Chapter 10

Mason

“Are you ready?” I asked.

“Ready,” Nicole replied.

“Okay. On the count of three.”

We were standing in her kitchen late Monday afternoon, ready for Operation Wallpaper Removal. Bernie had been recently walked, so we were good to go for a few hours. Following the directions I’d Googled yesterday, we had already prepared the kitchen with plastic and towels to protect the floor and floorboards from the water needed to strip the walls bare.

“One…two…three,” I said from the stepladder. With the putty knife, I loosened the wallpaper near the ceiling and peeled it downward. Nicole was on the other side of the room, dealing with the paper between the countertops and the overhead cabinets.

I managed to pull a foot of paper free from the wall before it ripped, the rest still clinging to the wall like its life depended on it. Fuck. And based on the grunt from Nicole, she hadn’t had much luck either.

“I was really hoping the article had lied about old wallpaper,” she said. According to it, the longer the paper had been up, the tougher it would be to remove. And given that this paper had to be from the 1970s…

“Me too,” I said as I pried another strip of paper from the wall with the putty knife.

Over an hour later, we were still battling with the reluctant-to-be-freed wallpaper. Various-sized bits of it lay scattered over the floor and counters.

“Wallpaper should be permanently banned from the planet,” Nicole said, shoving back a wayward strand of hair that had fallen from her ponytail. Between the hair, short shorts, and tank top, she was easily the sexiest woman I’d ever seen. My arms were about to fall off from the effort of removing the wallpaper, but the sight of her like this made the pain worth it.

“Obviously whoever created it never had to remove it,” I said. Or maybe he did and that was what had killed him.

I ripped off the last remaining piece from the section of wall I’d been working on and turned around…to find Nicole staring at where my ass had been.

“See anything you like?” I asked. Her face turned red, and I laughed. “That would be a yes?” I joined her by the counter and plucked out a few tiny shreds of paper lodged in her hair. I knew I was pushing the boundaries of the easygoing friendship that had developed between us—well, the easygoing friendship that involved a few hot kisses—but that didn’t stop me. “You know, you look adorable with wallpaper in your hair. It’s a great look for you.”

She snickered. “You really do know how to charm the panties off girls, don’t you?”

“Is it working?”

Her smile shifted to one side and she glanced down at her shorts. “Nope, still there.”

“Oh, really?”

Even though I knew I probably shouldn’t, I took a step toward her. She backed away, her ass banging squarely into the counter behind her. I parked my hands on either side of her, caging her in. “Guess I must be losing my touch.”

The smile that grew on her lips was neither a sweet smile nor a smile aimed to seduce. It was a smile meant to disarm a man, to play his game—and to win.

She placed her hands on my chest and gave me a small shove. I didn’t budge. “Guess that must be so. So since you’ve lost your panty-dropping touch, let’s get back to the wallpaper. It’s not getting any more in style.”

Disagreeing with her assessment, I leaned in to kiss her. But as I was making my descent toward her luscious lips, the fucking doorbell rang. Whoever it was, I thought, had better have a damn good reason for interrupting us—like the house was on fire. Nicole gave a quick what-can-you-do shrug and left the room to answer the door.

While she was gone, I resumed the task of removing the final bits of wallpaper on the wall where she’d been working.

Footsteps approached the kitchen. Turning to the door, I said, “What do you say—” But I bit off the final words when I saw Amy, the teen we’d met while walking Bernie yesterday, enter the room, along with a little girl Logan’s age.

“Hi,” the little girl said. “My sister likes you.”

“Bree!” Amy’s tone was sharp, but she looked as though she wished the floor would conveniently open up and swallow her whole.

I walked over to them and crouched in front of the little girl. “Hi, I’m Mason.”

“I’m Brianna, but my sister says you’re famous, so you can call me Bree.”

Amy groaned. “Just ignore her. Her goal in life is to humiliate me.”

I laughed shortly. “I think the goal of most kids is to humiliate their older brother or sister. It’s in their genes.”

Bree’s gaze dropped to my legs and she studied them, a slight furrow between her eyebrows. “What’s in the jeans? Can I see it?”

Deciding this was a pointless conversation to have with a four-year-old, I switched topics. “Did you guys come to help us remove the wallpaper?” I gestured to the torn paper scattered around the room.

“No, my sister—” Bree began, but she didn’t get very far, as Amy’s hand shot out and covered her mouth. The little girl wriggled free and glared at her, lower lip sticking out. “Daddy told you not to do that.”

“Well, stop embarrassing me,” Amy said through clenched teeth.

Still pouting, Bree crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re so bossy.”

