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  Nodding, Sara turned her attention to Jason. “And you?”

  “I’m a school teacher,” he said, gesturing to Haley, who was smiling warmly at them. “And so is my wife. Both of us have passed criminal background checks and we love kids. I promise that she’s safe with us.”

  “I think she’s in good hands,” Sara said with a reassuring smile, which Kasey took to mean that she’d already ran their license plates and knew exactly who they were and where they lived. It was the kind of thing she expected from her overprotective best friend.

  But just in case she was wrong…

  “You ran their plates?” she discretely asked, as she rubbed the bridge of her nose and shot her friend a questioning look.

  “Before they had a chance to unload the last bag,” Sara said with a wink.

  Hoping she didn’t live to regret this, Kasey looked at Mikey. “You know the rules.”

  “I can stay?” Mikey asked, smiling hugely.

  “Yes, you can stay, but please don’t make me regret it,” she said with a pointed look as she said, “And no fast ball.”

  “No fast ball,” Mikey promised, nodding firmly. “Got it.”

  “Okay,” she said after a slight hesitation, reminding herself that she had a kitchen to demolish. With one last look at Mikey and a pointed look at Reese, who seemed to read the silent message clearly, she turned around and headed to the house, eager to get this project started.

  Chapter 9

  “Don’t start,” Reese said, gesturing for Mikey to throw another ball, wishing like hell that the asshole standing next to him hadn’t caught him running an appreciative eye over their temporary neighbor’s incredible body, but Christ, he was only human after all.

  It took everything he had, but somehow he managed to stop himself from looking back towards the two women walking up the path, one of them overdressed for the beach and the other one…

  Had him shifting and trying to think of something other than a black bikini top concealing large breasts, a flat stomach adorned with a navel ring, cut-off jeans and the heart shaped ass that had him licking his lips and imagining how good it would feel to run his hands over. He needed to get his shit together, because the last thing he needed was another complication in his life.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Jason said with a huge smile and a jaunty whistle as he lazily rocked back on his heels as he stood next to him, clearly intent on bugging the shit out of him.

  “I know that look,” Reese reminded him, in absolutely no mood for any of the typical Bradford bullshit that came from spending too much time in his cousins’ presence.

  “What look?” Jason asked, blinking innocently at him as he reached over and intercepted the ball as it was thrown at Reese and-

  “Holy shit!” Jason yelped, dropping the ball and shaking his hand as he bent over and bit back several of the more colorful expressions that he no doubt wanted to get off his chest at the moment.

  “Sorry!” Mikey yelled with a sheepish smile that had Reese chuckling as he leaned over and picked up the ball, throwing it back as his cousin dropped to the ground and proceeded to curl up into the fetal position.

  “Oh, my God!” Jason gasped, hugging his hand against his chest as he tried to breathe through the pain.

  “Next time, wear a glove,” Reese said, chuckling as he raised his glove and caught the next throw.

  “Is he okay?” Mikey asked, worrying her bottom lip the same way that he’d seen her mother do it, looking adorable with those braids and backwards baseball cap.

  “He’s fine,” Reese promised, holding his glove up for her next throw.

  “Dying,” Jason gasped as he rolled over onto his back.

  “Let me have a shot,” Trevor said, stepping over Jason and gesturing for Reese to toss him the glove.

  Nodding, Reese tossed the glove to him and stepped back.

  “She has a hell of an arm,” Trevor said, holding up his glove and releasing a pained chuckle as the ball soared through the air and slammed into his glove. “One hell of an arm,” he repeated with a grin and a nod as he threw the ball back.

  “I’d hate to see the damage her fast ball could do,” Reese said, absently brushing his fingers against the damage her curveball had left behind.

  Chuckling, Trevor caught the ball and tossed it back. “Me, too.”

  “Kill. Me,” Jason gasped, but since they were busy, they ignored him.

  “How are you holding up?” Trevor asked, keeping his focus on Mikey as they continued to throw the ball.

  “It doesn’t hurt as much today,” he said, already knowing that his cousin wouldn’t bring up the bullshit that had brought them all here this summer.

  That was one thing he loved about his family. They might fuck him over for their own entertainment, but they knew that there were certain topics that were off limits. Not once since all this bullshit had started had anyone in his family taken a shot at him, mocked him for fucking up, mentioned the bullshit all over the internet, or even asked him if he was really a virgin.

