“Good to see nothing has changed,” he said, his voice teasing.
In a lot of ways, he was right. He still had the same cute butt that all the girls at school had talked about in barely contained whispers when he passed them. For me, he was always the brother I never had, though, not some pretty boy to drool over. Which was why I averted my gaze from his butt.
“But you know, I hear they make these things called,” he started, then groaned and heaved up the last step, “e-books now. You should really look into it.”
“Oh, I have an e-reader. It’s in there, too,” I said.
“Of course it is,” he muttered.
At the top of the stairs, Riley pushed into a large bedroom on the left and set my luggage down. Inside, three tall windows lit the cream-colored carpet with bright square patterns. A queen-sized bed covered in red pillows of all shapes and sizes took up half of the floor space. On the opposite wall stood a large dark oak dresser, and next to it, another door opened into a massive bathroom with both a whirlpool tub and a shower. Holy hell. This was not how I remembered this room.
I whistled. “You better be careful, Cleary, or you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”
He laughed, and though it was deeper than seven years ago, the rhythm of it still sounded the same. “Mom and Dad remodeled before they moved to Alexandria into something more ‘presidential hopeful,’ as Mom calls it. They said to tell you hi.”
Sergeant Maxwell Cleary was expected to announce his bid for presidency any day now, according to Riley, since he’d been turning heads across the political spectrum with his stunning military career and his effectiveness as a senator. To me, he’d always just been Max with his quiet, calm demeanor and a barbecue spatula permanently glued to his hand. Maybe it was because he always made me the juiciest hotdogs I had ever eaten, but I thought he made a great senator and would probably make a great president.
“Tell them hi back for me. When is your dad going to throw his hat in the ring, so to speak?”
The same crinkle I’d seen downstairs hardened the corners of Riley’s eyes. He scrubbed it away with a hand over his face and a sharp nod. “Soon. I can tell you all about the statistics I have on proper presidential bid timing, but you’ll probably be begging me to stop in five minutes. Remember those days I bored you into a coma by telling you all about baseball camp? You pretended you were listening when really you were reading underneath the table.”
I gasped, faking innocence. “I was listening.”
A smile curved his mouth. “Mm-hm.”
“Well, if I remember correctly, you whipped out your book, too, and caught up with me so we could dissect Voldemort’s childhood with charts and maps.”
“Good old Voldy. Those were the days, huh?”
I laughed at our shared pet name for the Harry Potter villain. “Do you still read a lot?”
“Sadly, no. I work too much, which means you’re going to be bored stiff here all alone for the next six weeks.”
My ears perked up at the sound of running water downstairs. What had made Sam bleed so much in the few disorienting moments since the library?
“Should we be worried about Sam and all that blood?” I asked.
“He’s not a kid anymore. He can take care of himself.”
“Of course he can.” And why wouldn’t he be able to? “So...” I didn’t need to know this, shouldn’twantto know. “He lives here? You didn’t say so on the phone.”
“He lives here in theory, but he’s never here. He’s...” Riley shook his head and sighed. “He’s a mess, is what he is.”
“Yeah, he’s not like the Sam I remember.” Now he had long fingers that had stoked a fire in my lower belly hot enough to melt steel just by handing me a paperback. I flushed at the memory. The man, once a sweet, innocent boy, had some serious know-how in the turning-women-on department that had little to do with actual touches and a lot to do with...experience? Yet another reason I should feel disgusted by him and the series of women he must have practiced on.
He was a mistake waiting to happen, and I’d already had my share of mistakes, which was part of why I dropped out of existence after moving to Kansas and needed therapy with Dr. Morrison. Besides, Sam couldn’t do anything for me I couldn’t do for myself. I hadn’t come here for some random hook-up. I was here to better my library career, continue with my carefully crafted life. Nothing else.
Riley glanced behind him to the hallway and ran a hand through his short, blond hair. “He always has work and parties, so he shouldn’t be much bother to you.”
Good. Outstanding.
“Was it a party that gave him the black eye?” I asked.
“Who knows?” he said, rolling his eyes at the ceiling. “Mom and Dad are too busy to do much about him, and they don’t know half the things he does, anyway. He’s a walking time bomb, and I don’t have time to babysit him, even though it could cost Dad the presidency.”
“Can’t Rose talk some sense into him?”
At the mention of the youngest Cleary, all the irritation on Riley’s face washed away into a blank stare. I knew Riley’s expressions too well, but this was not one of them. It was too practiced, too rehearsed.
