Dream Maker Read online

  She was peeking under long dark lashes, cheek pressed to her father’s thick thigh, and up close, I saw her cheeks were pink, her eyes looked tired, but they were riveted to my feet.

  “I like your shoes,” she mumbled.

  “That’s my girl,” Gwen cooed.

  “Someone kill me,” Hawk muttered.

  I smiled.

  Danny’s arm around me grew tighter.

  “She’s not feeling well. Maybe flu. It’s going around,” Gwen told me.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that,” I replied.

  “So, not being rude, I’ve been hoping to meet you, but we have to go. Though, before we do, I’m glad I have you, because Elvira’s doing boards,” she said.

  I perked up.

  “You don’t want to miss them,” she went on.

  Oh my God!

  Was this an invitation?

  “I’ve heard about these boards,” I shared, trying not to pant with excitement. “And what I heard is I definitely don’t want to miss them.”

  “Well, you have to come around. Next Tuesday?” she asked.

  “Totally,” I answered, and okay, it came out breathily, but Gwen didn’t seem to notice.

  She just said, “Awesome,” before she turned, leaned into her husband, put her hand on (the wall of) his chest, pushed up on her toes and touched her mouth to his. She then whispered a different kind of “Awesome” that made his eyes gleam, my toes curl and Danny silently chuckle again.

  I looked down to Vivi. “I hope to see you again when you’re feeling better.”

  “Me too. Maybe I can try on your shoes,” she replied.

  “You aren’t wearing shoes like those until you’re fifty,” Hawk decreed.

  She tipped her head back and pouted, “Daddy!”

  He hefted her up into his arms and she immediately seemed a lot less sulky.

  “Evan,” he said to me, tipped his chin up to Mag, took his wife’s hand in his free one, and started down the steps with his daughter’s booty held in the curve of his arm, her little arms wrapped around his muscled neck.

  “See you Tuesday, and cool to finally meet you,” Gwen said to me while following them (or, more apropos, being dragged on her own pair of high heels by her husband).

  “You too and can’t wait.”

  They barely made the bottom floor when Danny had my hand in his and I was being dragged, this down the row to his workstation.

  When he got us there, he twisted his mesh-seated rolling chair, sat in it and then drew me between his open knees.

  “Seriously?” he asked.

  “What?” I asked back.

  “Babe, you walking in here in those shoes, this morning’s blowjob seems like it happened a decade ago.”

  I tipped my head to the side and grinned at him, deciding the long-awaited maiden voyage of my red sandals was a success.

  “You come here just to make me hard or is there some other purpose to this visit?” he asked. “Wait,” he went on quickly. “Belated preface to that, you can show anytime you want, wearing hot sex shoes or your usual beat-up sneakers, I don’t give a fuck.”

  God, this guy was easy to love.

  “I picked up the mail when I got home from having lunch with Sidney,” I shared. “And the present I ordered for you came. Since I got it for your workstation, and I had a free afternoon, I thought I’d bring it in.”

  His brows were up, and he asked, “Present?”

  I dug in my bag, pulled it out and handed it to him.

  When he saw what it was, he looked even more confused, until he took it and turned the writing around so he could read it.

  Then he busted out laughing.

  I pretended to be miffed even though I was not.

  From the very beginning, I loved making him laugh.

  “You think that title is funny?” I asked.

  I barely got the last word out before he tugged sharply on my hand and I landed in his lap.

  He held me in the curve of one arm even as he rotated us and leaned forward, taking me with him, doing this to set the old-fashioned, aluminum-framed plaque with its slide-in plate in faux wood with wording on it at the head of his workstation.

  It said in white, #1 BOYFRIEND, and under that, DANIEL JAROD MAGNUSSON.

  I watched as he adjusted it so it was centered perfectly, and I thought he was joking around until he titched it just a centimeter.

  That was when I looked at his face to see he was genuinely concentrating on what he was doing like the perfect placement of that plaque was of the utmost importance.

  “Danny,” I whispered.

  He lifted those crazy-gorgeous eyes with those fabulously amazing eyelashes to me.

  “Won’t move it, baby, until that title changes and you get me a new one.”

  Shit.

  I was going to cry.

  He saw it.

  So he tipped his head further back, I got his message…

  And kissed him.

  I broke it with my hand cradling his jaw, but I didn’t move very far away.

  “Are we allowed to make out at your workstation?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I gave him a small smile.

  “Are you gonna get shit for your plaque?” I asked.

  “Totally,” he answered.

  The smile on my lips died, but that didn’t mean the happiness was gone.

  “You don’t care, do you?” I whispered.

  “Not even a little bit,” he whispered back.

  “All my life, you know?”

  “All your life what, baby?”

  “Until you.”

  He curved both arms around me and his voice was growly when he asked, “Until me, what?”

  “The people I loved made loving them hard. Until you.”

  I got just a growl for that as Danny slid a hand up my spine, into my hair, and then my mouth was on his again.

  We made out and we kept doing it even when we heard the door open.

