Fireball (Cheap Thrills #1)(22)

Which led me to now and wondering why someone was knocking on the door in the middle of the night.

Looking at the face of my watch, I groaned when I saw that it was eight o’clock in the morning. Rolling off the couch, I got to my feet and weaved over to the door, wrenching it open. What I got was a blinding light in my face that had me shielding it with my arms, and hissing when the sunlight hit me right in the eyes through a small gap between them.

“Be warned, if you’re selling something, asking for something, here to cause trouble, or here for anything that involves the use of a brain, I will kill you slowly. And I’ll do it with the broken breast pump on the table over there. FYI I broke it when I used it on the last person who came around to sell…” I broke off my rant when I smelled my addiction. This smell could calm my PMS, it could calm my rage when someone stole my parking spot as I was pulling in. It could even calm me down when I was doing a dumbass diet that deprived me of all the necessities in life. Coffee. “Is that…?”

Lowering an arm, I blinked slowly as my eyes adjusted to the light and focused on the man in front of me holding a holder with takeaway cups in it – the sheriff who’d demanded last night that I call him Dave. Behind him stood Ellis who looked like he hadn’t slept all night and needed coffee as badly as I did.

“Gonna let us in?” Dave asked as he took a step around me anyway and came into the house with Ellis following him closely.

Watching their backs as they moved further into the living room, I had the presence of mind to kick the door shut before I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Never left,” Ellis muttered as he leaned over Olivia’s bassinet to check on her. “She was up a lot last night. Thought at one point y’all were gonna have a breakdown, yelling about boobies and mammaronis.”

Blushing, I kept my focus on Dave as he moved around the kitchen, picking up paper napkins and plates then walking back to a paper bag I hadn’t seen him carry in. I’d even missed the smell which was crazy because now that I’d seen the bag, all I could smell was baked goods.

Picking a cup out of the carrier, he looked up at me. “Coffee?”

I felt this was a stupid question because who says no to coffee? Well, maybe not last thing at night because my body wasn’t going to survive on caffeine alone. Close but not quite, it needed sleep too. Still, I nodded and stared at the cup as his hand lifted it out to me.

“Hey,” Jose croaked as she shuffled into the room and joined us.

Wincing at how she looked, I did a quick prayer that I didn’t look as bad as that. Her hair was sticking up in spots, she had dark circles under her half-open eyes, and she looked like she’d done ten rounds in the ring with a bear. I could pray all I wanted that I didn’t look like that, but the sad reality was that I probably did, except with bright pink spikes coming out of my head. Maybe my hair looked like a Troll version of Game of Thrones? That would be cute, right?

Both men gave her chin lifts, and went back to what they were doing – Dave picking massive bagels out of the bag and putting them on napkins, and Ellis making faces down at Olivia. Taking her cup of coffee from him and pulling a face when he told her it was decaf, Jose walked over to the bassinet and looked down at her new baby.

“Hard to believe something so tiny and beautiful can wreak so much havoc,” she mumbled. “She wouldn’t sleep last night, but she’ll sleep now?”

“Girls got some lungs on her,” Ellis noted, completely unnecessarily seeing as how we both knew she did firsthand. My ears were still ringing from the noise she’d made all through the night.

Yawning and nodding at the same time, Jose tiredly sat down on the arm of the couch. “Yea… wait, how do you know that?”

“Um, he stayed in his car outside last night, Jose.” I pointed at the door, just in case she was too tired to figure out where. “All night,” I stressed, watching in amusement as she suddenly woke all the way up.

Jumping up from where she’d been perched, she stammered, “Why? Why? Why would you do this? Why?”

Oh, she totally knew what he’d heard last night. Two hysterical women who hadn’t got a clue about babies, trying to find the off switch on a newborn, trying to figure out what nipple to use on the bottle, yelling out what to look for next online that would tell us what to do, gagging over the smell and color of a poop… it had been mayhem.

“Just in case your ex came back,” Ellis told her, his face giving nothing away.

Like someone had just let the air out of a balloon, Jose’s body sagged with relief, and she returned to her seat. “Oh, that’s nice of you.”

That was it? That’s nice of you?

Nothing else was said while she took a mouthful of her coffee and shuddered at the taste. Well, at least nothing was said until Ellis asked a question that made both of us choke on the mouthfuls of coffee we’d been swallowing.

“So, inquiring minds want to know – what in the ever-loving hell are mammaronis?”

Our reactions to the question really weren’t that different. I continued to try to cough the coffee out of my lungs seeing as how I’d taken a breath in like a douche with mine, while Jose spluttered and reached for a Kleenex from the box on the end table in front of her. With my lungs burning and tears streaming down my face, I almost missed it when she picked a cushion up and covered her face because a hand started pounding my back. Somehow, through the tears and dots dancing around, I saw it though, and once the coffee drowning was averted, I got to watch as she tried to hide from him – in plain sight.