  It wasn’t any of their business and they knew that. They did however do their best to get him to laugh and to let him know that they were there if he needed them. It was one of the things that he loved best about his family. They pissed him off and annoyed the shit out of him, but they always had his back no matter how badly he fucked-up and he’d definitely fucked-up.

  “We keep you up last night?” Trevor asked, gesturing for Mikey to step back a bit.

  “I couldn’t sleep anyway,” he said with a shrug, not mentioning that he’d been having problems sleeping for a while or that he’d ended up on the couch last night when the sounds of beds slamming rhythmically against the walls and their moans and grunts had driven him from his room.

  Trevor nodded as he caught the ball. “You want to trade rooms?”

  Shaking his head, he gestured for Trevor to hand the glove back over. “No, I’m fine,” he said, resigned to sleeping on the couch until his cousins left in two weeks.

  “So, she’s not your usual type,” Trevor said nonchalantly and Reese didn’t pretend to misunderstand.

  “I’m not interested,” he said, catching the ball with a grunt as the impact rattled the bones in his arm.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure,” he said, throwing the ball back, impressed by the way Mikey easily caught it. The girl definitely had skills.

  “Okay,” Trevor said, nodding absently as he glanced over his shoulder to watch his children play.

  Reese waited a minute, fully expecting his cousin to push the subject, but he didn’t. A miracle, he thought as he caught the ball and-

  “That’s probably for the best,” Trevor murmured with a shrug.

  He would not take the bait.

  He would not do it.

  He wouldn’t!

  Aw, hell.

  “Why is it for the best?” he bit out, hating himself as every syllable left his lips, because he knew better.

  “Well, you know…” the bastard said, letting his words trail off and Reese swore that he wouldn’t react, again.

  “That’s what I was thinking, too,” Jason said with a long-suffering sigh as he joined the conversation from where he now lounged on the beach.

  “She’s not your usual type,” Trevor added with a shrug.

  “True,” Jason murmured his agreement.

  “And what’s my type?” he bit out even as he couldn’t help but wonder how they managed to fuck with his head like this.

  “Dumb bimbos with the personality of an ice cube?” Jason said helpfully, and since he couldn’t really argue with that description, he didn’t. Instead, he caught the ball and threw it back.

  Which seemed to piss off his instigators, because after a moment of glaring at him as they waited for him to react, they shrugged their shoulders, said, “The hell with it,” and tackled him just as the next ball soared over their heads.

  As he shoved Jason’s face into the sand, he couldn’t h
elp but ask, “Is this because your wife wants me?”

  Which didn’t end well for him and as he was being dragged into the ocean, he told himself that it had been worth it.

  *-*-*-*

  “So, where should we start?” Sara asked, as they stood there, holding one of the rusty hammers that Kasey had managed to find yesterday when she’d rummaged through the garage looking for anything that they could use today.

  “The cabinets?” Kasey suggested, because they seemed like the easiest place to start.

  “Sounds good,” Sara said, nodding as she pulled her sunglasses on and raised her hammer, clearly ready to commence with the destruction of Kasey’s ugly kitchen only to hesitate. “Maybe we should empty them first?”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Kasey agreed, chewing on her bottom lip as she glanced from the top cabinets filled with dishes and bowls to the kitchen sink.

  Since she kept her cleaning supplies in the small “pantry,” the small cabinet beneath the sink was empty. Deciding that was the place to start, she gestured towards the sink. “That’s empty.”

  Nodding, Sara said, “The sink it is.”

  And with that the two of them took up positions in front of the sink, assumed positions of destruction, and with a nod, they both swung. Sara’s swing resulted in the rusty hammer in her hands breaking in two upon impact and Kasey’s wild swing-

  “Oh, shit!”

  -resulted in something really bad happening.

  “Why did you do that?” Sara demanded, as they tried to stop the water from spraying everywhere, but with the faucet now embedded in the small kitchen window there was nothing to stop the water from flooding the kitchen.

  “Get a towel!”

  “Okay!” Sara said, nodding like an idiot as she grabbed a kitchen towel and handed it to Kasey, who quickly shoved the towel into the hole she’d created in a desperate attempt to make it stop.

