But first, I was getting my hands on some red clover and racking my brain for the rest of my great-grandmother's special fertility tea recipe. When the kettle was on the stove and those dried flowers were in the strainer, everyone knew it was time to start knitting baby blankets because that tea never failed.
The recipe was the one gift my great-grandmother gave at bridal showers. Sometimes there was a loaf of scratch-made olive bread with the tea recipe, but only if shereallyliked you.
Without that recipe and with my luck, I'd flub the ingredients or ratios, and end up with hair on my chest or an accidental cure for indigestion. But that wasn't going to hold me back. Nope, I was full steam ahead with my smelly tea and a new app on my phone to track the comings-and-goings in my lady regions.
Once I'd navigated my way to Shannon's neighborhood, it took another twenty minutes to find a parking spot, and I was far behind schedule. Things didn't get much better. There was the odd moment of finding a very wet, very large, very tattooed, and very nearly naked man behind Shannon's door—he looked like a mighty fine way to recover from a breakup—and then the splendor of babbling that information to Andy and Lauren before discovering that Shannon wished to keep it private.
How I was supposed to know that Tattooed-and-Toweled was meant to be a secret was beyond me. Through it all, I pissed off my future sister-in-lawagain, guzzled four too many mimosas, managed to eat none of my lunch, and had to call in a favor to get my drunk ass home.
I was leaning beside a trough of butternut squash, alternately eyeing the phallic shape and laughing at my own quips when I spotted him near the main entrance.
"Hey," Riley said as I approached. My head was still swimming with light, fizzy bubbles, and I was working damn hard to keep from wobbling.
"Hi," I said, "and thank you for coming so quickly."
"Yeah, no problem. I was at the office, so I was close," he said. His hand landed on my shoulder, steadying me, and he leveled me with a skeptical look. "Everything okay?"
I nodded, and the sensation in my head was slow, reminiscent of shaking an Etch A Sketch. "I can't keep up with them," I confessed. "I don't know how those women can drink like that, and on a Saturday afternoon, no less. It's like they run on liquor and nonfat yogurt, and Sephora samples."
"Don't forget about the cupcakes." Riley tightened his grip on my shoulder as he laughed. "Where are you parked, Punky Brewster?"
I led the way, wobbling and nearly wiping out on a cracked segment of the sidewalk, and handed over the keys to Sam's Range Rover when it came into sight. Without a word, Riley turned the ignition and merged into the afternoon traffic.
"You're not going to ask?" I studied him while we were stopped at a light near Faneuil Hall. "About me texting you in the middle of the day to drive me home, and not calling Sam instead? I'm sure I dragged you away from something fun."
"At theoffice?" Riley shook his head. "Nope."
"I've had a lot of champagne, and think I'm gonna tell you anyway."
He tugged at the knotted man-bun sitting loose at the nape of his neck. "I don't fuckin' understand what it is about chicks and brunch."
"Sam's in his workshop, which means he's not going to hear his phone over the saws, and he's been all fired up about getting some table finished." Slouching deeper into the seat, I sighed. "I still can't figure out what to say around your sister. I'm always going on about the wrong things, or saying too much or not enough, or it comes out all wrong. Even when I try to help, I screw up."
I wanted to find my groove with these women. It didn't escape my notice that I'd already flamed out of one family, and I didn't want that track record following me here. But befriending adult women on the basis of our shared love for the Walsh brothers was an oversimplification of the matter. The presumption that all significant others and sisters-in-law would automatically become besties only made sense if these boys were in the market for the exact same woman, and I could attest they weren't.
Liking each other and becoming good friends wasn't merely a dress that you put on. No, it had to look right, feel right,fit.
And right now, despite all my best efforts, I didn't fit. At least not with Shannon.
"She'll get over it," he said. He rested his elbow on the center console and gestured toward me as we crossed the Congress Street Bridge. "Contrary to popular belief, she doesn't hold grudges. She gives everyone seven or eight second chances."
"Hmm," I murmured. "I don't think I qualify for that package."
"You do." Riley clicked the automatic door opener and drove into the old fire truck bay. "Hell, I think I'm on second chance number twenty-nine. Don't sweat it." He pointed at the street, and said, "I'm going to get some work done at Turlan. It's easier when there isn't as much noise, or people. There are all these old medallions to fix, and I can't believe anyone accepts the quality I'm getting from Sam's plaster craftsman. It's horrendous. I'd rather do it all by hand, myself, than let that shit fly, and…yeah. Don't worry about me for dinner or anything."
"Thanks for the save," I called as he backed out.
"No sweat," he said. "You've saved my ass plenty of times. And remember: there's no bite in Shannon's bark."
I wasn't sure that theory extended beyond Shannon's siblings, but Riley was already cruising down the street, and the argument dissolved on my tongue.
I stumbled inside and then into Sam's workshop, and found him running boards through the circular saw. He was dressed in a black tank top and the old pair of low-slung jeans he always wore when he was woodworking. And the battered gloves. Jesus, there was something about jeans, a tank top, and work gloves that screamed "Come a little closer so I can defile you."
That look turned my thoughts into dark, sticky molasses.
There had been times when I'd tried to look at him in this gear without turning into a stuttering pile of hormones, but it always ended with me climbing him like a tree.
I boosted myself up on the edge of the work table and watched his arms and shoulders flexing against the saw's vibrations. He hadn't lost any of that lumberjacked strength.
