A Date with the Other Side (Cuttersville #1)(25)
Author: Erin McCarthy

No, he couldn’t sleep with her. It was probably a good thing they’d been interrupted.

He nearly groaned at the thought, suddenly exhausted and wanting nothing more than to just tumble into his bed and sleep for about twelve hours. Except that he had to get up early tomorrow and go buy bricks to use as doorstops. He didn’t even know where one went about buying bricks.

In his experience, they just showed up on the side of buildings.

Boston sighed as he parked the car back at the White House. Maybe it was time to call Brett again and try and get himself the hell out of there.

Chapter Eight

Sleep would have to wait, Boston decided, when he walked around the back of the house and found a teenage boy with blue hair sitting on the back step, smoking a cigarette.

Shelby’s cousin.

“Hey, what’s up?” Brady said, blowing smoke to the side.

“Nothing. What’s up with you?” Boston debated lecturing him on the effects of tobacco, then realized he was too tired to be properly firm.

“I’m just looking for Shel. She around? Mrs. Danforth said she was giving you a tour.”

“I just took her home.”

Brady grinned in the dark, his white teeth flashing. “That was a helluva long tour, huh? She must have shown you just about everything.”

He would have to be an idiot not to catch Brady’s raunchy tone of voice, but he chose to ignore it. Putting his key in the door, he opened it and stepped around Brady. “Just the usual.”

Brady crushed out his cigarette on the stoop and scrambled to his feet. “I think it’s cool if you hook up with Shel. She deserves someone paying a little attention to her. This town treats her like Cinderella or something, man.”

Boston flipped on the kitchen light and looked at Brady curiously. “And that bothers you?”

“Hell, yeah. Pisses me off. I wish she’d leave this place and go somewhere new, then people would have to see her for who she is, not what they think she is.”

Boston liked Brady’s emotional and protective tone. He sensed Brady was also in a talkative mood, and Boston decided it was worth a little lost sleep to hear what the kid might be able to tell him about Shelby.

“And what is Shelby?” A giant moth flew past Brady’s blue head, attracted to the kitchen light, and Boston added, “Get in here and shut the door.”

Brady did, spinning the earring in his eyebrow as he moved. Watching the skin pull out made Boston a little nauseous, but he decided that was probably due to lack of nourishment. He hadn’t eaten since lunch.

“Shelby’s smart. She’s loyal. She doesn’t talk down to anyone and she doesn’t need fancy clothes and a house to be happy.” Then Brady shrugged like he’d gotten too sentimental. “She’s cool, that’s all.”

Boston pulled open the refrigerator and stared at its sparse contents. Brady’s assessment of Shelby was exactly what he’d thought of her. Too good for him.

He stood up so fast he nailed his head on the freezer door. Where the hell had that thought come from? Shelby was not too good for him. No one was too good for him, and he wasn’t that little kid anymore who just desperately wanted his parents to love him.

Irritated, he grabbed a drinkable yogurt and ripped the top off. He took a swig, then turned to Brady, realizing a second too late that he shouldn’t be eating in front of him. “Want one?”

Brady shook his head, lip curling up. “No way. That’s like girl food.”

“What do you want? A bloody steak and greasy eggs?”

Brady grinned. “That sounds good. With a beer.”

Boston found himself amused. “Yeah, in about five years.” He pulled open the deli drawer. “Best I can do is a ham sandwich.”

“Cool.” Brady vaulted himself onto the counter and leaned over, reaching into the drawer between his legs. “Here’s a knife for the mustard.”

Boston pulled out the sandwich fixings and set them on the counter. He went for a couple of plates. “So where’s your girlfriend tonight?” He’d never got a glimpse of Brady’s girlfriend, but he remembered her indignant squawk from behind the closed door.

“Dude, she has like the most unreasonable curfew you’ve ever heard of in your life. She has to be home by ten-thirty. I mean, what’s up with that?”

Taking in Brady’s blue hair sticking up in spikes, his eyebrow ring, the silver tongue stud that flashed from time to time when he spoke, and the spiked bracelet, Boston wasn’t surprised. Brady’s T-shirt had what looked like a bleeding head on it. “Maybe they’re protective.”

As he started to assemble sandwiches, Brady snorted, kicking his legs against the cabinets. “There’s overprotective and then there’s a f**king bubble, man.”

Brady swiped a piece of ham from one of the open-faced sandwiches and tossed it into his mouth. “And here’s a little warning for you. The chicks in this town want commitment. We’re talking a ring, the wedding, the whole forever bullshit. So you just watch your back.”

“All of them?” Shelby didn’t strike him as eager to jump into marriage again.

“All the ones I ever met. Joelle wants to get engaged. Isn’t that nuts? We’re like fifteen. She’s cool and all, but man, I want to see what’s out there. Shop around.”

Boston couldn’t disagree with that. He’d done quite a bit of shopping himself. He cut their sandwiches in half and handed a plate to Brady.

“Thanks. I mean, look at you. You’re like, what, forty?”

Boston paused with his sandwich half to his mouth. “I’m only thirty-two.”

“See, that’s still pretty old. And you’re not married. What’s the rush?”

None, as far as he could tell. It wasn’t like he had any ambitious hopes for a happily ever after anyway. “I’ve been building my career.”

A ham sandwich waved in front of him. “See? Exactly.”

“So, why did Shelby divorce Danny?” That bothered him. It had since he’d first seen her with Danny outside the diner, looking way too friendly for exes.

Brady shrugged, downing the last bite of his sandwich. “Hey, got anything to drink? And I don’t know, Shelby never tells me personal stuff like that, and I was just a kid anyway. Eleven or twelve when she left him. I thought my aunt Susan was going to have a stroke, though. Man, I remember that. She screamed herself hoarse.”

Boston dug two soft drinks out of the fridge and arched one through the air to Brady. “Why?”