Story of My Life (Story Lake #1)

18. Three hot guys and me with pillow face

18

THREE HOT GUYS AND ME WITH PILLOW FACE

HAZEL

IntrepidReporterGuy:

New owner of Heart House monopolizes local construction trade with outrageous plans to tear down historic home.

I was in the middle of trying to tell my dentist that my two front teeth had fallen out and three more were loose when an incessant pounding ripped me awake.

I spent a few seconds probing my teeth with my tongue, ensuring they were all intact, before I threw the covers off and got out of bed.

I dragged an oversized T-shirt over my head then nearly tripped over a raccoon in the hallway. The slightly domesticated wild animal hissed questioningly at me.

“Oh, bite me, Bertha. Can’t you find a new home?”

It backed away from me and then scampered into Zoey’s old room.

I muttered my way down the stairs and flung open the front door.

“What?” I demanded.

All three Bishop brothers stood on my doorstep looking stupidly handsome and awake. None of them were meeting my eyes. They were looking a few inches above my head. I patted my hair and realized it had exploded out of its messy knot to become a messier bird’s nest.

“Mornin’, sunshine,” Gage said, holding up a cup of coffee. “I’ll trade you caffeine for entrance.”

I felt a kinship with those trolls that lived under bridges in fairy tales, working hard to collect tolls from self-important pedestrians.

“Gimme.” I reached for the coffee with grabby hands.

Caffeine secured, I stepped aside and let three tall male hotties inside. My mother would have opened the door in thousand-dollar lingerie. Meanwhile, I’d forgotten to set an alarm and looked like some kind of swamp creature that could only open one eye at a time.

I was just closing the door when something heavy hit it from the outside. I opened it to reveal Melvin, the giant, hairy dog that seemed to belong to everyone. He had leaves in his fur and the kind of happy expression that made it clear there wasn’t a lot going on upstairs in his doggy brain.

“What time is it?” I rasped between sips of coffee.

“Seven,” Cam said, dropping two plastic totes filled with tools on the floor with a clatter. “Nice hair.”

“In the morning? That’s practically the middle of the night,” I complained. I was a night owl by nature. And just because I’d moved to a small town that didn’t have all-night cake delivery didn’t mean my circadian rhythm had adjusted. I’d stayed up until one in the morning writing a newsletter about my first forty-eight hours in Story Lake. I’d included pictures of the house and a selfie that showed off my bandaged forehead.

“This place brings back memories,” Gage said, admiring something on the ceiling that I didn’t have the energy to care about until I had more caffeine in my system.

“Yeah,” Levi agreed.

He was looking at me like he wanted to say more. It was probably about my hair. Or the pillow creases on my face. But he turned away to give a metal duct cover his attention.

I supposed that was the silver lining to not being interested in a relationship. I didn’t have to feel an ounce of shame over my just-dragged-from-bed pillow face. Though maybe it wasn’t so much liberating as it was a symptom of a deeper problem. There were three presumably eligible, factually hot-as-hell men in my house putting on actual tool belts. And here I was, calculating whether I could crawl back upstairs and get another two hours of sleep.

“Nobody likes a romance novel heroine with no libido,” I muttered to myself.

“What was that?” Gage asked, looking at me like he actually expected me to repeat myself.

Oops. Right. I had actual humans in my house. I didn’t get to just shuffle around and mutter things out loud anymore. That would take some getting used to.

“Er, nothing,” I croaked.

“Dumpster is being delivered at nine,” Cam said. I was fairly sure he wasn’t talking to me.

“I have to leave at eleven for that meeting. Should be back by one,” Gage reported.

“I’m cutting out at four to take over at the store,” Levi said.

Gripping my coffee, I decided it was the perfect time to escape. I half lurched, half scampered to the kitchen. Resigned to officially being up for the day, I grabbed a Pepsi out of the fridge and helped myself to another cup o’ oatmeal that Zoey had left behind.

While the oatmeal burped and spat in the microwave, I stuck my head under the kitchen faucet and held it there, hoping the water would both wake me up and tame my snarl of hair.

The water shut off.

“Hey,” I sputtered.

“No drowning yourself on the first day.” Cam sounded irritated, which in my experience was his normal, everyday emotion.

“I’m not drowning myself. I’m waking up.” My voice echoed tinnily off the sink’s stainless-steel walls.

A dish towel appeared in my face. I took it and did my best to mop myself up before straightening away from the sink.

Hair water hit the floor like Niagara Falls. Melvin clomped into the kitchen on his gigantic dog feet and began slurping it up.

