I swung the door open without glancing in his direction, then resumed tossing the bottles into the trash. I assumed he would just hop in the shower while I worked; it wasn’t as if I hadn’t already seen the goods. I’d sorted through a couple more bottles when I finally noticed that he hadn’t moved from his place in the doorway, and turned to face him in irritation.

As I was about to snap at him to get going, the expression on his face stopped me in my tracks.

“Holy shit. I know it’s weird, but you look hot as fuck in those,” he rasped, motioning to my head.

“The curlers?” I scoffed, thinking surely he was joking.

“Shit, Ladybug.” He stepped toward me, clenching his jaw. “We don’t have time right now, but I need you to make me a promise.”

“Okay?” I watched his face as he gripped my hips and pulled me closer, his erection pressing against me from beneath his boxer briefs.

“Promise me that you’ll wear those for me—”

“Shut up.” I felt my face heating as I realized he was serious.

“No, listen. Promise me that one day I’ll come home and you’ll be wearing nothing but those . . . and an apron.”

“You’re outta your mind!” I let out a laugh from deep in my belly, shaking my head.

“You promised!” he reminded me, then kissed me hard on the lips. He gave me one more squeeze, rubbing his hands lightly over my ass before pushing me aside to climb in the shower, mumbling under his breath, “Fuck, now I’m hard.”

As soon as I heard the shower running, I couldn’t help the wide smile creeping onto my lips. I couldn’t believe he had a thing for my curlers. What a freak. I hummed quietly as I finished my work, and as I set down the last bottle under the sink, something dawned on me.

I’d just let Cody see me before I’d finished putting on my armor for the day, something I’d allowed no man to see since I was fourteen years old. I hadn’t even noticed. I’d welcomed him into the room before finishing my most important ritual of the day, my few moments of complete peace before facing the world with a smug smile on my face.

I was bracing myself against the cabinet doors, wondering what the hell it meant, when I was rudely interrupted by Cody howling in the shower.

“Cold! Shit! Fuck! It’s cold!” he yelled, slapping at what I assumed were the taps behind the shower curtain. “I’ve got soap in my hair! Shit! It’s burning my eyes!”

“Sorry!” I called back, my smug smile finally in place as I looked in the mirror and started pulling out the rollers.

My smile widened as I added, “We run out of hot water at about, eh . . . one and a half showers.”

Chapter 5

Casper

I couldn’t stop staring at her.

We spent the morning with Gram and my two-year-old nephew, and watching the three of them together was a fucking revelation. I hadn’t realized how tense it had become between Farrah and me until the tension was gone and I got to see her as she actually was.

The girl was funny.

The facial expressions I’d caught in the past were a small fraction of her arsenal. She had the most expressive face I’d ever seen, which was pretty amazing because she could also lock it down to the point that you wouldn’t even be able to tell if she was happy or mad. For the first time I was inside the inner sanctum, able to gauge every reaction—but only because she was allowing me—and it was a hell of a place to be.

I guess Callie’s call was about more than checking in. My sister had decided to finally move from Sacramento to Oregon to be with her man, so Gram and Farrah were in full-on planning mode, making lists and shit for all the things they needed to do. I knew Gram would follow Callie, but I couldn’t help the smile on my face as Farrah told Gram she was going with them.

I caught Farrah’s eye as we sat across from each other at Gram’s scarred-up table, the shy smile on her face making my entire fucking day. I wanted to take her back to bed that very second, but even if we hadn’t been in the middle of a conversation with my grandmother, the massive hard-on I was suddenly sporting wouldn’t have allowed me to stand up from the table. Goddamn. The woman wound me up without even trying.

Farrah insisted on taking Will with us that afternoon to the Laundromat and to buy boxes from a moving company. There was something about the way she and the boy played off each other that had my chest tightening. It wasn’t a maternal thing, really, but the way she loved on him and knew exactly what he needed and how to take care of him made me feel stupidly proud, really proud.

You could see the connection between them—not surprising since he’d lived with her his entire life—but it was more than that. Farrah would kill for him, and it showed in the way she held him protectively and watched him like a hawk. She loved that boy with an intensity that matched my own, and it made me dig her even more than I already did.

By late that afternoon, we’d finally made it back from our errands. I didn’t know how she was so unruffled when I felt like dropping the baby at Gram’s and taking off on my bike to get some quiet. Will was bouncing off the walls, exhausted because he hadn’t gotten his nap, and asked every two seconds for his mom and dad. The poor kid had rarely been without both of them at the same time, and he’d finally reached his limit as we’d packed Farrah’s clean clothes into the trunk of her car. He’d cried the entire way home, and when we got there, refused to stand more than a foot away from the front door, as if he was waiting for Callie to come through it. It was sad as hell . . . and gave me a massive headache.