  But it didn’t.

  What it did manage to do was to make the water spray out harder through the sides, soaking everything within ten feet. Worrying her bottom lip, she slapped her hands over the hole, which once again, didn’t work out like she’d planned.

  “Why are the sinks filling up?” Sara asked, as she frantically searched for something else to shove down the hole.

  “I don’t know!”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know!” she said, although it really should have been obvious at this point.

  “Maybe we can shut it off by-oh, crap!” Sara started to suggest when Kasey somehow managed to push on what remained of the faucet and made things worse.

  A lot worse.

  “Oh, my God!”

  “Stop yelling!” Kasey yelled back, trying not to panic and failing miserably as the water that refused to go down the drain now poured over the top of the sinks and flooded the floor along with the water that was still shooting out everywhere.

  “I can’t help it!”

  “Well, try!”

  “What are we going to do?” Sara asked, waving her hands frantically around as an idea came to Kasey, probably not a good idea, but an idea nonetheless.

  “We have to stop the water,” she said and with that, she hopped up onto the counter, turned around and with a silent prayer, she shifted back so that she was sitting on the hole.

  “Oh, my God! It’s working!” Sara said with a relieved smile as Kasey sagged with relief and-

  “Oh, crap,” she said when the move caused her to shift and she felt the pull on her shorts.

  “Did something just rip?” Sara asked, meeting her gaze with a frown.

  Nodding slowly, Kasey said, “You could say that.”

  “Your shorts?”

  “Yup.”

  “Oh, that’s unfortunate,” Sara said, clearly biting back a smile as Kasey was forced to sit there, wondering how this had gone so wrong so fast.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, deciding that this wasn’t helping and moved to climb off when she realized something else.

  She was stuck.

  Somehow her shorts had become stuck on the faucet handles, which she took as a bad sign. Shifting to turn, she heard another interesting rip and then-

  “Ouch!” she gasped when something stabbed her shoulder.

  “Uh oh,” Sara mumbled as Kasey became aware that her bikini top had become snagged on the faucet that had embedded itself in the window and had just ripped it in two.

  “Damn it!” she said, pressing her arm across her chest as she tried desperately to free herself from the faucet, but the move only managed to rip her shorts further.

  “Help me!” she said, pulling her legs up and placing her feet in the sinks full of water and tried to push up only to-

  “Ow!” she yelped when the moved caused something sharp to dig into her ass.

  “Oh, I don’t think that helped,” Sara said with a tsk and a sad shake of her head.

  “I know that!”

  “Stop yelling at me!” Sara cried, wringing her hands together.

  “I can’t help it!”

  “Fine!”

  “Fine!” she snapped back, only to end with a groan as she took in her precarious position.

  She was stuck in the sink with her boobs hanging out, her ass hanging out, something stabbing her ass and shoulder, water trying to shoot its way up where it didn’t belong and absolutely no idea how to get out of this situation.

  “Okay, I think you’re going to have to make a choice,” Sara said, nodding to herself as though she was trying to psych herself up for what was about to happen.

  “What?” she asked weakly as she tried to move off the sink, but it wasn’t letting her go.

  “Your boobs or your ass, Kasey. Make a choice.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your boobs or your ass!” Sara snapped, looking terrifyingly focused as she picked up the hammer that got them in this mess in the first place.

  “What? Neither, you demented psycho! Get me down!”

  “I don’t know how!”

  “Well, then Google it!” she yelled, uncaring that she was now screaming as water continued to…well, she really didn’t want to think about the way the water was currently violating her.

  Sara opened her mouth, closed it and then opened it again with an excited gasp while Kasey was forced to sit there, soaked to the bone, cold, semi-naked and distraught that her demolition project was not going according to plan.

  “I’ve got it!” Sara said with an excited squeal as she turned around and ran off, sliding and stumbling most of the way towards the front door while Kasey sat there, shaking her head and sighing, “Whatever,” trying to tell herself that it could be worse, but at the moment she wasn’t sure how that was even possible.

  Thankfully, Yummy came tearing into the house a minute later, letting her know that yes, yes things could get a lot worse.

  Chapter 10

  Thanks to his job, he’d seen a lot of things over the years, things he wished that he’d never seen, things that had left him sick to his stomach, things that had left him struggling not to