Page 77 of Story of My Life
I spent a few seconds probing my teeth with my tongue, ensuring they were all intact, before I threw the covers off and got out of bed.
I dragged an oversized T-shirt over my head then nearly tripped over a raccoon in the hallway. The slightly domesticated wild animal hissed questioningly at me.
“Oh, bite me, Bertha. Can’t you find a new home?”
It backed away from me and then scampered into Zoey’s old room.
I muttered my way down the stairs and flung open the front door.
“What?” I demanded.
All three Bishop brothers stood on my doorstep looking stupidly handsome and awake. None of them were meeting my eyes. They were looking a few inches above my head. I patted my hair and realized it had exploded out of its messy knot to become a messier bird’s nest.
“Mornin’, sunshine,” Gage said, holding up a cup of coffee. “I’ll trade you caffeine for entrance.”
I felt a kinship with those trolls that lived under bridges in fairy tales, working hard to collect tolls from self-important pedestrians.
“Gimme.” I reached for the coffee with grabby hands.
Caffeine secured, I stepped aside and let three tall male hotties inside. My mother would have opened the door in thousand-dollar lingerie. Meanwhile, I’d forgotten to set an alarm and looked like some kind of swamp creature that could only open one eye at a time.
I was just closing the door when something heavy hit it from the outside. I opened it to reveal Melvin, the giant, hairy dog that seemed to belong to everyone. He had leaves in his fur and the kind of happy expression that made it clear there wasn’t a lot going on upstairs in his doggy brain.
“What time is it?” I rasped between sips of coffee.
“Seven,” Cam said, dropping two plastic totes filled with tools on the floor with a clatter. “Nice hair.”
“In the morning? That’s practically the middle of the night,” I complained. I was a night owl by nature. And just because I’d moved to a small town that didn’t have all-night cake delivery didn’t mean my circadian rhythm had adjusted. I’d stayed up until one in the morning writing a newsletter about my firstforty-eight hours in Story Lake. I’d included pictures of the house and a selfie that showed off my bandaged forehead.
“This place brings back memories,” Gage said, admiring something on the ceiling that I didn’t have the energy to care about until I had more caffeine in my system.
“Yeah,” Levi agreed.
He was looking at me like he wanted to say more. It was probably about my hair. Or the pillow creases on my face. But he turned away to give a metal duct cover his attention.
I supposed that was the silver lining to not being interested in a relationship. I didn’t have to feel an ounce of shame over my just-dragged-from-bed pillow face. Though maybe it wasn’t so much liberating as it was a symptom of a deeper problem. There were three presumably eligible, factually hot-as-hell men in my house putting on actual tool belts. And here I was, calculating whether I could crawl back upstairs and get another two hours of sleep.
“Nobody likes a romance novel heroine with no libido,” I muttered to myself.
“What was that?” Gage asked, looking at me like he actually expected me to repeat myself.
Oops. Right. I had actual humans in my house. I didn’t get to just shuffle around and mutter things out loud anymore. That would take some getting used to.
“Er, nothing,” I croaked.
“Dumpster is being delivered at nine,” Cam said. I was fairly sure he wasn’t talking to me.
“I have to leave at eleven for that meeting. Should be back by one,” Gage reported.
“I’m cutting out at four to take over at the store,” Levi said.
Gripping my coffee, I decided it was the perfect time to escape. I half lurched, half scampered to the kitchen. Resigned to officially being up for the day, I grabbed a Pepsi out of thefridge and helped myself to another cup o’ oatmeal that Zoey had left behind.
While the oatmeal burped and spat in the microwave, I stuck my head under the kitchen faucet and held it there, hoping the water would both wake me up and tame my snarl of hair.
The water shut off.
“Hey,” I sputtered.
