Number Neighbors - Emma Hart Page 0,23
should never, ever wear again, for the record. I was all for personal expression, but not when scarred the general public.
Or me.
Mostly me.
“I’m building a new sofa for the back porch,” I replied, looking over at Isaac. “Or trying to. My elf isn’t very helpful.”
“I heard that,” Grandma said, reaching for her tumbler full of mojito that she swore was just lemon cordial.
She was fooling nobody.
Also, it was eleven in the morning. I probably should have taken that off her already. Where did she even get the mojito?
“Don’t you have a drill?” Isaac asked, leaning right over the fence and surveying the mess of my grass. “That’s gonna take you forever with a screwdriver and an allen key.”
“I don’t know what an allen key is.”
He chuckled. “Wait there. I’ll get my toolbox and help you.”
“Aren’t you working today?” I yelled after him.
“Nope! It’s your lucky day!”
I blew out a long breath.
I doubted that very much.
“Who is he?” Grandma asked. “He looks like the hero in our new book we’re reading. Seducing the Duke.”
“Seducing the Duke? Are you all bored of BDSM novels now?” I tightened the screw I’d been working on. “That sounds awfully historical.”
Grandma sighed. “Evelyn found this stupid reading challenge on the internet. Pin something?”
“Pinterest.”
“I don’t care, dear.”
Of course she didn’t. “All right. Carry on.”
“Anyway, she brought it in, and Kathleen thought it was a wonderful idea! Anyway, Eve had her grandson print it out, then we blindfolded Lil and made her choose one.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“No, dear, he wasn’t around to help me, or he’d have burned the damn thing.”
“So that’s how you’re reading a book that isn’t fully kinky.”
“Mm. It’s a perfectly good story, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like she’d seduce him a lot faster if she used her stockings to tie the duke to the bed.”
Just at that moment, Isaac arrived. “I’m not even going to ask why you’re tying a duke to a bed with stockings.”
“Book club,” I explained. “Grandma and her friends have a weekly book club. They like to read… uh…”
“Kinky books!” she said brightly with a big old smile. “We read sex books!”
That was one way to put it. Not the way I was going for, but okay.
“Interesting,” Isaac said, sitting down near me and picking up the instructions.
“You look like the hero in the book we’re reading now,” she went on, oblivious to everything else. “It’s a bit vanilla for my tastes, but I’ve read worse.”
“You read the obituaries for fun, Grandma. Of course you’ve read worse.”
Isaac raised an eyebrow.
“I need to check the dead people out of my phonebook.”
“You don’t have a phonebook! You don’t have any friends outside Lil, Evelyn, and Kathleen.”
Grandma tapped her finger against her lips. “You know, I’m not even sure I like those three most days.”
I rubbed my temples. “There we go, then.”
“I only check the obituaries so I know when my time is up. It’s coming, you know.”
“I’m sure it is,” I said dryly, then looked at Isaac. “Will your drill work?”
“Yep. This won’t take long to put together.”
I liked his confidence. God only knew I’d spent an hour on it already and not gotten very far at all.
I handed him the things he needed while he wasted absolutely no time putting everything together.
He was right. The drill really worked.
Within half an hour, the sofas were built, and Grandma had already taken occupation of the two-seater one. She’d swapped her mojito for a cup of coffee and was currently eating her way through my last packet of Doritos.
And leaving orange dust all over my new, cream cushions, because she was apparently five years old.
“So, Isaac, what do you do?” Grandma asked, licking her fingers.
“I’m a vet,” he replied, cradling his own mug, but his was tea and not coffee.
“Oh. Does that mean you’re a doctor?”
“For animals.”
“Damn it.”
He was smart, I’d give him that. Quick, too.
“Are you busy tomorrow night?” Grandma asked. “I’ve taken up a new art class at the local college and I think you’d be a perfect fit.”
I had a bad feeling about this. Why did I have a bad feeling about this? Oh, probably because it was Grandma, and nothing good came from her little ideas.
Isaac glanced at me. “I’m not really an arty kind of person.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t need to paint, dear. You’d be the model. It’s a nude art class!”
And that’d be the reason for the bad feeling.
Grandma leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. “We paint naked men!”
Oh, Jesus.
“Oh. Well, I’m very flattered,” Isaac said. “But I do