Power Drilled (Roommates, #8)(22)

“I’d hope so. I’m pretty sure there are more of your possessions in my SUV than are left in your apartment.”

I laughed. “Probably. But hey, I need all that stuff. Got to look nice for my fake boyfriend.”

Jackson grinned as he opened the passenger side for me. “I doubt that’ll be difficult for you.”

He closed the door before I could work out that he’d just complimented me. My smile lasted until he pulled back onto the road. “Do you really think this’ll work?”

“Could you be more specific?”

“All of it. The wedding week. Your Ten-Day Turnaround.”

“Only one way to find out.”

He had a point, but it still seemed to me that there was a lot that could go wrong. And just because my life was screwed up at the moment didn’t mean I wanted his to be. Nor his brothers’. “I just don’t want to mess up your week.”

“You won’t. We, the four of us I mean, have a plan, and we’ll see it through.”

The confidence in his voice warmed me. “You and your brothers saved me, so I want to do my best for you all, too. So please tell me if I’m doing something you don’t like with the videos.”

“It’s not that hard,” Jackson said, and then he backtracked. “I don’t mean the editing and how you combine all the footage into something cool-looking. That certainly sounds hard to me. But as for what to shoot in the first place, Chris basically aimed for about forty percent of us doing the actual renovations, and sixty percent of us goofing around, pranking each other, and just being bros.”

That sounded like something that would be fun to witness. “I don’t really know what men are like when they’re just being bros.”

“You will by the end of the week.”

“I hope so.” My voice sounded doubtful, even to my own ears.

“Let’s put it this way. Do you find us attractive?”

I glanced over at him in surprise, aware that my face was heating again. But just a few minutes ago, he’d implied that he thought I was pretty, so I decided to be direct. “Yes.”

“Good.” He glanced over with a smile before returning his eyes to the road. “So make videos that will make other people think we look good, too.”

When he put it like that, suddenly my job didn’t seem very difficult at all. “And that sells houses?”

“It has in the past. The more people who watch our videos means a bigger pool of potential buyers. Your job is to create thirst traps, whether the viewer is thirsting after the house or us.”

If Hunter had said something like that, I’d have thought he was bragging. And Reid—well, I couldn’t imagine him saying that. But with Jackson, it was just a fact of life, one that he made work to his advantage. “I’ll do my best.”

“That’s all we ask.”

I still didn’t know what all the week would bring. And I really didn’t know anything about renovating a house. But I knew the triplets were handsome as sin, so I was pretty sure their fans would see that in the videos I made, too.





8





HUNTER





Who the fuck had a family this big? The whole clan could barely fit in the ballroom. I’d been introduced to dozens of Penny’s relatives, and that was just her side of the family. The groom’s side was even bigger.

Who even wanted to spend that much time with family? Well, okay, I worked with my brothers. But as for the rest of the family, we saw them a normal amount. Like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the occasional Sunday dinner. For us, weddings were small affairs that occasionally took place during drunken Vegas weekends. They weren’t week-long affairs.

“Do you want another drink?” Penny asked, clinging to my arm as she stood on her tiptoes, her mouth inches from my ear. It would’ve been flattering if I’d thought she wanted to be that close to me, but it was the only way we could hear each other.

“I’m pretty sure Reid would have one,” she said with a small grin. Then she clamped her hand over her mouth. “I mean… you are Reid, of course.”

She didn’t need to worry about being overhead. I’d barely heard her myself. Then again, she needed to get a whole lot better at lying if we were going to make it through the week.

“Can you drive home if I get shitfaced?” I asked.

“Sure.”

“Then hell yeah I’ll have another whiskey.” My head was already pounding from the clamor around me. If we’d been in a club, I wouldn’t have minded. Club music was so loud that your heart started pounding in time with the beat. That was its purpose. But here, the only thing blaring through the sound system was 80s music played by a band of people who looked and sounded like they were nuns.

We made it to the open bar and back without Penny introducing me to anyone else, which was a fucking miracle. I didn’t know how she remembered the names of so many relatives. And I also didn’t know if she was so eager to introduce me because she wanted to stick it to her ex or because she liked being here with me.

I cleaned up well, even if I did say so myself.

So did she, though. She had on a little dress that sparkled silver when you looked at it from one angle and blue from another. And trust me, I was looking at it from all angles. Or looking at her from all angles.