  And we continued even as we heard boots on steps and Hawk muttering, “Yeah, Jesus, somebody kill me.”

  Only then did we break it off.

  Because Danny was laughing.

  I was giggling.

  And all was right in the world.

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  Chapter One

  Less and Less You

  Ryn

  Iwas wiped.

  Even so, I was still heading up the walk to my brother’s ex’s house at seven o’clock in the morning regardless if I drove away from Smithie’s after dancing at his club only four hours before.

  This was because Angelica called me, sharing she had another migraine, and she needed me to help her get the kids to school.

  My brother’s kids.

  My niece and nephew.

  And Angelica did not call on my brother Brian because she knew he was probably passed out so drunk, if she could wrangle miracles and was able to wake him, he’d come over and still be hammered.

  So she called on me.

  I made the door, knocked, but knew the drill.

  It’d be open.

  The knock was just a formality.

  I pushed in and saw immediately that Angelica had not changed her ways in the two days since I’d been there to get the kids and take them to my place to hang because her back was spasming.

  Although the house wasn’t filthy, it also wasn’t tidy.

  There was kid stuff everywhere. Toys and markers and such. A basket of laundry was on the couch that I couldn’t tell if it was clean, and needed to be folded and put away, or dirty and needed to be washed. A wa
sted chip bag that, considering nutrition wasn’t high on her priority list for her or her children, it was a toss-up if it was left behind on that end table by Angelica, or one of the kids. Same with a can of Coke.

  And…right.

  Even not filthy, the carpet seriously needed to be vacuumed.

  “Auntie Rynnie!” I heard a little boy’s voice yell.

  I turned my eyes to the opening of the kitchen and saw my six-year-old, dark-haired, blue-eyed nephew Jethro standing there.

  I mean, serious.

  From birth to now, that kid was adorbs.

  And I loved him with everything that was me.

  Or half of that.

  I loved his sister with the other half.

  I smiled at him even as I put my finger to my lips and whispered, “Shh.”

  His entire face ticked, the exuberance washing clean out of it, and my heart lurched seeing it.

  Eggshells.

  My two babies’ lives were all about walking on eggshells.

  With Daddy and his hangovers, if they ever spent time with him, which was rare, but even so, he didn’t stop drinking through it.

  With Mommy and her migraines, her bad back, her bum knee, her creaky hips, if they ever spent any time with her, which wasn’t as rare, but they were off to Auntie Ryn’s place, or one of their grandmas, and they were this often, because Mommy needed peace and quiet and rest.

  Sure, it takes a village.

  And I was so down with being part of that village for Jethro and his older sister, Portia.

  But bottom line, a kid needed to be able to count on their parents.

  At least one of them.

  I moved to him, asking quietly, “Have you had your bath, baby?”

  “Last night,” he whispered.

  I put my hand on his thick hair, bent to kiss his upturned forehead, and as I straightened, I looked left.

  My curly-blonde-haired, also blue-eyed Portia was at the table, eating a massive bowl of Cap’n Crunch.

  I loved Cap’n Crunch.

  I could make a pretty convincing argument that Cap’n Crunch was a major component of the meaning of life.

  What I did not love was my seven-year-old niece horking down a huge bowl of sugary crunches that had no nutritional value, she’d burn it off in approximately fifteen minutes and then crash.

  Another decimated bowl was beside Portia’s, kibbles of cereal and smears of milk all around the bowl on the table.

  Jethro’s breakfast.

  I said not a word because I knew Portia poured those bowls for her brother and herself. She “made” breakfast, seven-year-old-style, and did the best she could.

  “Hey, honey,” I called.

  She had milk on her chin when she looked up at me and replied, ‘Hey, Auntie Ryn.”

  I smiled at her and then looked down at Jethro.

  “Right, want your face cleaned up, bucko. Anything you need to take to school today?”

  He looked like he was concentrating, hard, to remember if he was supposed to take anything to school.

  Then again, it wasn’t his job to keep track of that. Not yet.

  “I’ll poke my head in and ask your mom,” I told him.

  “She needs quiet.” Having been reminded of this fact by me, he was still whispering.

  But at his words, Portia made a noise like a snort.

  A disgusted one.

  A lot like the sound I was making in my head.

  Though I didn’t want Portia having this reaction about her mom, I had to admit, my niece had been displaying signs of impatience that were about twenty years older than she was, and she’d been doing this for a while now.

  I ignored her and said to Jethro, “I’ll be real quiet when I ask her. Now go wash your face. And your hands.”

  He nodded and ran off, so I looked to Portia.

  “After you’re done, honey, you too with the washup. Do you need to take anything to school?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. But my book bag is ready.”

  I hated to ask what I next had to ask because I had been that kind of sister to my brother when I was seven.

  Keeping track of him.

  Keeping track of me.

  “Do you, uh…know about your brother?”

  She shoved more cereal in her mouth and said in a garbled way I still could decipher before chewing it, “Show and tell day today. I put something in his bag. He’ll figure it out.”

