“Fine. Naked and crawling on the floor. It’s traumatizing right now, but it’s a great story and someday you guys will be able to laugh about it.”
“Like you’re able to laugh about finding the box of sex toys under your parents’ bed when you were sixteen?”
“NO. That was a whole other level of trauma.” Ellie shuddered. “I can’t even believe you just brought that up.”
“Oh, come on. It was funny.”
“Winnie, there was a whip in that box! And a blindfold!”
“I know.” Distracted for a moment, I shook my head. “I still can’t imagine your parents—”
“Please stop talking.”
I laughed. “Sorry.”
“I wonder if he went home and told his wife he just saw the new neighbor lady naked.”
“Oh! Turns out, there is no wife.”
She glanced at me. “I thought you saw her.”
“That was his sister. He’s a single dad—only two of those kids were his. Hallie and Luna.” I cringed again. “The ones who saw me naked.”
“A hot single dad, huh?” Ellie was clearly intrigued. “And he’s right next door. Imagine that.”
“Actually, I don’t know that he’s single. Just that he’s not married. He might have a girlfriend.”
“And he might not.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” I told her, even though I’d already had plenty of ideas about the hot single dad next door, who’d only moved in like six hours ago.
“But I like ideas,” Ellie said, pulling up in front of my Aunt April and Uncle Tyler’s house.
“You just want to win the bet,” I said. “But I told you—I am the boss of my feelings, and I’m off romance until Thanksgiving.”
“Christmas,” she said with a grin. “You changed it to Christmas, remember?”
“Right. Christmas.”
“Remind me whose house this is,” she said as we turned up the driveway. “I get all your aunts and uncles confused.”
“April and Tyler Shaw—they’re Chip’s biological parents. They had him when they were super young and gave him up for adoption, but they reconnected when he was like eighteen. I grew up calling him my cousin.”
“April is one of your mom’s sisters, right?” We went up the porch steps and knocked on the door.
“Right.” While we waited for someone to answer, I thought about my new neighbor again. “I forgot to mention that before the whole wet and naked debacle, I went over to his house to drop something off and heard him yelling at his ex-wife.”
“She was there?” Ellie’s eyes widened in surprise.
“No—on the phone. Something about being able to handle anything except her trying to butt into his time with the girls. Gave me flashbacks of hearing my dad on the phone with Carla when I was a kid.” Carla was my biological mom, but she’d moved to Georgia before I was even out of diapers, and growing up, I’d only seen her about once a year.
“Huh. I wonder how recent their divorce was.”
“I wonder when I’ll be able to face him again without wanting to die. How long do you think it’ll be before he forgets he saw me naked?”
She laughed. “Cherie, you’re twenty-two and you’ve got a kick-ass bod. He will never forget he saw you naked.”
Unfortunately, my cousin Frankie, who’s fourteen, pulled the door open right then and caught the end of Ellie’s sentence. Her brown eyes widened. “Who saw you naked?”
“No one,” I said, giving Frankie a hug and Ellie a look to keep her silent.
“Come on, who?” My cousin looked back and forth between Ellie and me eagerly. Ellie zipped her lips and threw away the key.
I sighed. “This hot guy who moved in next door to me,” I said as we went inside. “I accidentally set off the smoke detector in my house, and—”
But then I lost track of my thoughts, because right there in the living room was Dex, looking less sweaty but just as gorgeous as he had this afternoon. Hallie and Luna hung off him like monkeys, like they were begging for something he’d already said no to.
Dex and I locked eyes, and I couldn’t speak. My entire body was flushed with heat, and I knew my face had to be crimson.
“Winnie!” The girls spotted me and came racing over. “What are you doing here?”
“Um—I was invited.” Tearing my eyes from Dex, I looked down at them and tried to smile, but my heart continued to race. “This is my aunt and uncle’s house, and the party is for my cousin Chip. What are you two doing here?”