I bent at the waist and tied the dish towel around my sopping-wet hair. There were work boots and dog paws just past my bare toes. An odd little family of feet in the kitchen of a single hot mess.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked, righting myself. Was he here to discuss my proposition? Was he going to say yes? Or was he going to reject me and make me feel like an idiot?

“Just wanted to go over the plan for the day,” he said.

“Oh. Okay. What’s the plan?” I cracked open my cherry Pepsi.

“We’re working up some preliminary plans for the kitchen and the bathrooms on the second floor. In the meantime, we’d want to start demoing what we can. Since you’re probably into the whole having-indoor-plumbing thing, I figured we’d start demo on the kitchen and the guest bath and leave your bath for later.”

Did the guy actually expect me to chime in with relevant opinions on demolition? “Sounds fine to me,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster.

“That means we need you to move everything out that you moved in, and you won’t be able to cook in here,” he reminded me.

My oatmeal chose that moment to explode in the microwave. Melvin galloped hopefully toward the contained mess, nose scenting the apples and cinnamon air.

“That shouldn’t be a problem,” I deadpanned.

“Good. Here. Throw this out.” He handed me a balled-up piece of paper.

Frowning, I unfurled it. It was an election poster with a photo of Emilie’s unsmiling face, promising that as chief of police, she would be starting a town-wide HOA to police residential seasonal decor.

“Wow. Where did you find this?”

“On your front door.”

“That woman works fast,” I observed.

Cam turned to leave.

“Wait.” I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “What about what we talked about…last night?”

He studied me for a beat. “Still thinking.”

“Cam!” Gage yelled from somewhere upstairs.

“Keep your pants on,” Cam yelled back and left the room.

Melvin and I stared at each other. The dog’s tail wagged encouragingly.

“Am I really that terrible that he has to think this long about a fake date?” I asked my furry companion.

Melvin’s doggy eyebrows lifted, and he jogged out of the room.

I picked up the toaster and looked at my distorted reflection. “Okay, maybe he has a point.”

I took the salvaged remains of my oatmeal upstairs, where I showered quickly and awkwardly in the claw-foot tub. I’d found that getting out was trickier than getting in since every inch of me was wet. I dried my hair into a semblance of order and was just pawing through my makeup bag when there was a thud at the bathroom door.

“Uh. Occupied. I thought you weren’t touching this bathroom until?—”

I opened the door to find Melvin staring up at me expectantly. I could hear the brothers banging around downstairs and yelling over music. The dog barged in, all business as he brushed past me and went directly to the tub. He put his front paws on the skyscraper lip of the tub and peered inside, his tail wagging.

“I don’t know what this is. Are you allowed to do that?”

Melvin’s tail continued to wag as he slid one of his front paws down the inside of the tub.

“Oh, buddy. Hang on. You’re going to get…stuck.”

The dog’s furry middle was draped over the lip of the tub, his back feet off the ground, his front not quite touching the porcelain bottom.

He whimpered pathetically.

“I don’t know how to help. Do you want in or out? If you get in, how am I going to get you out?”

Melvin made the decision for me by sliding down the inside of the tub feet first until they hit bottom. He started lapping up the water around the drain with his hips and hind legs still hanging over the edge.

“I’m just going to…help you,” I said through gritted teeth as I tried to heft the dog’s back end up and over. But he was heavy and the tub was too tall. “What do you eat for breakfast? Bowling balls?”

Unperturbed, Melvin continued to slurp up the tub water.

“Okay, let’s think.”

It took me a few minutes and several contingency plans. But I finally crawled under the dog’s rear legs, giving him purchase on my towel-clad back, and slowly lifted him until he awkwardly scrambled over the side.

“And now I’m all sweaty. I can’t believe I wasted a shower already,” I grumbled.

Melvin heaved a blissful sigh and flopped down in the bottom of the tub. I peeked over the edge at him. His tail was a thumping metronome against the cast iron in his new horizontal position, damp fur already curling.

Turning my back on tub and dog, I decided to put forth a little effort in the makeup department since I’d made such a lousy first impression. I tidied up my cosmetics and then pondered an outfit that was comfortable but not slovenly. I was absolutely procrastinating. What if the words didn’t come today? I might go downstairs and Cam would say, “Yeah, about that whole research-dating thing. I’m out because you’re gross.” What if I just stayed put in this room with this tub dog and didn’t face anything ever again?

I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Yeah, I’d already tried that avenue as Dead Inside Hazel. This was New Adventure Hazel, and I had responsibilities, deadlines, a dog trapped in my tub… Hmm. I glanced at Melvin again. He’d tired of drinking and had rolled over onto his back in blissful hydration. If the heroine was wrapped in a towel… No! A shower curtain. And the handsome, heroic contractor had to come to her rescue, that could be…something.

