your good report card. Um, ah, I don’t think that’s a good idea, pumpkin.”
His eyes flash to mine again, and there’s a look of panic in them.
“Well, because I’m working. I know I always sing with you, but now isn’t a good time.”
Oh my gosh, he sings with his niece? This just keeps getting better and better.
“Oh come on, Uncle Brady. I think you should sing with the girl,” I say loud enough for my voice to carry through the line to the little girl he’s talking to.
I’ll get you for this, he mouths silently. I just shrug in response and place my hands on my hips. If he wants to know so much about me, then he better start doing some sharing of his own. Listening to him sing on the phone with his niece is an excellent start.
“No! Not that song. Anything but that song. Emma, please? How about that awesome Nirvana song I taught you last week? No, it does NOT suck. Where are your priorities?”
Brady lets out a huge sigh, rolls his eyes and then turns his back to me.
“Fine. But this is the last time,” I hear him say softly to her.
So quietly I have to strain to hear him, I make out the first few words to a song I am quite familiar with.
“It’s Friday night and the beat is sick. I’m gonna get my girls and hit the club up quick.”
It’s absolutely impossible to contain my laughter at this point. Clutching my sides, I laugh harder than I have in a really long time as Brady practically whispers a few more bars of the song before stopping abruptly and telling Emma he loves her before hanging up.
He turns around, stuffing his cell phone back in his pocket and refusing to look at me.
I quiet my laughter and put a serious look on my face.
“Just so I’m clear, was that Waiting for the Weekend? You know, one of MY songs that you were just singing?” I ask innocently.
He crosses his arms in front of him and glares at me.
“That’s what I thought. Just one more question,” I tell him as he rolls his eyes at me. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful singing voice?”
I can’t hide the grin that takes over my face, and before I know it, Brady is picking me up by the legs and flinging me over his shoulder so the top half of my body hangs down his back. Once again, I have a clear view of his sculpted ass.
“Oh my gosh, put me down!” I yell in between laughs as he turns towards the trail and heads back the way we came.
“Nope, sorry. Straight to the showers for you so you can wash away every bit of what you just heard,” he tells me before smacking his hand on my ass and tightening his arms around my legs.
As I watch the ground fly by while I dangle over Brady’s strong shoulder, trying not to think about what his warm hands feel like wrapped around the bare skin of my legs, I wonder if there just might be more to him that I originally thought.
“So, what’s she like?! Is she as gorgeous in person as she is on TV? Is she totally cool and approachable? I bet she’s totally cool. Oh my God this is so awesome! I can’t believe you get to spend every day with THE Layla Carlysle!”
Gwen’s been gushing and throwing questions at me nonstop since I walked into the office this morning, still sweaty from my morning run with Layla and still focused on how warm her breath felt against my back as it seeped through my T-shirt while she hung over my shoulder.
She hadn’t been happy when I tried digging into her mother, and that makes me even more curious about the type of person Layla is. Who just lets someone walk all over them like that, even if it is their mother? She has spunk and doesn’t mind telling me where to go, but when it comes to Eve, she just shuts down.
“Okay, enough already with the twenty questions. She’s a normal human being, not some science experiment you stare at through a cage,” I tell Gwen as she bounces up and down on her feet, waiting for me to tell her everything about her favorite singer.
“Well, well, well. Will wonders never cease? Just last week you were calling her a 'no-talent drama queen,'” Gwen reminds me. “And for your