It had just been an innocent series of events that had ended with him fucking her on his couch, but had Reese been able to see that? No, the judgmental bastard had refused to believe him and forced him to tell him what was really going on by threatening to tell everyone what he’d walked in on. So, after a brief physical altercation in which he’d explained what would happen if Reese ever opened his big mouth, he’d told his brother what was going on.

Once he’d finished explaining how he was easing Marybeth into marriage with sex, his brother had stared at him for a solid five minutes before calling him an idiot, which had led to another physical altercation where Darrin was forced to beat the shit out of his brother. Since then Reese had done his best to stay out of it, but every now and then he would bring it up, trying to convince him that this plan was too fucked up to work.

“Why don’t you just double dare her to marry you?” Reese asked, sounding bored as they stood there, watching as the little screen above the doors announced the floors as they passed them.

“We’ve already been over this,” he said, sighing heavily.

“Refresh my memory,” Reese said, clearly intent on aggravating the shit out of him today.

“Because I want her to know that she can’t live without me before I drag her beautiful ass down to City Hall and make her the happiest woman alive,” he needlessly explained, again.

“It’s been six years, Darrin, and she won’t even let you hold her hand in public,” Reese said, shooting him a sympathetic look that he didn’t appreciate one bit.

His jaw clenched tightly as he said, “Mind your own fucking business.”

But he refused to listen. “She doesn’t want to get married, Darrin. She told you.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants,” he said, wishing the elevator would hurry the hell up so that he could get this call over with and get away from the bastard and this fucked up conversation that he refused to have.

“You want to get married and have a family and she doesn’t,” Reese said with a shrug. “That’s never going to change.”

With a glare, he turned to face his brother. “Just for that, you’re out of the running for position of godfather when she finally starts popping out my precious babies.”

“You bastard!” Reese gasped in outrage. “You can’t do that!”

“Just did,” he said smugly, returning his attention to the elevator doors just as the elevator chimed, announcing their arrival.

“Your kids would be lucky to have me as their godfather and you damn well know it,” Reese snarled.

“They could do better,” he said with a shrug just to piss his brother off.

The doors started to open when Reese decided to up his game.

“You know that she’s only with you because she thought that you were me, right?”

Darrin considered beating the shit out of his brother, but at that moment the elevator doors opened, revealing the reason that they’d been called.

“I quit, mother fuckers!” the plump middle-aged woman standing on the receptionist’s desk announced, adding a “Whoo-hooo!” at the end there just as she yanked off her blouse and waved it above her head.

Sighing, Darrin reached back, grabbed Reese by the back of his neck and shoved him towards the overly excited woman just as she tore off her bra and sent it flying.

“You’ll pay for this, you son of a bitch!” Reese hissed as the bra slapped him in the face seconds before the woman spotted him and decided to try her hand at stage diving.

Chapter 7

“But they asked for mint green,” Uncle Jared said, looking adorably confused as he looked helplessly around the large living room.

“We’ve been over this,” she said, gesturing for Bill, one of her crewmembers, to start work in the large foyer.

“They’re not going to be happy,” he said with a slight pout as he looked from the paint sample in his hand that the clients had picked out to the colonial green that now covered the walls.

“It was tacky and glowed. They would have been calling me to repaint the room within a week. This way I saved time and money by fixing their mistake now,” she said, glancing down at her watch with a scowl.

Where was that bastard?

“Yes, but-”

Sighing, she reached into her bag and pulled out the photo she’d printed out last night. “Give them this.”

He frowned down at the photo. “Is this the color they picked?”

“That would be the very one,” she said, grabbing her backpack and threw it over her shoulder as she headed for the front door.

“God, this is horrible,” Uncle Jared said, catching up with her.

“It’s an institutional color,” she pointed out, glancing around the large yard, looking for Darrin, but the bastard wasn’t there.

“Well, now you’re just exaggerating. This could be from-”

Too hungry and admittedly bitchy, she pointed at the caption at the bottom of the picture. “That’s from Riker’s Island.”

“Oh…”

“Just explain that this color will add more warmth and sophistication as well as complement their furniture and you should be all set,” she said, heading towards her truck, relieved when one of Uncle Jared’s employees managed to distract him so that she could make a clean break.

“Damn it,” she muttered pathetically a minute later when she turned on her car and saw the time flashing on the dashboard.