Yeah, right. I wasn’t buying it, which meant Zeb would see right through me.
Despite the embarrassment that my out-of-control hormones were bound to cause, I strolled past his gigantic Jeep with my head held high and my breath trapped deep in my lungs. The front door was propped open and there was light and music coming from somewhere inside the house.
I picked my way carefully over the still littered and messy floor because the lighting was faint and only coming from the front room of the house. Even though things were still torn apart, it was amazing to see how much work Zeb and the guys had put into the house in just a few short weeks. In places where there had been holes, there were now openings to other rooms and I could see they had started on the kitchen. All the old stuff was gone, leaving blank walls and a clean slate for Zeb to do his thing.
I followed the twangy, bluesy sound of whatever he was listening to into what I assumed was the living room of the house. I expected him to already be hard at work on the “god-awful” blue walls—really they weren’t that bad. I kind of liked how bright and cheery they seemed, but he was sitting on a white bucket, focused intently on his phone. There was a slight smile stamped on his mouth, and I had a moment in which I was tempted to turn around and run back to the car and head home. I didn’t want to intrude, but while I waffled, his head suddenly snapped up and those green eyes pinned me on the spot. Some of my indecision must have shown on my face because he held the phone up and told me, “My niece keeps texting me from my sister’s phone. Beryl has a new boyfriend that she isn’t ready to introduce to the family, so I’ve been covertly bugging Joss for info.”
I cleared my throat a little. “That isn’t very sneaky if you’re texting her on her mom’s phone. Your sister is guaranteed to see it.”
He chuckled. “I want her to see it. My sister hasn’t dated much since all that stuff went down with her ex. I want her to be happy, and if this guy is the one to do it, I want to meet him. It’s my brotherly right.”
I walked farther into the room as he climbed to his feet. “Zebulon and Beryl? Your mother named you both after famous explorers.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow at me and his grin got wider within the beard that covered the lower half of his face. “Not many people pick up on that. I think she wanted great things for us. Too bad she just got stuck with a couple of normal kids. What about you? Where did ‘Sayer’ come from? That’s pretty unusual.”
I blinked up at him stupidly as he moved even closer to me. I wasn’t prepared for the way his very innocent question threw me headfirst into a place I rarely visited since my father had died. I inhaled a sharp breath and winced at the way it made my nostrils flare. “It was actually my mother’s maiden name—Abigail Sayer. I think passing it on to me the way she did was a small way for her to keep a part of herself alive after my father took over her whole life.” I never talked about my mom. It was too hard, and all those things I tried so hard not to feel threatened to overwhelm me when I thought about her.
His eyes narrowed a little bit as he considered me thoughtfully for a second. “I know your dad passed away not too long ago, but you’ve never mentioned your mom. Is she still around?”
This was the last thing I wanted to be talking about, but considering I knew each and every single thing about him and the mistakes that had shaped him, I figured I could give him a brief glimpse into the train wreck that was my own past. I shifted my weight on my feet and let my eyes drift to the worn floorboards under the soles of my tennis shoes. “My mom died when I was a teenager. She committed suicide.” She left. Abandoned me knowing good and well the kind of monster she was leaving me with. A monster she had loved up until her dying breath. A bastard she had begged for love and affection until it killed her. To this day the memories still burned and the image of her blue, unmoving, and so obviously dead in the bath where I found her was etched forever into my mind. It never went anywhere, holding on to me just as tightly as the way my father had chastised me for crying hysterically at her funeral. I was making a scene and it was undignified. He was already mortified at the disgrace my mother had caused him by taking her own life, he wouldn’t abide by his child embarrassing him further. He told me to stop crying, so I did—forever. Instead of questioning how he handled me, or my mother’s passing, I had clear recollections of everyone at the funeral, friends and family telling my father how proud they were of him for handling the death so stoically and how impressed they were with how well behaved I was. I was conditioned and trained to be that way.
“Shit. I’m so sorry.” He took a few steps closer and I lifted my head to meet his intense gaze.
“It’s okay. I mean, it’s obviously not okay, but I deal with it and now I have Rowdy and Salem—and Poppy was an added bonus, so it kind of makes up for all that I lost back then.” It did and it didn’t, but I couldn’t really dig into all of that with him. That would be like rolling over and showing him my soft underbelly and I was already way too exposed where this dynamic man was concerned.
He didn’t look like he believed me, but he didn’t push. Instead he walked over to one of the windows in the room and picked up a plain white bag off the ledge. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now that it was in his hands I couldn’t miss a heavenly and obviously greasy and bad-for-you smell coming from within.
“I was so behind today I didn’t get lunch, so I figured I would grab some brats from Home Depot while I was there getting the primer. I picked you up one if you’re hungry and not scared of hot-dog-cart food. There’s also some beer and a few sodas in the cooler in the kitchen.”
I’d never had hot-dog-cart food before, so I didn’t know if I was scared of it or not. Again it was not something pre–Denver Sayer even had on her radar. Whatever he had in that bag smelled better than any five-star dinner I had ever eaten, so I held out my hand and he plopped a warm, silver-wrapped concoction into it. He motioned to another white bucket and I gingerly sat down while unwrapping my food. Immediately sauerkraut and mustard slopped down on my lap, making me swear and causing Zeb to laugh at me. I narrowed my eyes at him but was surprised that his amusement at my expense didn’t make me immediately freeze up. I asked around a mouthful of food, “How come you don’t drive your cool truck during the week?”