Page 133 of The Maxwell Brothers
“Umm… as soon as I put everything together for the pool excursion, I’ll text you. But I’d like to hang up now.”
“No problem. I didn’t want to put you on the spot.”
Hmm, I wonder what the purpose of the call was, then?But I didn’t ask.
“And, Kendra? If you change your mind about sharing those thoughts, you can always text me.”
I let out a sound somewhere between a yelp and a giggle. God help me, I wasn’t myself when it came to this man.
I was still on edge, though feeling oddly giddy.
Tyler Maxwell was the hottest man in Chicago. The most successful goalie in the national hockey league. He had the world at his feet.
And he was attracted tome.
Was this a good thing or a bad thing? He probably had a trail of broken hearts behind him, and I didn’t want to be one of them. I wasn’t going to get to the bottom of my conundrum today, so instead, I chose to bask in this giddiness that was filling me. I turned on my favorite playlist on Spotify and tapped my feet to the rhythm of the music while I got to work.
Once I had a tentative schedule, I sucked in a breath and messaged Tyler.
Kendra: Thursday at three work for you?
Tyler: Yes it does.
A few seconds later, he sent another text.
Tyler: I can’t wait to see you in a bikini.
I blushed instantly. He liked to play dirty, huh? Ha, the joke was on him. I wasn’t going to wear a bikini. But I had an inkling I’d find out exactly how dirty Tyler liked to play on Thursday anyway.
I focused on work after that, trying not to think about himtoomuch.
In the afternoon, Emma and I went to a hardware store to look at tiles. I wasn't buying anything today, but I just wanted to get an idea of what was on the market and within my budget.
"Damn, I'm dreaming of a day when I'm not broke," I said, looking longingly at some amazing tiles with a Portuguese design on them. They were three times the price of most of the others.
"Hey, that day will come. I have it on my vision board," Emma said. She had future plans on this thing. It was really working for her.
We were walking at a slow pace. The shop was super crowded, but that was okay. We weren't in a hurry. We just stopped whenever we saw something interesting, took pictures, and moved on.
"Hey these tiles remind me of the ones we had in the apartment we moved in after Dad died.” She pointed to blue tiles. I could see the resemblance.
“You’re right. They look similar.
“You were such an awesome sister. You spoiled me rotten even though we had nothing. Remember those amazing lemonades?"
I smiled. "Hey, it was all in the honey. You loved it because it was sweet."
"Yeah, obviously, but you were so good at helping me with homework and even super inventive to keep me from freaking out about the visits from Miss Spooky."
I stared at my sister. Miss Spooky was what I’d dubbed the social worker who came to our place, mostly on surprise visits when Mom was working. The neighbors alerted her that we were unsupervised, and I used to hide with my sister when she knocked at the door. Sometimes she left after knocking a few times, but we couldn’t fool her every time.
"What do you mean?"
"You know, when you asked me to play under the table and not make any noise. Remember that one time when you said we were having a contest of who could keep still for longer, and at the end of it, the winner would get a chocolate chip cookie?"
I was stunned. I’d hoped my sister wouldn't pick up on the fact that I was basically making her hide, but it seemed I’d failed.
"Okay. Wow. I'm sorry. I honestly hoped you wouldn't notice why we were doing that."
