River: I’ll let you know later in the week. It’s harvest season.
Rain: Oh my fucking god, River Phoenix MacAllister! Can you stop being so stubbornly annoying? What, pray tell, are you going to do on a Friday night at the orchard? Last time I checked, you didn’t have a boo to take under the trees and give her a good roughing.
Miles: *eating popcorn gif*
Merlin: Wait. Are you cooking again? Xander mentioned you were tossing your cookies on the daily. I’m glad you’re feeling better!
Miles: Noooooo Merlin! How can you throw Xander under the bus like this? You still have lots to learn, baby bro. *face palm emoji*
Merlin: Oops! Nevermind. I can’t make it, but you all enjoy. Love you!
Ruin: We’ll miss you, wizard! *soccer ball emoji*
Rain: I gotta go have a conversation with my husband. But I expect everyone there Friday.
Ruin: Can’t wait! *heart-eye emoji*
I toss my phone onto the empty side of the bed and let out a long sigh, pressing my fingers against my closed eyes.
There’s never a dull moment with my siblings, but for all the shit I give them, I love seeing how damn happy my sisters are with their husbands.
That kind of love isn’t for me.
Which makes it even more annoying that my brain keeps going back to Penny, giving me hell before getting into herfancy car. The woman is too beautiful for her own good, all grace and sharp edges wrapped into one. Like an angel sent from heaven solely to make my life a living hell.
I don’t even know what it is about her, just that she hasn’t left my head since the second we met.
One night should’ve been enough to get her out of my system.
It wasn’t. Not even close.
I exhale hard and roll onto my back, already annoyed with myself. Sitting here thinking about Penny isn’t going to fix anything.
I get up and decide to go for a run instead of making supper. I need to get my head on straight before I see her at work tomorrow. The last thing I need is Penny taking one look at me and smirking like she already knows.
I swear that woman belongs to Granny’s coven. She can tell how worked up I get around her, and she loves to rev me up. And fuck if I don’t love to give it right back.
“Just the man I was looking for,” Gio says as I enter my small office at the construction site.
I glance at the clock on the wall and realize I’m fifteen minutes late. The weather’s turning, and this morning I had to scrape the season’s first layer of frost off my windshield.
“Hey, man. I didn’t realize we had a meeting today,” I say as I give him a one-armed hug, making sure I don’t spill my coffee on him.
He waves me off as he passes his hand through his hair. “No, no. We had nothing planned. But Penny called in sick, so I thought I would come down and see if I could do anything to help in her absence.”
My brain short-circuits. Penny’s sick?
I blow on my coffee and take a slow sip, buying myself a second. “Sick? Is everything okay?”
Gio crosses his arms across his chest, widening his stance. “Yeah, she’s fine,” he says, fighting a grin, which only makes me frown harder.
How can she be okay and ask for a sick day? Is she playing hooky?
“Apparently, the girls went to Charlotte over the weekend, and they’re not over their hangover yet.” Gio shakes his head, a smile on his lips.
“A hangover.” I scrub a hand over my jaw. “Somehow that makes it worse. Or maybe better. I honestly can’t decide.”
“It’s totally fine, though. In all the years I’ve known Penny, she’s never taken a personal day off,” Gio says as he slips his hands into his pockets. “I’m actually dreading the day she tells me she no longer wants to work with me.”
