I couldn’t think about Drake’s nightmares though. They just pissed me off and made me want to punch something.
Friday night he didn’t have dinner with us. Emmie said he was going out with Lana, and I wondered if that was a good idea. But Emmie seemed thrilled about it, and I trusted her judgment on this so I didn’t say anything.
We were all still up when Drake came home. It wasn’t late, barely after eleven. I was relieved when he walked into the house. The look on his face startled me though. He was actually humming and I had never seen him smiling so freely before the entire time I’d known the guy. Even I would admit that Drake, like his brother, was a sexy fucker, but when he smiled, it shined from the inside out and made him almost beautiful.
Emmie jumped up and hugged him tight. “How was it? Did you have fun?” She sounded like a mother asking her son how his first date went. It wasn’t far off the mark. It was probably Drake’s first actual date, and she mothered us all.
He laughed and pulled her down on the end of the sectional with him. “It was just dinner, Em.”
“I don’t care. Tell me all about it.”
“Maybe later.” He kissed the top of her head, and she snuggled closer to him with a little pout. “No, sweetheart. I can’t right now.”
“Tomorrow?”
He rolled his eyes at her but was still grinning. “Tomorrow.”
I emptied the rest of my beer and got up to throw it away. “I’m calling it a night.” I stopped behind Emmie to place a kiss on her cheek. “I finally get to sleep in tomorrow!”
“You get most of next week off, you big baby,” Nik grumbled. “So stop complaining.”
I shot him the finger. “Not my fault I’m so damn good at what I do that you get the drums down on the first go.” I winked down at Emmie. “Night, sweetheart.”
“Night, Jesse,” she called after me.
I tossed the beer bottle in the recycling can in the kitchen before heading up to my room. Instead of crashing on the bed I moved to the window. It didn’t overlook the beach but the guest house. It was dark except for the flashing light of a television in the living room. I imagined Layla laying there on that damned hide-a-bed and wished I was there with her right now…
Layla
I had the whole day to myself. It was something that never happens, but I wasn’t going to complain about it. I spent the morning just vegging out in front of the television, watching pure crap. It was stuff that would rot my mind, but I loved every second of it. After a small lunch of cereal and a bagel, I took a long soak in the bathtub and then washed my hair.
Emmie called me on my new cellphone and asked if I wanted to come over to swim, but I was enjoying some me time far too much to want to end it just yet. She seemed a little disappointed, but I promised her that I would spend the entire day with her by the pool the next day, and she cheered up. I loved spending time with Emmie.
Lana and Lucy got home from their day with Drake just after four. Lucy came running into the guest house full of excited energy. She was already telling me about her day while Lana stormed into the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. I glanced over at the front door to see Drake glaring after her, his arms loaded with bags of clothes and toys.
“Lucy, go watch some cartoons.” I pushed her toward the sofa. “You can tell me all about your day later, I promise.”
“Okay.” She sighed. “Don’t yell at Drake. It isn’t his fault that Lana is so rotten.”
I shot her a look that told her to keep quiet and moved over to the door where Drake dropped his load of bags on the floor. “How was your day?” I asked.
His jaw tensed and he finally turned his glare from the closed bedroom door to me. Those blue gray eyes of his were gorgeous, the way they were all glassy and full of stormy emotions, even when he was pissed off. “Your sister is so stubborn!” He informed me. As if I didn’t already know that! Ha!
I couldn’t help but grin. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”
“She didn’t want me to buy her anything. Nothing! Not one little thing. Then when I bought them anyway, she stormed out of the store and left me there with poor little Lucy. She refused to speak to me the rest of the afternoon…” He ran a hand through his over long hair and pulled at the roots. “She makes me f…uh…freaking bonkers!”
I admired the way he caught himself from swearing. I had noticed the weekend before that he and the others tried not to swear when Lucy was around. “Give her a little while. She won’t stay mad forever. Lana’s the type of girl that doesn’t want material things. She learned the hard way that people trying to buy her affections didn’t exactly mean that they cared about her.” I saw his eyes darken as if my words had smacked him in the chest. “She would rather you pick her a flower beside the road than buy her one in a flower shop…”