26. A rude awakening
26
A RUDE AWAKENING
CAMPBELL
I fucked up.
Kissing Hazel during our little fake date had been stupid. Kissing her again in public just because I felt like it was epically stupid. I wasn’t in the market for a relationship, and there was no way a romance novelist was looking for an easy, meaningless fling.
I’d spent another nearly sleepless night fighting my baser instincts as they’d played an endless montage of all the naked things I could have been doing with Hazel.
Which was why I was sitting at the curb in front of Heart House, debating the merits of being a lying coward and telling my brothers I was too hungover to work today. If I said I was sick, it would get back to my mother, who would show up at my apartment with chicken soup, a bag of cold and flu meds, and a lot of unnecessary motherly advice.
The only thing stopping me from taking the coward’s way out was the fact that Levi and Gage were already inside. And both of them had already shown too keen an interest in Hazel. Maybe I wasn’t in the market for a relationship, but that didn’t mean I was going to step back and let one of them try to start one.
I’d kissed her first.
My gaze slid to her book on my dashboard. The second in her series since I’d already finished the first.
Christ on a cracker. I’d just gone too long without sex. That’s all. It wasn’t like I was infatuated with the infuriating woman. I just liked the way she felt and tasted…the way she laughed.
“Fuck me,” I muttered, wrestling my seat belt off.
I grabbed my belt and bucket from the bed of the truck and stomped into the house. There was no sign of Hazel, not that I was specifically looking for her.
“Look who finally decided to join us,” Gage said when I shoved back the plastic tarp acting as a curtain to the demolished kitchen. He was irritatingly chipper this morning.
I grunted at him.
Levi grunted back.
“Got a little more demo left in here, which we’ll finish up today. The cabinet crew is swinging by this afternoon to take measurements. Figured we can finish up the bathroom and closet demo upstairs. Least we can once our sleepyhead client wakes up,” Gage noted.
The woman thought she could leave me sleepless while she caught up on her z’s? I didn’t think so. I picked up the sledgehammer.
“Where you goin’ with that?” Levi asked lazily.
I didn’t respond. I took the stairs two at a time to the second floor and strode into the bedroom behind Hazel’s. After a quick check to make sure the water was turned off to the en suite’s busted sink, I donned my safety glasses, wound up, and let the hammer fly through the warped vanity.
The entire thing dislodged from the wall with a satisfying crash. I swung again, this time striking the god-awful bubble-gum-pink wall tile. It shattered, sending shards of octagonal porcelain in all directions.
“Ugh! What. The. Hell ?” came a muffled cry through the wall.
Smugly, I took another swing, sending the head of the sledgehammer through the plaster. I was winding up again when I heard footsteps.
“What is wrong with you?” Hazel demanded from the doorway.
Her hair was exploding out of a braid. Her glasses were on crooked, and she was wearing either the shortest pair of shorts in the world or a pair of underwear and a David Bowie tank. I was suddenly regretting my decision to interrupt her sleep.
“A lot of things. Nothing a good night’s sleep won’t cure.”
“I could murder you right now,” she said, taking a step toward me, but I met her in the doorway and blocked her path.
“You’re barefoot, and there are pieces of tile everywhere.”
“Whose fault is that?” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
“Are you freaking kidding me? I just went to sleep three hours ago, you ass.”
I suddenly felt much more cheerful than I had a few moments ago. Vindication would do that to a person. “You knew we were coming to do loud construction work on your house. This is what you signed up for.”
“There isn’t enough Pepsi in the world for this,” Hazel grumbled. She turned on her heel and stumbled into the doorframe.
I caught her and steered her into the hallway.
“What the hell, Cammy?” Gage said, stopping short. Levi ran into his back.
“What are you doing up here?” I demanded, stepping in front of Hazel. It was one thing for me to see her like this—again—but it was a whole different ballgame for my brothers.
“You mean besides investigating all the crashing and shouting?” Gage asked.
“Your brother is a pain in my ass,” Hazel announced on a grumpy yawn.
“No arguments,” Levi said.
“Try growing up with him,” Gage added.
“Well, now that we’re all awake for the day, we can get to work,” I said, giving her a helpful push into her bedroom. “Mornin’, sunshine.”
She held up her middle finger and opened her mouth.
I beat her to the punch by slamming the door.
“Dude, what the fuck?” Gage said in a whisper.
“Come on, boys. Let’s go figure out a game plan,” I said, putting an arm around each of my brothers. “I’ll even spring for breakfast burritos.”
“Oh, goddammit, Bertha!” Hazel yelled. Her bedroom door opened, and a fat fuzzy raccoon waddled out. It paused in the middle of the hall and stared us down.
“What. The. Fuck?” Levi whispered.
The raccoon gave a half-hearted snarl before waddling into the bedroom across the hall.
“I need a picture of you doing something manly for my social media,” Hazel announced, appearing in the doorway of the space that was going to be her new closet. At least she was dressed now.
It was afternoon, and we’d had a productive day of demo and cleanup and walked the cabinet guys through the kitchen, laundry room, closet, and bathrooms. “Fuck. No,” I said succinctly.
“You owe me for that wake-up ambush this morning.”
“Excuse this Neanderthal, who was clearly raised by wolves,” Gage cut in. “What can I do for you?”