I was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, typing away on my laptop with my towel still tucked under my arms, when my phone signaled a text. I stretched my arms overhead and rolled out my shoulders. A loud snore echoed from the bathtub. How long had I been sitting here? I glanced down at the word count and blinked.

“Holy shit,” I murmured.

My phone rang from the toilet tank, sparking a frantic bout of barking.

“Hello?” I shouted over the dog’s hysteria.

“ Finally , she answers,” trilled the cultured voice of Ramona Hart-Daflure-Whatever-Her-Current-Hyphenation. She’d trained the Alabama out of her voice between husbands two and three.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, between Melvin’s desperate barks.

“What on earth is that noise? It sounds like you’re at a dogfight.”

I tried to soothe the wet dog with my hands, but Melvin seemed hell-bent on scrabbling his way out of the tub. “No dogfight here,” I said, climbing into the tub. “Relax, buddy! You’re fine! You fell asleep in my shower, remember?”

“Oh my. Am I interrupting?” she asked gleefully.

“Not what you think you are.”

“You sound down, darling.”

“I’m fine. I’m just wrestling a soaking-wet hundred-pound canine,” I explained, trying to get Melvin into a friendly headlock without losing towel or phone.

“Well, I’ve got news that will turn that frown upside down. I’m engaged! Isn’t that exciting?”

“Congratulations,” I said through gritted teeth as I managed to pin Melvin to the floor of the tub. My mother traded in husbands the way other people traded in cars.

“He’s the most amazing man. He’s tall and handsome and tan. He has the most beautiful home in Paris and a six-bedroom mansion across the street from Robert Downey Junior. He’s the one .” All six of Mom’s previous husbands had also been “the one.”

As my mother continued to list her new fiancé’s assets, I collapsed next to the soggy, panting dog, inserting “uh-huh” and “sounds great” at appropriate intervals.

“How old is this one, Mom?” I asked finally.

“He’s a very virile seventy-seven, if you know what I mean.”

“I wish I didn’t.” I said, as Melvin leaned over and licked my face.

The nineteen-year difference was only the third biggest age gap of my mother’s husbands. She claimed she preferred older men, but I always assumed she was just trying to outlive one of them. There was more money in being a widow than a divorcée.

“You don’t sound happy for me,” Mom pouted through the phone.

“I’m thrilled for you,” I lied.

Melvin let out a doggy grumble then sneezed.

“Ew. Gross,” I muttered.

“When are you getting back out there?” Mom asked. “You’re wasting your most attractive years, you know.”

I looked down at my sodden towel covered in dog fur. If these were my most attractive years, the downhill slide was going to be rough. “I just got divorced, Mom.”

“Darling, that was ages ago. Being single isn’t good for anyone.”

I was immediately offended on behalf of real-life and fictional women everywhere. “Not everyone needs a man,” I told her, conveniently forgetting I had propositioned a man twelve hours ago.

“Well, not lesbians,” she conceded.

“Mom!” I said on a laugh. No matter how many times or ways she disappointed me, she still always made me laugh.

“What? I have several lesbian friends and you know what? They’re all married.” She was convinced that true security came from being married to a rich, powerful partner. But I’d done the marriage thing and ended up with so many insecurities that if I ever went on a real first date again, it would have to be to a couple’s counselor.

“Did I send you the picture of me officiating Trinity and Eviana’s wedding last summer? I wore the most exquisite white suit,” Mom continued.

Only my mother would wear a white suit to upstage the brides she was marrying.

She kept up the chatter for another five minutes before a man’s voice in the background interrupted her. “Oh, Stavros, you’re too much. Darling, I’ve got to go. Stavros just surprised me with opera tickets and a new gown! I’ll send you the details on my nuptials! Talk soon.” She disconnected the call before I had a chance to say anything.

I put my phone down on the tub floor. There were few people more charming and casually selfish than my mother. I always felt the need to lie down after a phone call with her.

Melvin nudged me with his big wet nose.

“Yeah, okay. Let’s figure out a way out of here,” I said, getting to my feet.

I had the dog’s front legs over the lip of the tub when we got tangled up in the shower curtain. With a tremendous rip , the material shredded free from the metal hooks, landing on top of us and sending Melvin into another barking fit.

“Stop trying to hide under my towel!” I yelped.

“Need some assistance?”

Melvin and I froze for a beat before I shoved the shower curtain off us to find two of the three Bishop brothers lounging in the doorway.

“A little help here?” I said to Cam and Levi.