He made a face right back. “Get in.”
“I’m not going home,” I told him.
Those black sunglasses were aimed right at me as his jaw did this tick thing. Then, “What? You got a hot date?”
“No, numbnuts. I’m babysitting tonight.”
The expression on his face instantly changed, but I didn’t think anything of it.
“I’m going to my sister’s,” I finished, reminding him about what Ruby and I had literally talked about in front of him a week ago.
Ivan shoved his glasses just above his eyes with the tip of his finger. “Get in then.”
“It’s further away than my mom’s.”
“How much further?” he asked slowly.
I told him what side of town, and watched as he made a face.
“How long are you supposed to babysit?”
“About four hours,” I said, hearing the hesitation in my voice, mainly because I wondered where the fuck he was supposed to be going that he was worried about how long it would take.
Then he made a thoughtful face and said, “Okay. One second.” He must have reached for his phone, because the next thing I knew, he was focusing on his lap and saying, “One more second.”
Who was he texting? And what was he texting?
I’d barely started to wonder what, when he glanced back up and said, “Okay. If it’s only four hours, I can drive you there and drop you off at home afterward.”
Wait. Afterward?
“You’re going to drive back and pick me up?” I asked with a frown.
He pinched his mouth in that way that used to drive me crazy because it looked like he thought I was an idiot. “No. That’s the other side of town from where I live, genius. I’ll babysit with you, and after that, I’ll drive you back home… as long as it’s only four hours. I need to be home after that.”
What did he have to be home for? Was someone waiting for him? Did he… have a girlfriend?
“You getting in?” he kept going.
It wasn’t any of my business. None.
Nope, none of my business.
If the swallow I took felt tight, I wasn’t going to overthink it. “You can just drop me off and one of them can take me home after.”
I didn’t have to see his eyeballs to know he was rolling them. “Shut up and get in. I can take you as long as it doesn’t run too late.”
He had a girlfriend, didn’t he?
“You don’t need to stay—” I started to say before he cut me off.
“Get in, Meatball,” he’d demanded, already rolling the window up.
And with a dirty look and a reminder that whatever he was doing afterward had nothing to do with me, I got in. And he drove us to my sister’s, which was where we were, with me waiting on the paved sidewalk, arguing with Ivan after we’d bickered over whether he drove slow or I drove fast.
He drove slow.
That was how I found myself in front of Ruby’s house with Ivan beside me.
“Coming!” I heard my sister call out from the other side of the door. All of a second later, the door opened and she was there, already beaming that great big smile that made me feel like I’d kill someone for her and eat their heart too. “Jas.” She hesitated only a second before taking a step forward and wrapping her arms around me.
I hugged her back, deciding to keep my mouth shut about the pause she had taken before touching me. Had I ever not wanted her to hug me? I couldn’t remember, and the possibility that I had once made her think twice about doing something like hug me, made my stomach tighten.
I could fix this. I could work on it.
Pulling back, I tipped my head toward Ivan at the same time her eyes strayed to him. “I brought reinforcements to take care of your gangsters.”
My sister’s face turned pink instantly, and she nodded tightly, her eyes shifting from me to him and back again. “Hi, Ivan,” she managed to squeeze out.
Ivan smiled gently. Then, because he held his hand out toward her, and when she did the same, he took it and gave it a soft shake. “Nice to see you again, Squirt.” He gave her a charming smile that made me uncomfortable for some reason. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”
My sister blinked, and so did I. But I knew her reaction wasn’t because Ivan was handsome or anything like that. Her husband was smoking hot in a completely different but equal way as Ivan. And she was madly in love with him.
She was just shy.
And no one called her Squirt but family. At least as far I knew, not even Aaron called her that.
“I don’t mind,” she pretty much whispered, her eyes darting to me, and then back to him. “You’re almost family now, right?”
Almost family? I shoved the idea aside just as Ivan nudged me, and I elbowed him right back.
“Come in,” Ruby said, taking a step back. “We’re ready to go. We’re just doing dinner and going to a… eh, store afterward.” By store, I’d bet my kidney she meant a comic book store, but I knew she wasn’t admitting it because Ivan was right there. “We shouldn’t be gone long.”
I shrugged and stepped into the house I’d been in plenty of times over the last year since she’d moved back to Houston after spending the last four years living in Washington with her husband while he’d been in the army. He had rushed through a degree over the last few years, and gotten a job at a VA hospital doing…. Something with veterans. I was a shitty sister-in-law not to know what he did exactly. I really needed to ask Ruby. “It’s fine. Do whatever you want. I don’t have anything else to do besides go to sleep,” I told her, purposely not mentioning that Ivan had to bounce after four hours to go do whatever it was he needed to do.
“Hey, Jasmine,” a nice voice called out from down the hall a moment before the tall, blond man walked toward us.
“Hi, Aaron,” I said, rocking on my heels. “Aaron, you remember Ivan.”
The blond beefcake, who I swore could have had a successful career as a gigolo if he hadn’t been in the military, held his hand out toward me, and I slapped his palm. He then turned to Ivan and held it out too, where Ivan shook it. “Nice seeing you again,” my brother-in-law said, taking a step back to be side by side with my sister. “Thanks for babysitting.”
I shrugged but Ivan said, “Sure.”
“We’ll get going so we can get back faster,” Aaron let us know, leaning over to kiss my sister on the temple.
Ruby nodded. “You know where everything is. They’re both upstairs right now. They’ve eaten. Benny’s asleep on our bed. I didn’t want to wake him up to move him. We’re still working on his potty training…”
I waved her off. “Don’t worry about it. I can handle it.” I glanced at Ivan standing there and tried to imagine him changing a pull-up… and I came up with nothing. “We can handle it.”
Maybe. At least I could.
With another kiss to the temple that Aaron gave Ruby, they filed out of the house, closing and locking the door behind them. The lock had barely been spun when there was a wail from upstairs.
“Let’s get to work,” I said, pointing at the stairs.
Ivan nodded, then followed me up the stairs of the nice, big four-bedroom house in the suburbs.
My sister’s babies shared the same room. There were two cribs set up on opposite sides, one white, the other one wood tone. I headed straight to the white one, seeing the squirming, tiny body lying face down. Jessie was crying so loud I winced as I picked her up and brought her into my chest, cradling her. She was so small… and so damn loud.
I rocked her, whispering, “Shh, shh, shh,” and bouncing her a little the way she liked, before turning to find Ivan standing in the doorway, grinning like an idiot. I blinked. “What?”
Jessie kept on wailing.
“You picked her up like it was nothing,” he said, his eyes going from me to the baby and back again, like it was a miracle or something.
“She’s just a baby, not a grenade,” I told him, still whispering shh, shh, shh, and bouncing to try and calm my favorite little baby down. It always did the trick. I smiled down at the cute, pissed-off face.