sheepish, grateful shrug. “Thanks,” I said.
“No problem. My grandma won’t let me wear shoes in her house, either.”
Oh, great. I’m like his grandma. Speaking of non-sexy things...
I turned back to the living room, doing my best to hide my bare hobbit feet under my robe, just as Luke came out of the kitchen to join us.
“Hey, good to see you, Remington.” The two gave each other some sort of bro-handshake/back-slap thing that only heterosexual men do. Well, I’d never seen Harrison do it, but that wasn’t the point.
I gave Jeremy another sheepish smile and pointed a finger in the air. “Would you excuse me for just one sec?”
“Sure.” There was that knee-weakening smile again.
Tossing my brother a furious, how-could-you-do-this-to-me look, I hurried into the kitchen, set my mug on the counter, pulled my MacBook off the table, and spun it around. I pulled up Instagram and searched for my brother’s account. Finding it, I scrolled down, down, down. Yep, there. There was the hot guy from his Instagram feed. The one I’d been eyeing for months. It was Jeremy. I hadn’t made the connection until just now. Nice.
Luke came hurrying in. “What are you doing? Remington came here to talk to you, not me.”
“This is Jeremy!” I pointed an accusing finger at the screen.
“Yeah.” My brother gave me a “duh” look. “I told you that you must have seen him.”
My eyes widened, all the implications of this scenario falling into place. I hissed at him in a whisper, “The hot guy I’ve been fantasizing about for the last six months on your Instagram feed is poor little Jeremy from high school?”
Luke’s lips puckered and his eyes narrowed like he’d just eaten a raw egg. “Eww. I didn’t need to know that. But yes, that’s him. Always has been. And if you thought he was so hot, why didn’t you ask me about him?”
“I’m in a relationship!”
“With a gay guy!”
“Harrison’s not gay. He’s—”
“Look, are you going to argue with me in this kitchen all morning, or go out there and make a deal to turn Remington into a cravat-wearing English gent?”
My brother had a point. There was just one final thing to say. “If you tell him I said he was hot, I’ll murder you, cut you into small pieces, and dispose of you in such a manner that they’ll never find so much as a fingernail clipping.”
“Don’t worry, you sociopath. It icks me out to think about you finding him hot. Besides, I think he might have a girlfriend.”
“Good.” I popped into the hall bath by way of the kitchen to furiously rake my hands through my hair in front of the mirror. I splashed the morning funk out of my mouth with a handful of water, and ensured I didn’t have crust in my eyes. There was nothing I could do about my hobbit feet. All my socks were upstairs. Looking as presentable as I was going to get under the circumstances, I straightened my shoulders and marched back into the kitchen.
“Jeremy, would you like some coffee?” I called.
“No, thanks. Don’t drink the stuff.”
Well, that was unfortunate. “Okay.” I picked up my Pemberley mug again and made my way back into the living room.
Jeremy was sitting on the couch facing the bay window. Luke was sitting in the dark brown leather armchair to his left. I decided to sit in the gray velvet slipper chair on the right. No telling what was going on with my breath, even after the water splashing. That had merely been a stopgap measure.
“It’s been a long time,” Jeremy said. “Good to see you, Meg.”
“Yes, how long’s it been? Like ten years or something?” I replied.
“Only six. Or so. Remember that time I saw you in the airport in Chicago?”
“The airport? Chicago?” Er, no. I didn’t remember that.
“I was with my brother at O’Hare and we were— It doesn’t matter.” Jeremy shook his head.
“Meg says you look different than she remembers you,” Luke announced, a wide grin spread across his face.
I cleared my throat delicately before addressing my brother. “Hey, Luke, remember how much true crime I like to watch?”
“What?” Luke side-eyed me.
I pushed a strand of dark hair behind my ear. “I have a lot of information on how to get rid of dead bodies.”