“Whatever,” he muttered.
I looked up at the loft, rolling my eyes when I saw him hanging a blanket up for privacy. Not that I could blame him. He was a teenage kid. The last thing he wanted was an adult spying on him.
“Great, Blake,” I mumbled to myself. “You’re doing a bang-up job of taking care of this kid.”
A swift knock on the door drew me out of my depressing thoughts. For just a second, I thought it was Parker coming to apologize, but instead, Jeff stood there with a pan full of steaming food that made my stomach rumble.
“I figured you hadn’t eaten yet, and with a teenage boy in the house, I thought you might need some sustenance.”
“Thank you,” I smiled, taking it from him.
He followed me inside, his eyes darting to the blanket blocking the loft. “I see he’s already marked his territory.”
“And officially labeled me the pain in the ass adult.”
“Well, that comes with the territory of any teenage boy. They tend to not like authority figures.”
“Are you telling me to go easy on him?”
“Oh, hell no. Give him an inch and he’ll drive off with your house,” he chuckled. “Like how I did that? Because I drove off with your house?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
I couldn’t help but smile at Parker’s teasing brother. He was the easy-going sibling, the one who always had a joke on hand. At least I could count on him to make me laugh when I was struggling.
“So, any advice for raising a kid?”
“I’m right fucking here,” the kid shouted from the loft.
Jeff nodded. “One, they have excellent selective hearing. Two, never leave anything laying around that you don’t want him to touch. Three, I would get a sheet to hang over your door. Doesn’t matter if you’re his guardian. You’re a woman and you have boobs.”
I cringed at the thought. “Is that all?”
“Oh, there are so many others, but not enough time in the world to go through all of them tonight.”
“Well, that seems like a good place to start.”
Jeff tipped his cowboy hat at me, then headed for the door. I half hoped Parker would come over and apologize, but that seemed a little too far-fetched given the argument we just had. Still, there was practically a stranger in the house with me. I wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of doing this alone.
“Wesley, how about you come down for dinner?”
“No thanks,” he muttered.
I had to establish some boundaries. Otherwise, this would never work. “Wes, get your butt down here. Food is on the table, and there’s no way you’re going to bed without eating.”
“I said I’m not hungry!”
“And I said to get your ass down here!”
He ripped the sheet aside and scowled at me. “You’re not my mother.”
“No, and it doesn’t seem that she cared either if you ate dinner or had someplace to sleep.”
He flinched back at the harsh assessment of his family, but sugarcoating it wouldn’t do either of us any favors. Just as I was about to yell at him again, the door burst open and Parker stepped inside, his eyes glued to Wes and his jaw hard.
He must have heard us yelling.
“What’s going on?”
