Page 10 of Mr. McHunky

chapter

five

Jude

“What do you mean she said no?” Sofia asks, tapping her foot on the kitchen floor. “We’ve been in here all cooking together. You know what that means?”

Aria crosses her arms over her chest and eyes me up and down.

“Yes, I know what it means. It’s a goddamn miracle y’all haven’t burned the house down,” I say.

“They only got in one little fight involving knives,” Juliette says as she walks into the room. She leans up and kisses my cheek.

This one is the sweetest of all. The older two are like a pair of old ladies fighting over the last remaining widower.

“I invited her when you texted me. I even showed her the text. She wasn’t interested,” I say.

“So she’s just over there alone?” Juliette asks.

“Technically she has Rosie.”

“And Lola,” Aria says.

“Lola is a van, not a person.”

“She has a personality,” Sofia argues.

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Y’all are gonna put me in an early grave.”

Aria snorts. “You’ve been threatening that for years.” She smacks my arm. “Yet here you still are.”

“Ouch.” I press a hand to my heart and feign woundedness.

“Just go over there and make sure she knows we want her here,” Aria says.

“Why can’t you go if you’re so keen on having her over? She already told me no,” I say.

“You were probably an ass. So go back and don’t be an ass this time,” Sofia says.

I roll my eyes. “So helpful.” But I still find myself going out the back. The screen door slams behind me. “Bossy damn women,” I mutter.

My acreage is divided in half so that the house is on one end and the barn and cabin are on the other back end. I’ve cleared a walking path between the two, but you can’t see one building from the other. The stand of trees blocks that view.

My brain is consumed with thoughts of Emory as I approach the barn. I can’t deny how much I want her. I can’t even really think about her name without sighing like a lovesick teen. I’m not sure what it is about her, but all it took was one damn look and I knew she belonged to me. Well, that one look, her sassy mouth, and the electricity that came from our hands touching.

There’s something powerful between us. I’m not foolish enough to ignore that. My buddy, JD wasted four years not being with the love of his life because he was an idiot. I won’t be that dumb.

My friends are always telling me that I look like a mean son-of-a-bitch. I think it’s just the angles of my eyebrows, to be honest. Or maybe I do frown too much. The truth is I’m one hundred percent a pushover. Much of it likely stems from the fact that I’ve been my sisters’ legal guardian since I was twenty years old. Our parents died in an accident together, which is how they would have wanted to go.

So I know everything I need to know about love, commitment, and Emory, now I just need to make sure she knows it too.

I walk through the wooded area that’s between my house and my barn. Initially I built the barn to be a home garage where I could work on classic car restoration. I’m a regular mechanic when it comes to Wrench Wizards, but restoration is my passion. I still intend to use it for that purpose, but so far I haven’t been able to make the time for it.

At least I only have the remaining sister to get out of high school. Then legally I’m not responsible for them. Of course, you can’t turn off that kind of thing. My sisters mean everything to me and are a big reason why I’m still single. All those years of taking care of them—they were my priority. I didn’t have time for a social life or a romantic life. I sure as fuck wasn’t going to bring women home to a house I shared with my sisters.

But now, I could have that life. Juliette will be eighteen in three short months. While Aria and Sofia still live here with me, they’re both legal adults. Aria is home from college and Sofia graduated from cosmetology school and now works at the most popular salon in town, which happens to be directly across from my garage.

I hear her voice because I can see her. Emory. How has she already become so familiar to me?