I placed my hand next to my mouth and stage-whispered, “Big sisters are supposed to be bossy. Just like you’re supposed to embarrass her.” I winked at Bree, and her pout transformed into a huge grin.

I pushed myself up to a standing position. “So, what can we do you for?” I asked Amy, knowing that she was the reason they were here.

“Er…I came to see if you would sign this picture for me.” She held up an interview with the band in a recent issue of Rolling Stone. She had already been around yesterday, when I signed her Pushing Limits concert T-shirt.

With a smile, I took the pen from her and walked over to the kitchen table to sign the article.

“Nice picture,” Nicole said, examining it. “Who’s that?” She pointed at the guy with wavy light brown hair.

“Nolan, our lead singer.” Then I indicated the dark-haired guy next to him. “That’s Jared, our guitarist.” My finger shifted to the other dark-haired guy. We were all tall, but Kirk towered over the rest of us by a good two inches. Handy when you were playing hockey, I guess. “And this is Kirk, our bassist.”

“So this must be Aaron,” she said, pointing at the blond man at the edge of the group.

“That’s right,” I said, impressed she’d remembered his name from our conversation earlier.

Amy must have had a thing for him as well, because she let out a dreamy sigh.

Bree peered up at her and giggled. “She loves him,” she singsonged. “She told her friend she wants to have his babies.”

Amy’s eyes bulged as if she had downed a bottle of hot sauce, and I choked back a laugh. She wasn’t the first girl to announce that she planned to have one of the guys’ babies, but she was definitely the youngest I’d heard it from. Given that none of us were into jailbait, the chance of her becoming pregnant with Aaron’s baby was a big fat zero.

“Okay,” Amy said, drawing out the word. “It’s time for your nap.” She tugged on her sister’s hand, attempting to pull her toward the door.

“I’m a big girl,” the little girl huffed. “Big girls don’t nap.”

“They do now,” Amy muttered under her breath.

“Bye,” I called out, doing my best not to laugh at the pair as Amy led the reluctant Bree from the kitchen. But at least now Nicole and I could get back to work.

While Nicole was escorting the girls to the front door, the need for some fun bubbled up inside me, like a Jacuzzi turned on full speed after you dumped in too much bubble bath. Tearing ancient wallpaper off the wall didn’t exactly make it onto any ten-fun-things-to-do-this-weekend lists. At least not without a little help.

Some girls would get prissy at what I was about to do. But if there was one thing I’d learned about Nicole in the last two days, it was that underneath the workaholic exterior was a girl who loved to have fun as much as I did.

I grabbed the empty water mister I’d seen under the sink and filled it with water. I hid it in the corner where Nicole wouldn’t see it, then got to work, filling the bucket with hot water.

Nicole entered the room as I was turning off the tap. I set the bucket on the floor near where she was working and filled the second one. We wetted the walls with sponges and carefully scraped the wallpaper paste off the walls. In the background, her favorite country singer sang about falling in love with his best friend. Much like what had happened with Nolan when it came to Hailey.

Nicole’s hips swayed back and forth as she sang softly to the lyrics, focused intently on the wall while removing a patch of glue that still remained. She had a sweet voice and for a second I watched her, mesmerized, before I slowly backed up to where I’d hidden the water mister. I picked it up, set it to stream, then squirted her from behind, soaking the back of her tank top.

She shrieked and spun around. “Oh, you think so, do you?” Laughing, she hurled her wet sponge at me.

I ducked out of the way, but not fast or far enough to avoid water splashing me. The sponge hit the wall near me with a splat and fell to the floor.

Nicole lunged for it but wasn’t fast enough. As I reached down to snatch it up, she wrapped her arms around my waist and tried to pull me away from the sponge. For someone so small compared to me, she was surprisingly strong. She tugged me back a step. But my foot slipped on the water that had spilled at some point, and I went down—pulling Nicole with me.

I landed on my ass. “Oof!”

She ended up sprawled on top of me, her legs tangled with mine. She then shifted to straddle my hips. “I win!”

No, I would say I was definitely the winner here, with her sex pressed against my cock. Granted, there were two layers of denim between us.

I thought Nicole would climb off me and put some space between us, to try to reduce the sexual tension between us, which had shot off the scale. That might have been the wiser thing to do.

But apparently wise didn’t count when it came to us.

Her gaze searched mine for a moment. Whatever she found there she must have agreed with, because the next thing I knew her lips crashed into mine and we were kissing.

Kissing like there was no tomorrow.

Or kissing because we knew that come tomorrow, I’d be heading back to L.A.