  “Chew and swallow, Portia,” I urged carefully, not her mother, but needing to be motherly, which pissed me off because I wanted to be Fun Auntie Rynnie, not Fuddy Duddy Aunt Kathryn. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  She looked down at her bowl and her cheeks got pink.

  Crap.

  Fuddy Duddy Aunt Kathryn sucked.

  I moved to the table and started to clean up Jethro’s breakfast.

  “You should make Mom do that, you know,” Portia said.

  “When she beats this headache, we’ll just give her a little break,” I replied.

  “Yeah, another one,” she mumbled, dropped her spoon in her still half-filled bowl and jumped off the chair she was using, having been sitting on her knees.

  She took the bowl to the sink and dumped it in.

  “I’ll finish that. We need to get sorted and go,” I told her.

  “’Kay,” she muttered, and didn’t look at me when she walked by.

  I stopped her retreat, asking, “Did your mom get lunches packed?”

  She turned, looked me right in the eyes and asked, “You’re kidding, right?”

  Oh yeah.

  Impatience.

  And demonstrating a frustrated maturity that I was not a big fan of the fact that she was forced to be developing.

  “We’ll make lunches in a sec,” I said.

  She had no response to that. She just took off.

  I rinsed the bowls, put them in the dishwasher, wiped down the table, put away the cereal and milk and then moved out to find and check their book bags.

  When it seemed all was set, I finished my inspection by zipping up Portia’s bag and moved down the hall, hearing the kids talking low and quiet in the bathroom.

  I knocked on Angelica’s door softly then opened it to stick my head in, seeing complete dark and a lump on the bed under covers.

  “Hey, I’m here, got the kids,” I called.

  The lump moved. “Heard. Um, can you come in a second?”

  I slid in and closed the door behind me.

  Angelica didn’t turn on a light, but in the shadows, I saw her push up to an elbow.

  “Listen, Jethro’s got some end-of-year field trip he’s going on and they need fifty bucks plus whatever money he’ll need for lunch, which they say will cost fifteen to twenty dollars.”

  Fifteen to twenty dollars for lunch for a first grader?

  I did not get those words out of my mouth before Angelica went on, “Brian’s fucked me over for support again and things are tight this month. I’m already gonna hafta ask Mom to pay cable and electricity. But I don’t wanna have to tell Jethro he can’t go.”

  She didn’t even hesitate anymore. Didn’t lead into it.

  No longer did I get a, “I hate to say this,” or “This sucks I gotta ask.”

  Just, “I don’t wanna have to tell Jethro he can’t go.”

  Well, if you got a job and maybe cut the premium package on your cable, even if my brother is a deadbeat, you might be able to cover some of your bills and take care of your children, I did not say.

  What I said was, “I’ll leave some money on the table.”

  I said this a lot.

  It was closing in on the end of May and I’d already given her three hundred and seventy-five dollars this month.

  Last month, it had been over five hundred.

  And next month, with the way the kids were growing, summer having already hit Denver, they’d need new clothes. And Angelica worried they’d be teased or bullied if they didn’t have the good stuff, so I could pla
n on a plea to have a “Day with Auntie Ryn” which included taking them shopping. With the added asks that were sure to come, I’d probably be laying out at least a grand.

  “Thanks,” she muttered, the lump in bed shifted, and that was it.

  I stood there a second, staring at her before I turned and left, clicking the door shut behind me.

  My bad.

  Conditioning.

  I’d conditioned her.

  Like I’d done with my brother.

  When I started to get niggles of concern when there wasn’t a get-together we had where he didn’t get obnoxiously drunk, I should have said something.

  And then it wasn’t even get-togethers, just anytime I saw him, he’d be drinking, clearly on his way to being obnoxiously drunk, before he became that. Thinking he was funny. Or cute. Or waxing poetic about shit where he thought he was stunning all of us with his brilliance, when he barely made sense.

  I should have said something then too.

  I should have said, “Hey, Brian, go easy.”

  Or, “Hey, Brian, what in the hell-blazin’ fuck? Honest to God, do you have to be fucked up all the time?”

  I did not do this.

  Like I did not tell Angelica maybe I didn’t want to be a stripper for the rest of my life. Maybe I didn’t want to need to have cash on hand to lay on her, or Brian when he came up short for the month, to help them take care of their own children. I didn’t want to feel like I had to be careful with my time so I could be free—again, to help them take care of their own children.

  I wanted to flip houses.

  I wanted in on that from start to finish.

  From finding a great pad, seeing the bones, dreaming what I could make it, negotiating a killer deal, then diving in from demo to design, and then negotiating another deal.

  That’s what I wanted.

  I had a house.

  A year ago, I’d driven by the perfect one, for sale by owner. Even in Denver’s OTT real estate market, I couldn’t let the opportunity pass. I’d been saving for my own place, so I went for it, and with the shape that house was in, I got it for a steal.

  I started demo of the inside.

  And now it had been sitting untouched for ten months because I didn’t have the money—because I kept giving mine away—or the time—because I kept saying yes to Angelica when she needed me.