Hazel’s eyes sparkled wickedly, and I realized I was strangling the handle of the push broom.
“I was wondering if I could take some action pictures of the demo. My readers would really get a kick out of seeing an attractive man swing a hammer, especially if it’s in my future walk-in closet,” she explained.
“My dad always said, ‘If the customer asks for something and you can do it, always say yes,’” Gage said with one of those charming grins that made me want to relieve him of his front teeth.
“ Our dad,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, but clearly I was the only one listening,” Gage said. He turned back to Hazel. “So where do you want to do this? Shirt on or off?”
“Need help?” Levi asked, appearing in the hallway already shirtless and covered with sweat and plaster dust.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath.
Hazel gifted them her brightest smile. “You guys are the best!”
“No, they aren’t,” I insisted, but no one was listening to me. They were too busy taking art direction from Hazel.
I stomped out of the room and left them to it. It was the end of the day, so I checked on the cleanup downstairs and started hauling tools and materials out to my truck.
Gage and Levi, wearing shirts, joined me.
“Good day,” Gage said, staring back at the house. “Roofers are starting soon, and the framers will be here tomorrow. Plumbers and electricians Monday.”
“Progress,” I agreed.
He turned to me. “By the way, this isn’t the playground.”
“I don’t have the energy for you or your metaphors right now,” I told him.
“You can’t pull the pigtails of a girl you like and expect her to like you back, dumbass.”
“What girl?” I hedged, pretending I didn’t know exactly whom he was talking about.
“See?” Gage said to Levi. “He’s a dumbass.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t like Hazel. I just don’t want her to like you.”
Levi clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You sound like a fucking idiot.”
“Look, no matter what your ‘feelings’ are,” Gage said, using annoying air quotes, “you gotta stop being a dick to her. She’s a client. The biggest we’ve had in years.”
“Yeah? You’ve been flirting with her nonstop, and every time I turn around, Livvy is tripping over his size fourteens around her,” I said.
“First of all, I have not been flirting with her,” Gage interrupted.
Instead of defending himself, Levi opened a bag of chips and popped one into his mouth.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” I demanded.
“Nope.” He crunched. “But I did catch Cam on a date with Hazel.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot, Livvy,” I snarled.
Gage groaned. “Man, I say this with love. I really do. But are you fucking kidding me right now? Are you on some kind of self-destruct setting? Why the hell would you think it was a good idea to make a move when our business is on the line?”
“It was a onetime thing. I took her out on a fake date for research purposes. It was her idea. I was just being nice.”
“You’re never nice,” Gage argued. “You can’t fuck around with her. You leave a trail of bodies behind you everywhere you go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snatched the chips from Levi and helped myself.
“Your last serious relationship was when? Oh, right. Never,” Gage said.
“I’ve had serious relationships.”
Levi snorted and stole the chips back.
“No, you haven’t,” Gage insisted. “And now you think it’s okay to fuck around with a romance writer. A woman who writes happily ever afters for a living. A woman who is single-handedly propping up our business right now.”
I stepped into my brother’s personal space and bumped his chest with mine. “I’m not fucking around with her.”
“Oh, so you’ve got real feelings then?” he taunted.
“No.”
“I wish I could beat you into a coma with that ego of yours.”
“Try it, Gigi.”
Levi shoved his arm between us. “Knock it the fuck off. We’re out of Band-Aids.”
We were distracted by the arrival of another pickup truck in front of the house.
“Shit,” I muttered as Dad got out, followed by Bentley the trusty beagle. Bentley made a beeline for Hazel’s overgrown salvia and relieved himself with enthusiasm.
We broke apart, looking as innocent as three pissed-off grown men could.
“What are you doing here, Dad?” Gage asked.
“Your mom sprung me from the store so I could do some supervising here. Looks like it was good timing too,” he said.
“We were just taking a break,” I said.
“Looks like you were just gettin’ ready to take some swings at each other. What’s going on?” Dad asked, crossing his arms.
We were all taller than him, bigger and stronger too. But we still had a healthy fear of disappointing him.
“Just havin’ a few words,” Levi said.
“About what?”
“Stock market,” we lied in unison.
If there was one thing that pissed off and confused my dad more than when his adult children acted like they were still in junior high, it was the stock market.
“For Pete’s sake. It’s all made up. You can’t grow a stock or build one and hold it in your hand. All those fake numbers represent what? Pretend shit. I’m telling you, you’re better off burying your money in the backyard,” Dad said predictably.
He’d expressed the sentiment so often that we’d once spent a drunken Easter in our twenties digging up our parents’ backyard to look for Dad’s buried treasure. It had been Laura’s idea. Being pregnant and therefore not drunk, she’d tricked us into it and laughed herself half to death when Mom lit into us the next morning.
“That’s what I was just telling these two,” Gage lied.
“What’ve we got here?” Dad said as a box truck pulled up to the curb.
“Furniture delivery for Hazel Hart,” the driver said through the open passenger window.
“We’ll clear the driveway for you,” Dad offered, heading for his truck.
“Ass-kisser,” I hissed under my breath as I elbowed Gage in the gut.
“Moron,” he wheezed and shoved me backward into a bush.
“I’ll go tell Hazel,” Levi volunteered and all but sprinted for the house before I could even crawl out of the shrubbery.