Playing It Safe(74)

I hastily backpedal my response. “What I mean to say is you know me, truck-driver mouth and all. They don’t, so … yeah, that’s about all I got right now, and …”

Alex bites his bottom lip to keep from laughing while I ramble on. He pulls me into his arms, his lips poised over mine, and he quietly says, “Shut up, Julia.”

“Don’t tell me to shut up.”

“I just did.”

“Yeah, well, don’t do it again.”

“Are you going to keep talking, or are you going to let me kiss you?”

“Not if you tell me to shut up again.”

“Are you done talking now?”

“Are you really asking me that?”

“Are you answering my question with a question?”

I open my mouth to say something back to him that is not in the form of a question, but he starts to kiss me, and quite frankly, I don’t give a rat’s ass anymore because he can shut me up like this anytime he likes.

The doorbell rings, and we reluctantly break off the kiss.

“Remind me to pick this up later right where we just left off,” he says in a low voice that makes my insides squirm.

“You’ve got yourself a deal.”

The doorbell sounds off again. I grab the backs of my earrings and put them on as I’m walking toward the front door to answer it, Alex following behind me.


I peek through the side glass panels and see that it’s Josie and Vanessa on the other side. Without a minute to waste, I swing the door open to find Josie smiling so wide all I see is her braces. God, she is so freaking cute.

“Julia!” she squeals and throws her arms around my waist.

“Hey, girlie!”

Vanessa pushes her sunglasses up on her head and sighs. “She’s been awake and fully dressed since seven o’clock this morning, asking me every ten minutes if it’s time to go yet.”

“Seriously?” I ask her, but Josie answers instead with a resounding yes.

Alex appears beside me and bends his head down to Josie’s level. “You’re not even going to say hello to me, are you?”

“Don’t be silly, Uncle Alex,” she says in a matter-of-fact voice and releases me.

It gives me a chance to properly say hello to Vanessa while Alex scoops Josie up in his arms. Her feet dangle at least two feet off the ground, her blond curls bouncing down her back.

When he puts her down, Alex gives his sister a big hug and kiss on the cheek as Josie looks on impatiently.

“Okay, girlie, are you ready to enter Hogwarts?”

She clasps her hands underneath her chin and nods.

“Give me your hand and close your eyes,” I instruct her.

I walk a couple of feet to the end of the foyer where the platform nine and three-quarters wall is waiting to be pulled back.

“Open your eyes, Josie.”

She complies and bounces from foot to foot, staring in awe at the sign painted to look exactly like the one from the movie. If she’s this excited by a fake wall, wait until she sees the rest of the place!

“Can I open it?” she asks in wonderment.

“Yup.”

Josie’s hand inches up and snatches the end of the fabric, pulling it back slowly and peeking her head through to take a look at the other side. She drops the curtain, and it falls back in place, her face in a stoic expression.

I bend my knees until I’m at eye level with her. With my hand I brush back a loose curl from her forehead. “Is everything okay?”

She nods but doesn’t say a word. I look up at Vanessa and Alex, who are just as confused as I am. “Josie,” I say quietly, “why aren’t you saying anything?”

She wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me to the point of choking. Through choked-up tears, she whispers in my ear. “It’s amazing.”

I’m sure the PMS hormones have something to do with it because I start to get teary-eyed and all emotional by her display of gratitude.

Jesus Christ, what the f*ck is happening to me? I’m turning into a mushy person, and I actually like it.

I peek up at Alex, who gives me a sweet smile with a wink, and I swear I have to avert my gaze to the floor before I start to really bawl like a baby. I quickly pull myself together and thank God I do before the waterworks really start for me. It’s one thing to see a child cry but quite another for a grown woman. And really nobody should have to see me cry. It’s downright frightening. I do the whole bottom lip quivering thing, and my nose gets as red as Rudolph’s. Seriously, it’s not pretty.

“But you haven’t seen everything yet,” I say, patting her back softly. “Come on, let me show you the rest.”

“Okay.”

She lets me go so I can stand up, and I grab her hand in mine again. I pull back the curtain and step over the threshold into party central, which has been separated into three specific quadrants. A Sorting Hat section that has a walkie-talkie attached to the back of the chair so that whenever a guest sits in the chair with the hat on, an actor I hired stationed in another room is signaled to speak. Once a guest has been assigned to his or her respective house, there’s a rack of rented authentic robes that have one of the four crests on it. The second quadrant is a potions section that has a giant witch’s cauldron filled to the brim with dry ice bubbling over and bottles lined up in front of it with the following ingredients: dragon’s blood, mandrake root, salamander blood, pickled slugs, eel eye, and goosegrass, to name a few.