“And I promise you that when I find a guy, it won’t get in the way of my time with Everly,” I blurt out, feeling like I need to bring the focus back to Everly, not Max. Everly is who’s important here.
“When you find a guy,” Max repeats as he scratches his fingers through the whiskers on his jaw. His forehead lines stack on top of one another, and I hope he’s not thinking about firing me again. “Okay then.”
“Okay?” I reply with relief and smile warmly. “Great! I’m glad we had this talk. I feel so much better.”
“Yeah.” His face looks pensive, but he’s probably just still in shock about my comment about women having blue balls. He can Google it later.
For now, I think I need to stop playing games and actually do something for myself.
Whiskey burns on my tongue as I hold the amber liquid in my mouth and watch my brother Calder deal out another round of cards for our monthly Texas Hold’em meetup. His inked arms are swift as he deals me in, my other two brothers, plus Josh and Dean, who join us every time it’s my turn to host.
The other person who joined us tonight is the tiny human working hard to take all our money this evening.
Everly sits at the head of the table, her feet swinging off the edge of her chair, as she dons Luke’s baseball cap backward over her blond hair. She looks like Cassandra did last night in her workshop, and I can’t help but notice how much the two of them seem to be morphing into each other this summer.
Everly grabs a handful of popcorn as Luke explains the rules to her for the twentieth time.
“But Uncle Luke, why can’t I see the cards in the middle before I bet?” Everly asks, her tongue sticking out of her mouth as she holds her two cards out for the whole table to see.
“Because then it wouldn’t be gambling,” Luke says, pushing her cards to her chest and trying not to look at them. “Don’t be showing these cheats your cards, or they’ll take your money.”
Luke looks at me with an exasperated expression, and I shrug. “You guys were the ones who asked her to play.” I glance at my phone to see it’s venturing on nine. I typically let Everly stay up until ten or eleven on weekends, so this will be a long night of card playing with her. She looks adorable, though, and I’m more than thankful to have brothers and friends who have zero issues with her hanging around. She is the princess of the group, after all.
“She needs to learn the art of a good poker face,” my brother Wyatt suggests, his face unreadable. Wyatt is the king of a poker face. I think that the secluded house where he lives in the mountains has sucked away his limited social skills. It’s either the cabin or the fucking goat named Millie he bought that’s turned him into a full-fledged grumpy mountain man who’s hardly fit for polite company anymore.
Everly adores him.
“Uncle Wyatt?”
He grunts.
“Will you tell me what your cards are?”
He slides unamused eyes to Everly and shakes his head stiffly.
She sticks out her lower lip.
He sighs heavily and turns his cards to her.
“This is why she keeps winning!” Calder barks, slapping his hand on the table, his competitive nature in full throttle tonight. “This is total bullshit.”
Josh tosses his chips out onto the table, shaking his head at the spectacle of my family. “All right, everyone…place your bets.”
I match him and glance out the window toward the guesthouse for probably the twentieth time tonight. It’s dark out now, and I can see the lights on inside. Every once in a while, I spot the silhouette of Cassandra’s body through the windows, and I can’t help but wonder what she’s doing in there. Is she thinking of going out tonight in search of that “summer fling”？
I inwardly groan. That was quite the conversation we had in the workshop last night. First, I walk in on some fucked-up version of a porn scene. Didn’t think a female doing woodworking was my kink but seeing the round ass of Cassandra hunched over a slab of wood that she was lighting on fire in that backward hat and those clear goggles made me see otherwise.
Fuck…I was done for.
Then she tells me women get blue balls right before she mentions she’s looking for a summer fling. I didn’t know what end was fucking up by the end of that conversation! I’m certain this isn’t the type of relationship most single dads have with their kid’s nanny, but I’m also certain most single dads don’t leave fucking hickeys on the person they’ve employed to watch their kid for the summer either.