Page 45 of I Can't Even

“Draw your shades, Julia, or I will call the police and have you charged with indecent exposure.”

She turned on a fluffy pink slipper and strode down the walkway where the boys were waiting. They fell in line behind her with Danny bringing up the rear. Before he disappeared, he held his hand up to his ear with his thumb and pinky out, miming a phone, and mouthed the words, “Call me.”

I turned to go back into my house, ignoring the guffaw that I heard coming from next door. Once inside I glanced out the side window to see Liam doubled up with laughter at my expense. Jerk! It did not help that his morning attire of jeans and a dress shirt looked fiiiiine on his muscle-sculpted body. Damn it!

“Who was that?” Soph asked as she came down the stairs. She had a raging case of bedhead and it looked as if she hadn’t washed off her makeup from last night. This was not the Soph I knew.

“Mrs. Rodriguez from down the street,” I said.

“This early in the morning?” Soph frowned at the door. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Something about bird watching.”

“Huh.” Sophie continued to the kitchen.

I uncrossed the fingers behind my back and started to follow when Em appeared in the doorway to Bab’s bedroom. Was she sleeping in there now? Judging by the dark circles that were even darker than they’d been the other day, that would be a no, there was no sleeping happening. She shook her head until her long blond hair covered her face.

“You are such a liar,” she hissed. Her voice was filled with scathing contempt and I winced mostly because what she said was true in this instance. Still I wasn’t one to get kicked and not kick back.

“Oh, I’m the liar?” I snapped. Soph and I had been giving her space, but it didn’t mean I wasn’t keeping an eye on her. “I heard you call your boss, Mr. Drake, yesterday. You cried and said you were so overwrought about sorting your mother’s things that you couldn’t bear to come into work. You haven’t sorted jack. So, why the lies?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“It is so my business,” I argued. “I saw you with him at Babs’s service, Em. You’re in love with him.”

“Ah!” Em gasped. Her face went bright red and then pasty pale.

“What’s going on in here?” Soph appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“Em’s in love with her boss,” I said.

“Shut up, Jules!” Em’s face went red again.

“That’s why she’s been calling out of work,” I continued. I looked at Em. “What did you think was going to happen? He’d miss you so much he was going to show up at the door and beg you to come back to work? Or did you think he’d leave his wife for you?”

“What?” Soph cried.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “He’s married.”

Chapter Fifteen

Soph’s head swiveled between us, her mouth agape.

“At least I’m waiting for him to come to me and not stalking him like you are Liam,” Em fired back.

“Liam is not married,” I said. “But your boss is.”

“So what?” Em’s teeth were gritted, and I really thought she might take a swing at me. “What I do is none of your business. You’re not even my sister!”

Well, that checked me. I blinked, feeling as if she had clobbered me after all.

“Emily. Grace. Blumer.” Soph spat out each name like a string of cusswords. She sounded ferocious as if it took every bit of her mom mojo not to turn Em over her knee. That made me feel a little better. “That was completely uncalled for and you will apologize right now. All nine words.”

Em tossed her hair. She seemed defiant for about a half second and then she looked at me. The hurt must have shown on my face, because she mumbled, “I am sorry. I love you. Please forgive me.”

I met her anguished, brown-eyed gaze and couldn’t be a bitch about it. I nodded. “Sure, I forgive you.”

Em stomped back into Babs’s room, slamming the door behind her. The coffeemaker beeped in the kitchen and Soph and I headed for it like it was the source of all that was good in the world.

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