The Job (Auctioned) by Cara Dee (highly illogical behavior txt) 📕

“What kind of fucking pullout couch is this? It’s comfier than most beds I’ve slept in.”

I smirked to myself and placed the pizza in the oven. “The good kind that costs you two grand. Well, if you pay for it.” After grabbing two sodas from the fridge, I left the kitchen for now. “Don’t get crumbs in it, I fucking swear.”

He was busy feelin’ up my mattress. It was thick, solid, part memory foam, part soft like clouds.

“Figures…” An ounce of the bitterness seeped back. “First man I have in my new bed is my goddamn brother.”

He flashed me a grin at that, a happy, pleased one that reached his eyes. Shit, I hadn’t seen him smile like that in years. It was a slap in the face in a way, because I was more convinced than ever that he was suffering from some kind of depression.

I stripped off my jeans and pulled my tee over my head, then got in on the other side and reached for the remote on my nightstand. “Gimme my Pop-Tarts, and I will give you a couple episodes of The Nanny.”

He chuckled. “I’ll never get your obsession with the ’90s. You know we have good shows now, too?”

They weren’t bad nowadays, but they were no Blossom quality either.

I knew Boone and Ace had their own thing of watching DC and Marvel movies. He was her Joker; she was his Harley Quinn.

“I do watch new movies,” I said in my defense. “I don’t know. The ’90s were just so…wholesome. Every comedy show is feel-good.”

“You’re the least wholesome guy I know, Case.”

I quirked a smirk and bit into my Pop-Tart. “Maybe that’s why I love it.”

We all needed balance, didn’t we?

Fucking hell, it was hot today.

As soon as Vegas bathed in triple digits, my systems started shutting down, and I craved air conditioning like some common tourist who’d never seen the sun.

I wiped my forehead and adjusted my shades, then glanced at the time. Any minute now. Taking a sip of my iced coffee, I eyed the woman in my rearview and hoped she didn’t push my buttons today. Every motherfucking week I had Ace, I somehow ended up right in front of or behind the same woman. She had two boys to pick up and a schedule that probably had her crunching Valium like mad. Soccer, track, PTA, bake sales, golf, the whole nine yards. And if I didn’t move my car in the pickup line exactly when the car ahead of me pulled forward, she honked at me.

My phone buzzed with a text, and I picked it up to see a message from Laney.

You got mail and a delivery. xxx

Fuck yeah. I was quick to text back.

I owe you dinner. Any place you want.

A message from Boone appeared before I could put down my phone again.

I returned the van and got the blueprints in a file. Want me to wait at Ma’s?

“Hi, Daddy!” I heard Ace holler. I looked up at her quickly and saw I had a few seconds to spare as she ran toward my car, so I typed out a reply to Boone.

Picking up Ace now, gonna drop her off at Emma’s. Go to my place and wait for me.

“Hey, baby.” I tucked away my phone and reached over to open the door for her. “How was school?”

She didn’t look tired at all, despite having been up so late last night. “It was good. Can you help me with my math assimament later?”

“Of course. I’ll help you with your math assignment.”

“That’s what I said,” she griped.

I stifled my mirth and peered ahead, then started the engine and backed up for as much as I could. The woman with her hawk eyes in the rearview perked up and waited for me to hit her or something, to which I flipped her off without looking back. With enough room, I was able to pull out and fuck off. AC on high.

“You eating at Emma’s house?” I asked.

“I think so,” she replied. “Her mom met someone who tries to impress her with a bunch of food.”

“Hey, it works for Boone.” I checked the rearview and switched lanes.

Ace laughed. “It’s a chef! Emma says he comes over and cooks and stuff.”

All right, then. Good for Emma’s mom. Bella deserved it. Emma was the one friend of Ace’s I really liked. They’d met a couple years ago when it was time for Ace to learn how to swim. The two were thick as thieves and shared similar personalities. The fact that they lived across town from each other hadn’t stopped them from turning into best friends and hanging out as often as they could. It helped that Bella was a down-to-earth, balls-to-the-wall woman who took no prisoners. Whatever game Vegas threw at her, she changed the rules.

“Are you and Daddy working again tonight?” Ace asked.

“Yes, ma’am. No fun excursions, though. We’ll be at home.”

“Oh, poo. Fun escortions are fun.”

I chuckled. “Excursions.”

“That’s what I said!”

Five

I had to do something about this obsessive need to check in with him. He was just at the store, for chrissakes.

He was noticing something was wrong too, wasn’t he?

Fuck! There had to be something wrong with me. My jumbled thoughts threw fragments of solutions at me—that I wasn’t sure were actual solutions. I was getting desperate. I couldn’t meet anyone. Everything gave me doubts. It’d started when Paisley announced that she liked Case’s new nickname for her. Ace. She wanted that to be her name. Then she’d stammered a little and asked what nicknames Case and I wanted, and we’d already known where that was going, because we’d told her we viewed her as ours. Our little champion, our daughter. And the moment she’d called us her dads, everything outside my family had just faded away. Women, even friends—everyone stopped mattering to me. But my urgency to be closer to Case grew tenfold. As if Paisley had opened up a new world