Bringing Home the Bad Boy (Second Chance #1)(13)

“Yeah, didn’t you hear? Evergreen Cove has a ban on skanks.”

“What about babes?”

“Open season, man. Especially the feisty ones.”

“Yeah,” Ash agreed, his eyes on Gloria. “I see that.”





CHAPTER FIVE




Asher pushed a bar napkin across the table and gestured to the hopeless doodle scrawled on the tearing paper. “See what I mean?”

Evan studied the napkin, then gave him a bland look.

Asher grinned. “Hey, I’m better at singing than I am at drawing.”

“God, I hope so.” He spun the napkin so it was right side up… he thought. And tried to make out what he was pretty sure was Swine Flew’s superhero costume. “Is this a… cape?”

Asher tapped the napkin. “It’s his tail.”

Gloria reached over Evan’s arm and turned the napkin again. In unison, they both said, “Ohhhh.”

“You guys are *s,” Asher pointed out, but his grin was locked on his face. Probably thanks to the Jack and Coke in front of him.

Evan folded the napkin, stood, and shoved it into his pocket. “I’m out. I have to pick up Lyon.”

“Where is he, anyway?” Asher asked. “School?”

“It’s July, dumbass,” he pointed out. Asher flipped him off. “He’s hanging out with Charlie.”

“Charlie.” Ash’s voice dipped. “I remember her.”

“You do not.”

He lifted his glass and shrugged. “I remember you talking about her.”

“You have a very skewed memory of our teenage years.”

“He has a skewed memory of his current ones as well,” Glo put in.

“You’d better be glad my memory is skewed, Sarge.”

Didn’t sound like something Evan wanted to hear about at all. He lifted a hand in farewell, leaving them to their bicker-flirting. “Bye, kids.”

He drove to Charlie’s, grateful she’d offered to watch Lyon while he had a powwow. He needed to find a long-term babysitter. Her being nearby wasn’t good enough reason to dump his kid on her lap whenever he had stuff to do. Willing or no, she had things to do, and Evan had always prided himself on his independence.


*


“That’s so coooool,” Lyon said through a fit of laughter.

Charlie couldn’t help laughing, too. She’d taken photos of him in her studio while they hung out today, which hadn’t impressed him, but when she’d opened Photoshop and started manipulating his facial features, he became rapt.

“I want fangs.”

“Fangs?” She laughed but acquiesced, using the mouse to drag one of the program’s tools over the tip of his canine tooth to make it pointed. After two “fangs” were in place, he erupted again.

“All right, Lestat, enough play. I’m going to print some for your dad. You pick.” She shut down Photoshop and was about to open the folder full of pictures when a different folder caught her eye.

It was labeled, simply, RAE.

“Look here,” she said quietly, double clicking the folder. Thumbnail images filled the screen. Rae smiling, Rae being sassy. Rae in a wedding gown. Rae in her prom dress. Rae in Evan’s arms on New Year’s Eve. Rae holding a newborn baby Lyon in a hospital bed.

He pointed. “That’s me.”

“Yep. That’s you. All eight pounds, seven ounces of you. You were a big baby!”

“No, I wasn’t.” He wrinkled his adorable nose.

“Your mom would have argued differently. She was in labor with you for eighteen hours.”

Charlie could still hear Rae’s voice as she mopped the sweat from her brow. Never doing this again. Mark my words. Evan had chuckled. Rae had shot him a death glare. Such a good memory.

Then Charlie’s smile faded. Rae was right. She’d never done it again.

Before tears could cloud her vision, she closed the photo and opened the pictures of Lyon she’d taken today. Handing over the mouse to him, she gestured to the screen. “See those boxes?” She pointed out the small check box in the right hand corner of each photo.

“Yeah.”

“Click the box.” He did. “See how there’s a green checkmark there now? That’s how you can pick.”

“How many can I pick?”

She’d taken at least a hundred shots. “As many as you like.” She nudged his shoulder. “I have to clean up the mess we made.”

Leaving him to his task, she went to her “studio,” really the room in her house that should serve as the master bedroom. Instead of sleeping in here, she’d installed room-darkening blinds over both windows and packed the walk-in closet with screens, lights, and other photography equipment. She told herself she’d use the room all the time, which would justify her taking the smaller bedroom across the hall barely holding her queen-size bed, dresser, and vanity. Truth was, she used her studio sometimes, but mostly found herself where Lyon sat now: at the computer, poring over photos or Photoshopping images.

When she had dreamed of having a photography career, her dream hadn’t included airbrushing an ill-timed pimple off a bride’s nose in three hundred wedding photos.